‘Doing a Terrible F*cking Job’: Scott Galloway Hammers CNN For Not Fact-Checking Guests After Kara Swisher Had to Do It Herself

Scott Galloway and Kara Swisher kicked off the latest episode of their popular podcast, Pivot, by discussing Swisher’s recent appearance on CNN’s News Night with Abby Phillip, in which Swisher corrected claims from Trump campaign advisor Bryan Lanza.

After playing part of the clip of Swisher and Lanza from last Tuesday, Swisher summarized their exchange, saying, “You know, let me say, this is Bryan Lanza, senior adviser to the Trump campaign. He just kept coming out with — You know what? He was sloppy and didn’t know the facts. He called Reid Hoffman, Reed Hastings. Then when someone pointed out that Vance called Trump ‘America’s Hitler,’ he said, ‘Yeah, that was 2020. Who cares?’”

She continued:

Like, literally, he’s just he was sloppy and ignorant and it was exhausting. Like, they just. And another person on the thing didn’t know who Gwynne Shotwell was. And SpaceX kept saying that Elon did it all. I was like, Do you know Gwynne Shotwell? And they’re like, No, who is that? I’m like, So you don’t know SpaceX at all. It just went on and on and on around a number of falsehoods. It was really, you know, the problem I have. And I think they should have more reporters on these programs. I’m sorry. If you’re going to say something, you should at least do the research. You know the facts. And he didn’t, so I just showed him the way.

Galloway, an entrepreneur and marketing professor, replied, “There’s two things there in addition to your kind of awesome body slam here. The first is that when only four of 44 secretaries and cabinet members who you worked with are endorsing you in your second run for president, it kind of leads to a scenario that we have now. And as the Trump campaign has just awful fucking surrogates.”

“I mean, as much as I didn’t like Kellyanne Conway, I forget the really attractive blond woman who was a surrogate for him, a spokesperson for him. She was quite good. Vice President Harris’s surrogate surrogates are, you know, Secretary Buttigieg, Governor Newsom, they are fantastic. You know Senator Kelly. I mean, these guys are just fantastic in enemy territory with friendly or not friendly. Their surrogates are really quick. In addition, you’ve said nice things about Abby Phillips. I have no reason to think she’s not a good person. I think CNN is doing a terrible fucking job, and that is they’re putting up programs with village idiots on the other side and it doesn’t benefit the debate,” Galloway declared, adding:

It’s fun. It tickles our censors to see you just school somebody. But the few times I’ve dialed into that show, it is a couple incredibly biased people on the left and a couple of village idiots on the right who just have a food fight and talk past each other. It is not helping the discourse.

“Yeah, I think it’s a bigger problem because it’s the — it’s a bigger problem in society as a whole, is that you know, including with this pet thing, you just can see lies over and over again and then say you set a lie and it was okay. And that’s, you know, it’s just I think the reason it resonated is because I had the facts and I was like, you are. When I said ‘willfully inaccurate,’ I think people were like, finally someone saying exactly this. And what happens when people are, say, attacking things? He says they don’t correct him for one, in this guy, in this particular guy. And it was it was you know, a lot of people do it,” Swisher added.

“And I corrected him respectfully. Actually, I was not like screaming at him. I think a lot of what happens with the left people, they just argue a point that is inaccurate in the first place. And so it’s, no one ever gets any illumination. Right. Or what’s happening here. And so I’m like, this is a ridiculous argument about rhetoric because it’s so clear that the rhetoric levels have don’t make a difference. And they’re nonsensical and they get away from the point,” added the veteran tech reporter and commentator.

Galloway replied, “But at the end of the day, that’s not your job. And these companies are now in the business of entertainment, not in the business of news. And if they were actually in the business of news, they have an obligation.” Galloway then went on to cite some examples of media personalities who he argues have offered some stand-out examples of how to fact-check, including CNBC’s Deirdre Bosa and Colorado local anchor Kyle Clark.

As the conversation turned back to CNN, Galloway argued, “Quite frankly, what you did, Abby should have done.”

Swisher refused to blame Phillip and added, “I’m going to, I’m going to give her… The thing is I happen to know a lot about this. Right? And so you should have people on that happen to know a lot about [the topic].”

“I think they should have more reporters on. I’ve told them this. Agreed. So people, people or area expertise people. And I had just come off a series of interviews about Russian interference, about rhetoric around, you know, So I knew a lot. And so that’s the issue is so you either have someone who knows a lot on the topic if you’re going to take up the topic, who is actually a reporter or an academic or someone who has expertise. But just like saying, you know, you know, sometimes when they do that on some of these panels I’m on and they go, ‘Ukraine.’ I don’t speak. I don’t know what I’m talking about. Right? I don’t say a word. I don’t have an opinion or a take because I don’t know what I’m talking about. And unfortunately, into the breach, go these people who don’t know what they’re talking about,’ Swisher concluded.

Listen to the exchange about via Pivot (begins roughly 5 min in).