Elizabeth Warren Holds Onto Hope

An outspoken advocate for working families, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) has made a career out of taking on Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and the Beltway. And while she may be tired of Washington, she’s not too tired to make it better. At the top, we discuss the constitutional crisis (5:00) surrounding the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia (9:00), this administration’s attack on public education (12:00), and the GOP’s fealty to Donald Trump (13:25). Then, we dive into Senator Warren’s proposed bill to limit the power of special government employees like Elon Musk (25:48), her fight for campaign finance reform (28:05), and the values her Oklahoma upbringing instilled in her (35:43). On the back-half, Senator Warren reflects on her early work in bankruptcy law (39:47), why she’s devoted her career to fighting for the middle class (45:45), the challenges she’s faced in the past decade in office (1:00:19), and what she sees for the future of the Democratic party (1:05:30). Feedback, guests ideas, or a power-ranking of your favorite Warren takedowns? Email us at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. This episode was recorded at Spotify Studios. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:21Sam Fragoso?

  This is Talk Easy. I'm Sam Fragoso. Welcome to the show.

• 0:38Sam Fragoso?

  Today, Senator Elizabeth Warren. My introduction to Warren was, of all things, a viral video. This is back in 2011, when I was a junior in high school. And I remember, in between writing movie reviews of films like Contagion and The Hangover Part II for the local paper, both of which, by the way, have aged just beautifully, I came across this clip of Warren. She was giving an impassioned speech on taxation and income inequality in what appeared to be someone's living room. Maybe you saw it, too.

• 1:13Speaker 01

  There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there, good for you. But I want to be clear, you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory and hire someone to protect against this because of the work the rest of us did. Now, look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific

• 1:56Speaker 01

  or a great idea. God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.

• 2:11Sam Fragoso?

  Politics, like just about anything else, comes down to timing. And from that town hall, Warren emerged as the kind of liberal firebrand voters wanted. You can hear it in the clip. The way she was articulating, in plain terms, a frustration that had been simmering since the bailout of the big banks, where his proprietors were given bonuses instead of jail time. She spoke to an increasingly uneasy feeling that the game was rigged, that the American people had been sold a bill of goods and then been asked to shut up and pay for it. She was mad as hell, and she was not going to take it anymore. In turn, her 2012 run for Senate in Massachusetts, followed by a bid for president in 2020,

• 2:55Sam Fragoso?

  was an invitation to put that anger towards productive means. But anger, as late Ursula Le Guin once wrote, "Continued on past its usefulness, becomes unjust and dangerous, destroying its host in the process." And so Warren didn't just get angry. She got busy, securing $750 million in debt relief for students cheated by predatory for-profit colleges. She helped pass legislation to double federal funding for childcare, made hearing aids available over the counter, reduced out-of-pocket costs for high school students enrolled in career and technical education programs. As a former law professor at Harvard,

• 3:40Sam Fragoso?

  she's also been a tireless advocate for the judicial process and anti-corruption in Washington, making her a prime target for the GOP, especially right now. And so, given the past couple of weeks, I wanted to talk to the senator about how and why she's devoted her career to fighting for the middle class. We also discuss all the ways in which she is currently combating this Trump administration each and every day. We talk about her upbringing in Oklahoma and what values it instilled in her from a young age, the challenges she's faced in the past decade in office, and what she sees for the future of the Democratic Party. This is Senator Elizabeth Warren.

• 4:41Sam Fragoso?

  Senator Warren, thank you for being here.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  Oh, thank you for having me.

• 4:45Sam Fragoso?

  We have not met before.

• 4:46Speaker 01

  No.

• 4:47Sam Fragoso?

  But it is an absolute thrill to have you here in New York City. I heard that you sometimes wake up in the morning around 3:00 a.m. And when you do, you have a thing that's top of mind.

• 5:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 5:01Sam Fragoso?

  That comes to you.

• 5:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 5:03Sam Fragoso?

  A pressing issue.

• 5:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 5:04Sam Fragoso?

  I imagine, since Donald Trump was elected for a second term, you are not alone in these 3:00 a.m.

• 5:11Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 5:11Sam Fragoso?

  Panic wake-ups.

• 5:12Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 5:13Sam Fragoso?

  But since I'm here with you today.

• 5:15Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 5:16Sam Fragoso?

  What happened this morning? What was top of mind?

• 5:19Speaker 01

  So, the first thing this morning was, is he going to obey the court order? That's just like what popped into my mind. And it was 3:02 when I rolled over and looked at the clock. And I'm worried about every part of what's happening in our country right now. And that one sounds so abstract.

• 5:41Sam Fragoso?

  Mm-hmm.

• 5:42Speaker 01

  But for me, it just instantly clicks to, if he breaks this country, if he breaks sort of our, you know, three parts of government, the legislature writes the laws, the executive administers those laws, and the courts enforce to make sure everybody's followed those laws. If he breaks that, it means for lots of families, for good families, for people who work hard and play by the rules, the implications move to things like grandma doesn't get her social security check and the family can't get a mortgage.

• 6:20Sam Fragoso?

  You talked about schools expanding their class size.

• 6:22Speaker 01

  Schools, that's exactly right. They're going after the Department, the Department of Education. I'm sorry, I'm already worked up 45 seconds in. The Department of Education. And it means what they want to do is basically cut so that class sizes get bigger, little kids with serious disabilities don't get the aid that they needed so they can be in a classroom along with the other kids. It means the after-school programs are gone. And all of those things touch people's lives.

• 6:56Speaker 01

  In not just everyday ways, but can literally mean the difference between whether you can make it to the end of the month or not.

• 7:03Sam Fragoso?

  Well, my father has been a public school teacher in Chicago for

• 7:07Speaker 01

  God bless.

• 7:08Sam Fragoso?

  30 years.

• 7:08Speaker 01

  God bless.

• 7:09Sam Fragoso?

  I know your first job was, I believe, in New Jersey as a special needs teacher. You did that for about a year. Now, you woke up at 3:02 this morning with that thought. How do you fall back asleep?

• 7:23Speaker 01

  So I do two things. Get up and go to the bathroom.

• 7:26Sam Fragoso?

  Okay.

• 7:26Speaker 01

  Get a drink of water, right?

• 7:28Sam Fragoso?

  Is your husband, at this point?

• 7:29Speaker 01

  Sound asleep.

• 7:30Sam Fragoso?

  Profoundly annoyed by this?

• 7:31Speaker 01

  No, no, he's asleep.

• 7:33Sam Fragoso?

  Okay.

• 7:33Speaker 01

  He lets me do this, doesn't engage on this. I get back in bed and I do two things. The first thing I do is I say, is there something I can do about this? And there always is. There's something. I can call somebody in the morning. I know. I can see if I can get this group. I know. I'm going to talk to some public school teachers tomorrow and get them in the fight. I've got a thing going now called Save Our Schools. And it's to try to get more people from all around the country to lift up their stories about why they support public schools, why they are in this fight all the way. So just one thing I can do. That brings my anxiety level down a little.

• 8:15Speaker 01

  And then I put my earbuds in and I flick on a book I've already read and it does not have super exciting parts in it. And I put it in my ear and I go back to sleep.

• 8:30Sam Fragoso?

  So, top of mind issue today, and it is one that is on the front page of the New York Times this morning, is that as of right now, the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, US citizen, currently sitting in a prison in El Salvador, has not been brought back to this country. The administration has called it an administrative error. While the Trump team continues to ignore Supreme Court's instructions to facilitate his return, The Atlantic published a recent article claiming the constitutional crisis is here. Has anyone in the legislative branch developed what to do if and when the Trump administration formally tells the Supreme Court that they're not going to comply with

• 9:15Sam Fragoso?

  their instructions?

• 9:16Speaker 01

  So this is-

• 9:17Sam Fragoso?

  When Trump asks the justices, three of whom he's installed, to bend the knee, what is the plan then?

• 9:25Speaker 01

  So this is what I was thinking about at 3:02-

• 9:27Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 9:28Speaker 01

  -this morning. What if he just says, "No"? We are literally then in full-blown constitutional crisis. Now, look, we've been inching toward constitutional crisis all along.

• 9:37Sam Fragoso?

  Sure.

• 9:37Speaker 01

  When you've got a president who just doesn't care what the law is, when he's openly saying he doesn't want to obey the Constitution. But let me start with con law 101. And that is, remember, legislature makes the laws, the administration is supposed to administer those laws, the court is supposed to enforce those.

• 9:56Sam Fragoso?

  Mm-hmm. When was the last time you watched that YouTube video of "I am a Bill"?

• 10:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, "I am a Bill", do you love that? You know, he dances up and down the steps. You know, it's the whole heart. But all of that actually rests on something else, and that is people all across this country. So I'm not ready to give up on the Constitution. I'm not ready to say that the president has broken the whole thing, but ultimately, the power is less about Congress and more about 300 million people across this country who are going to have to be in the fight to save our country, to save our Constitution, to save our democracy. And ultimately, that's not just an abstraction, it's really to save our public schools, to

• 10:41Speaker 01

  save access to healthcare, to save your grandma's social security, that those are the things we're going to have to be in the fight for. So what are we trying to do in Congress? Fair question. Fair question. But it's not our end of how a bill becomes a law is not how we enforce it. It lies at the courts and not at the legislature.

• 11:05Sam Fragoso?

  So let's talk about the courts. I think we're in agreement that Trump- Is inching towards calling the court and its findings and its directions illegitimate.

• 11:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:16Sam Fragoso?

  But I want to go back because language, I think, is important here. When the court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, you immediately went on ABC and said, "The court, quote, 'has burned whatever legitimacy legitimacy they may have still had. They just took the last of it and set a torch to it." Two years before that, you called the nomination and confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett "a corrupt and illegitimate process." In that time, Gallup has reported that only 35% of Americans expressed confidence in the US judicial system, marking a 24-point dip since 2020.

• 11:55Sam Fragoso?

  So do you think calling the Supreme Court illegitimate, as burned down and torched, is an effective way to get voters to trust the system, to trust the courts? What is your aim in using that kind of vivid apocalyptic language?

• 12:14Speaker 01

  Look, I don't think that people should trust the court. Understand where we are right now.

• 12:19Sam Fragoso?

  But you want the court to do something right now.

• 12:20Speaker 01

  Yes, I do want them to earn the trust of the American people.

• 12:24Sam Fragoso?

  Earn it back.

• 12:24Speaker 01

  They don't get it automatically because they all have cool robes. They get it based on what they do. So let's do all the parts here. What the Supreme Court needs to do right now is to say clearly and with one voice, "No, Mr. President, you're the one who has to back down."

• 12:45Sam Fragoso?

  You want them to rise to the occasion.

• 12:47Speaker 01

  That's right. I want them to rise to the occasion. And this is why I keep underscoring, "No, we're not going to fix this elsewhere, damn it, court, do your job. You've got to turn the heat up under the court." And that is part of what I'm trying to do right now. But let me do the other half, and that is what we need to be doing in Congress.

• 13:05Sam Fragoso?

  Okay.

• 13:05Speaker 01

  I want to turn the heat up under every damn one of these Republicans. Look, a handful of Republicans could stand up and say, "Mr. President, no, you can't."

• 13:19Speaker 01

  Can't do this, no more. You don't get to create chaos through declaring an emergency. You don't get to do it in the courts. You don't get to do it on tariffs. You don't get to do this. We actually, over here in Congress, not only have the law on our side, we actually have spines and we can stand up and say no to the president. We've got 47 Democrats ready to do that. A handful of Republicans and everything that's happening right now in Washington changes.

• 13:51Sam Fragoso?

  You have 53 Republicans in the Senate.

• 13:53Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 13:53Sam Fragoso?

  Who do you think can stand up?

• 13:55Speaker 01

  Look, they're not going to do this one at a time. I get this.

• 13:58Sam Fragoso?

  Well, they go in unison?

• 13:59Speaker 01

  It's going to take a group.

• 14:00Sam Fragoso?

  They all got to jump in the pool?

• 14:01Speaker 01

  Not all 53 of them.

• 14:03Sam Fragoso?

  How many?

• 14:04Speaker 01

  But a handful.

• 14:05Sam Fragoso?

  Like four to five?

• 14:06Speaker 01

  We just need a few, four or five, and you're already at the majority here.

• 14:09Sam Fragoso?

  Who are you thinking here?

• 14:10Speaker 01

  Look, I don't know who's going to show signs of a backbone. And I say that sincerely, Sam, because all of them should. Look, these are people who-

• 14:22Sam Fragoso?

  Come on, we know that all of them should, of course, of course.

• 14:24Speaker 01

  Yes, but damn it, these are people who walk around with a copy of the Constitution in their coat pockets and they want to talk about rule of law and how important rule of law is and how they speak of the Constitution every morning and every evening over dinner. Then by golly, stand up and do your constitutional duty.

• 14:45Sam Fragoso?

  Does the Senate have a cafeteria? Does that happen?

• 14:48Speaker 01

  Uh, not really.

• 14:49Sam Fragoso?

  Do you guys ever, you guys all eat together sometimes?

• 14:51Speaker 01

  We have a dining room. No, our equivalent of the water cooler is when we vote. You actually have to go to the floor to vote and sometimes when-

• 15:00Sam Fragoso?

  And so when you deliver this face to face to some of the Republicans we're thinking about, they say what?

• 15:07Speaker 01

  Nothing, no eye contact.

• 15:08Sam Fragoso?

  No eye contact?

• 15:09Speaker 01

  No eye contact.

• 15:09Sam Fragoso?

  They're afraid of your eyes?

• 15:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:11Sam Fragoso?

  Really?

• 15:11Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 15:11Sam Fragoso?

  But you have such nice eyes.

• 15:12Speaker 01

  I know, but they are-

• 15:14Sam Fragoso?

  So they look down at their feet?

• 15:16Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 15:16Sam Fragoso?

  Like an awkward teenage boy?

• 15:18Speaker 01

  Yep, little sideways. We do the same thing in the elevators. Get on the elevator, I do this. And I will actually say, I cannot believe that Donald Trump just said X or did Y. And there will be three Republicans, tiny little elevators. We're all crammed in and we've got our folks with them and it's straight ahead. I do not see you here.

• 15:38Sam Fragoso?

  Really?

• 15:38Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 15:39Sam Fragoso?

  And you can't break through? You've been there for 12 years.

• 15:43Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 15:43Sam Fragoso?

  You can't break through to any of them.

• 15:46Speaker 01

  Not yet.

• 15:47Sam Fragoso?

  So then tell me, with 53 Republicans in the Senate, 47 Democrats in the Senate. In the House, Republicans, 218, Democrats, 215. You know these numbers.

• 16:00Speaker 01

  I know these numbers. God, do I know these numbers. They're like burned on the backs of my eyelids, Sam.

• 16:04Sam Fragoso?

  I understand.

• 16:04Speaker 01

  Come on, just remind me again. Tell me again.

• 16:07Sam Fragoso?

  Look, look, usually we wait till the third act to get into trauma.

• 16:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Geez.

• 16:10Sam Fragoso?

  But we're right here.

• 16:11Speaker 01

  Right, right. Just right out in front.

• 16:13Sam Fragoso?

  You came in hot.

• 16:14Speaker 01

  I didn't. You have the numbers here. Okay.

• 16:17Sam Fragoso?

  What power do you foresee Congress wielding to stop Trump's agenda? And why would a Republican-led House and Senate work to undermine his second term?

• 16:29Speaker 01

  So, we don't have as much power as we want. I want the power of majority. I want the power of 51. Not having as much power as we want is not the same as having no power. So, what have we done? What kind of fights have we been in? One is, you know, a job you have in the United States Senate is oversight. Man, I keep sending out letters. I send out letters to people in the Trump administration. I send out letters to other people who have power.

• 16:54Sam Fragoso?

  You sent out a letter last week to the head of SEC.

• 16:56Speaker 01

  That's right. And by golly, got an investigation. On Department of Education, it's they have certain statutory duties. They're trying to fire everybody. I get an independent investigator to come in and say, can you still meet your statutory authorities? And the importance of that is threefold. One, it reminds everybody in the agency, in the SEC, in the Department of Education, it reminds them, hey, you still have a job to do. Do your job. You are not here to just take a knee to Donald Trump. You're here to do your job. The second effect is that I pull in other Democrats with me. And that's important, and frankly, do it in front of a lot of Republicans.

• 17:38Speaker 01

  So we do this so I can bring it up at hearings, we can talk about it in other places where there are Republicans, damn it, so I can keep talking about it on the elevator, right? So I can hand these letters out and say, "Help me in this with the Republicans. Read this, help me." And the third is because it helps on the outside. You get this investigation, you get these facts. There are folks right now who are suing the Department of Education. An independent federal investigation may yield information that could be very valuable in that. So you pick up the tools you've got and you use those tools as sharply and as vigorously and as often as possible.

• 18:20Sam Fragoso?

  You know, people on the right, voters, pundits, commentators, have argued that Trump has a kind of genius that us pedestrians just can't see. Here are some exact quotes from commentators on Fox and Newsmax. "When it comes to the war on Ukraine, Zelensky is playing checkers and Trump is playing chess. When it comes to tariffs, one commentator said that his tariff strategy is actually Trump's 3D chess moves. The measles outbreak, plane crashes is actually Trump's 4D chess." And then finally, to top off the board game compliments, one Fox commentator has said,

• 19:01Sam Fragoso?

  "President Trump is playing 5D chess with the economy, inventing a new dimension that is Donald." So I want to know, what are they seeing that perhaps you are not?

• 19:16Speaker 01

  I think they are in the fable of all the people who stood by and watched the emperor parade down the street naked. Don't you remember the one?

• 19:31Sam Fragoso?

  January 6th?

• 19:32Speaker 01

  Until the little boy stands up and says, "The emperor has no clothes."

• 19:36Sam Fragoso?

  I do remember that one.

• 19:37Speaker 01

  You remember that one? You remember that one? Look, they can create whatever alternative reality they want.

• 19:44Speaker 01

  And reality does have a way of coming back in and asserting itself. People not getting their social security checks, I don't care what 5D you want to describe. They're not getting their damn social security checks, you're going to hear from them. Class sizes start going up in our public schools, we're going to hear from them. Half of the people in nursing homes right now are supported by Medicaid and the Republicans in Congress are looking to cut it. Half the babies in this country get their health care through Medicaid and the Republicans want to cut it. Veteran services and the Republicans want to cut it. You know, I go through the list of what the Republicans want to cut and there's not

• 20:27Speaker 01

  going to be a family left in America that's not going to feel that cut. And if I do my job and the rest of the Democrats do our job, there's not going to be a family left in America that doesn't know exactly whose fault this is and it's Donald Trump and a bunch of spineless Republicans in Congress. And let me just say, all toward one purpose, and that is to do tax cuts for a handful of billionaires. Why are they trying to make all these other cuts in government? They want to make these cuts in government so that a handful of billionaires can run this country and basically not have to pay any taxes doing it.

• 21:04Sam Fragoso?

  But billionaires are not why he won Michigan and they're not why he won Pennsylvania. It's not why he won Wisconsin. Almost every county in the US, there's been a rightward shift towards Trump in this past election, even in liberal cities, actually especially in liberal cities. Your home state of Oklahoma, born and raised, proud, 77 counties, not a one voted for Joe Biden. So I understand the fallout of these policies will likely be.

• 21:39Sam Fragoso?

  On the burdens and on the backs of the middle class, but it is the middle class that delivered him here. And so, do you think people who voted for him are masochists? Or is there something so profoundly unappealing about the Democratic Party that they would rather vote for someone that does not have their best interests at heart?

• 22:00Speaker 01

  Come on, Sam. Remember the campaign. What was Donald Trump's?

• 22:04Sam Fragoso?

  I try not to, but I remember.

• 22:05Speaker 01

  Number one promise, what he promised over and over and over and over and over is I will lower your costs on day one. Those were his words.

• 22:15Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 22:15Speaker 01

  On day one, over and over and over. After he got elected, his very first interview, he said, why did you win, Donald Trump? And he said, because I promised to lower people's costs. And now, here we are in the third month. And when he's told, you know, the stuff you're doing around tariffs could actually raise people's costs. He said, he couldn't care less. Those are his words. So he has gone from a promise to the American people that was very appealing in 77 counties in Oklahoma, very appealing to young people who look out there and say, I don't know when I'm ever going to be able to buy a home.

• 22:57Speaker 01

  Very appealing to seniors who say, I'm worried about my costs going up. And then he is weeks into his presidency before he has exactly turned that on his head, on its head. And he is driving up costs for American families. So I see this as a giant bait and switch.

• 23:16Sam Fragoso?

  Okay.

• 23:16Speaker 01

  He told people one thing, got elected on that one thing, and now he's headed in exactly the opposite direction.

• 23:22Sam Fragoso?

  But those people have not turned on him.

• 23:23Speaker 01

  Uh, I don't know. I'm smelling the milk souring here. I've seen more seniors showing up.

• 23:32Sam Fragoso?

  Now, hold on. I showered this morning.

• 23:36Speaker 01

  I'm just saying in that area, but I'm serious. I watch people now over social security who say, whoa, that's not what I signed up for. You know, look at right now, all the lights that are flashing red for working families. So, right now in America, people have more credit card debt delinquencies than they did right after the 2008 crash. More auto loan delinquencies and consumer confidence has just collapsed in America. It's the lowest numbers ever. People are saying two things. They expect prices to go up. They're saying inflation, they anticipate is going to be around 6.4%.

• 24:21Speaker 01

  And they're saying they're worried they're going to lose their jobs. And the reason that's so important, Sam, is it's important for two reasons. Consumers are like canaries in the coal mine. They're watching it firsthand, you know? Fancy people read the charts and the numbers once they come out. But people, families are living this one at a time and they're watching what Donald Trump is doing start to affect their lives. But the second is, the American consumer is the horse that pulls the cart economically in our country and really the whole world. When consumer confidence falls, when people think I may not have a job, when they see, God, this is how much credit card debt I've got, more credit card debt than savings in America right now.

• 25:06Speaker 01

  The consequence is people start to pull back. And they start to pull back, that starts echoing backwards through the economy. So, I think there are a lot of folks who are starting to live what Donald Trump's, I couldn't care less about their lives. And I, I think that's going to be powerfully important.

• 25:29Sam Fragoso?

  Right next to Donald Trump is a man that you've called an unelected billionaire, now serving as the co-president.

• 25:36Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 25:36Sam Fragoso?

  And Elon Musk. Just this week, you introduced the SEER Act.

• 25:40Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 25:40Sam Fragoso?

  Which is designed to strengthen transparency and ethics requirements for special government employees like Musk. Now, I think increasing transparency is a very good idea. And I wouldn't trust Elon Musk with... Just about anything.

• 25:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm trying to finish that sentence for you and thinking.

• 26:01Sam Fragoso?

  Almost nothing.

• 26:02Speaker 01

  Almost nothing.

• 26:03Sam Fragoso?

  Almost nothing.

• 26:03Speaker 01

  Almost nothing.

• 26:04Sam Fragoso?

  But many Republicans voted Donald Trump, not in spite of Elon Musk's presence, but because of it. Do you think Elon was able to have an outsized role in Trump's campaign beyond the interference he ran on Twitter, which is clear? Because we have not passed significant campaign finance reform.

• 26:23Speaker 01

  Oh, yes.

• 26:24Sam Fragoso?

  Why was eliminating super PACs not something you wanted to do in 2021 when the Democrats had the House and the Senate?

• 26:33Speaker 01

  Oh, it is something I've wanted to do for a long, long time. I, yes, we need campaign finance reform. Indeed, if you had to pick two words for the Trump administration and Elon, it's, one would be chaos.

• 26:46Sam Fragoso?

  Okay.

• 26:47Speaker 01

  And the other would be corruption. And it's the corruption of spending a third of a billion dollars to get somebody elected president of the United States. It's the corruption of being the guy. Are you ready for this? Did you know that Elon Musk makes eight million dollars a day?

• 27:05Sam Fragoso?

  A day.

• 27:05Speaker 01

  Just off his federal contracts. And what he wants to do is cut access to social security for people who make an average of $65 a day.

• 27:14Sam Fragoso?

  I read your, your act and I read the statement.

• 27:17Speaker 01

  Okay, sorry about that.

• 27:18Sam Fragoso?

  You know the show, you know I do a lot of reading.

• 27:20Speaker 01

  I know you do. I know you do, but I just gotta say it again because it's like, if this doesn't make us get in the fight, I mean, this is it. This is the moment. We are at a moment in history here where this is about turning our country over to a king and a handful of noblemen formerly known as billionaires.

• 27:43Sam Fragoso?

  So in 2021.

• 27:44Speaker 01

  And they get to run the whole damn thing.

• 27:45Sam Fragoso?

  Tell me why in 2021, when you had the power, it wasn't top of mind?

• 27:51Speaker 01

  I don't think I would describe it as not top of mind.

• 27:54Sam Fragoso?

  Well, I would describe it as not being present.

• 27:55Speaker 01

  We didn't, you're. I am there to fight this fight.

• 28:00Sam Fragoso?

  Okay.

• 28:00Speaker 01

  We fight on the front foot on this. It is something we have got to get done. But look.

• 28:06Sam Fragoso?

  By we, you mean you, not the entirety of the Democratic Party. You have senators in your party, right?

• 28:13Speaker 01

  Fair enough.

• 28:13Sam Fragoso?

  You yourself, you had opposed super PAC money for a long, long time.

• 28:20Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 28:21Sam Fragoso?

  Then in February of 2020, less than a month before you dropped out.

• 28:25Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 28:26Sam Fragoso?

  But you accepted 14.6 million dollars in super PAC money.

• 28:31Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 28:31Sam Fragoso?

  From a woman named Carla Jervison, whose philanthropy is in part funded by her ex-husband, Steven Jervison, who is a billionaire, who is still on the board of SpaceX, and was an early investor in Elon Musk's Tesla.

• 28:48Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 28:49Sam Fragoso?

  This is the money that was funneled into your campaign. What does it say about our political climate? That someone as smart and thoughtful and outspoken on this subject as you still had to take, not had to, but did take money?

• 29:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:06Sam Fragoso?

  What does that, what does that say?

• 29:08Speaker 01

  Look, what you're talking about is how the whole system has become corrupted.

• 29:16Sam Fragoso?

  And you feel like you're part of that corruption, then?

• 29:19Speaker 01

  Look, I feel like we live in a world right now where money keeps pushing every part of what happens. Do you think Donald Trump would be president if Elon Musk hadn't put a third of a billion dollars into his campaign?

• 29:37Sam Fragoso?

  I don't think he would have won in the fashion that he did.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  And you put that with he promised on day one that he was going to lower costs, and I think we get what's going on here. But at the end of the day, our question is, how are we going to save our democracy? And part of it has got to be that we have got to deliver those lower costs for families. But the other part is we've got to wash out this corruption.

• 30:01Sam Fragoso?

  I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to hold you to a purity test.

• 30:04Speaker 01

  No, no, it's okay.

• 30:05Sam Fragoso?

  But I do want to know. Because I know where you come from.

• 30:10Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 30:10Sam Fragoso?

  I know the jobs that you've had. I know the decade you spent in academia, looking at bankruptcy. I know you fight, I know you going to Washington against your will in 95, in the Clinton administration.

• 30:25Speaker 01

  You know I lost.

• 30:26Sam Fragoso?

  I know you lost, I know you fought them for a decade. I know that you went there in 2008, after everyone lost their goddamn home, and they asked you, please, can you fix this? Please, can you hold the bankers accountable? I know all of this. I've read the books, I've read the statements, I've read the briefs. Taking that 14.6 million.

• 30:47Sam Fragoso?

  Did that pain you?

• 30:48Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 30:55Speaker 01

  You know, the hardest part for me about running for office, the single hardest part, is how much you don't want to disappoint people.

• 31:05Speaker 01

  When I first ran back in 2011, 2012, ran for senate, I'd never run for anything before. And the part that was the hardest was actually not going out and raising money. I went out and people gave me $5 contributions online. I would go to house parties and people write checks for $25 and for whatever the maximum was back then, $1,000.

• 31:27Sam Fragoso?

  I think up until that point, that senate run was one of the most.

• 31:30Speaker 01

  Oh, it was the most expensive in the country by a lot.

• 31:33Sam Fragoso?

  Right.

• 31:33Speaker 01

  And I was up against a guy that was getting financed by Wall Street. So I saw the effect of money.

• 31:37Sam Fragoso?

  And most of your donors also were out of state, I believe.

• 31:40Speaker 01

  That may be right, in number.

• 31:42Sam Fragoso?

  A number.

• 31:42Speaker 01

  That may be right. And people would say to me, though,

• 31:48Speaker 01

  I've volunteered every Saturday. I've never volunteered on a campaign before. I had this woman come up to me. Remember, I started out way behind in this campaign. There were seven other Democrats in the race. I'm down like 35 points the first time I'm polled. And I keep inching back, inching back. And it's late summer before the election in November, late summer, early fall. And I've, I'm still behind. I'm not behind by a lot, but I'm behind. And this woman comes up through some selfie line or doing something and she shakes

• 32:28Speaker 01

  hands and she says, Elizabeth, you're gonna win. And I said, oh, thank you very much. You know, this is what you do and you shake hands, go to the next person. And she holds my hand a bit longer. She said, no, I know you're gonna win. And I said, how do you know that? And she said, well, my friend Barbara and I decided a year ago, when you got in this race, that we were gonna help you out in our town. And she names the town they're in. And she said, so, we rearranged our work schedules and we went out two mornings a week in the traffic circle, a few blocks from our house and held up signs for Elizabeth Warren. We painted the first ones. Later, we got your signs. And we never missed, two

• 33:11Speaker 01

  days a week, week after week after week, for a year. And I never met this woman. And she said, and the reason I know you're gonna win is at first, you know, people go around the circle and they look curious. Some people give us the finger, you know. And she said, and then over time, more and more people would wave. And now people honk and wave and give us the good honk. And so this was kind of her version of how I know you're gonna win. But to me, it was how much you have invested in helping me win. And I want to do everything I can. I wake up at three in the morning. I do the best I can. I get

• 33:51Speaker 01

  up, I give the speeches, I do my homework. And the financing part of it, it's, it's just a killer. It's, I want a chance to let this campaign work. And yet, we can't, our democracy can't survive if it's just gonna be all about big money. It's hard.

• 34:21Sam Fragoso?

  It pains you saying that.

• 34:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. You know, I didn't run for office because I wanted to be a senator. I had a great job. God, I loved my job. I'm a teacher. It's what I was born to do. And I've known that since second grade, since Mrs. Lee gathered me into her ample bosom and whispered in my ear that I could be a teacher.

• 34:48Sam Fragoso?

  As a kid, you had a series of dolls that you would put in a row and.

• 34:54Speaker 01

  Teach.

• 34:54Sam Fragoso?

  And teach.

• 34:55Speaker 01

  I did, I did. You know, those dolls, I just want to say, we had some who always paid attention, but we had some bad boys in the back of the class. Boy, I'm telling you, that Sammy doll, he was, it was his name. I'm just saying.

• 35:10Sam Fragoso?

  What?

• 35:11Speaker 01

  I'm just saying, his name was Sammy.

• 35:13Sam Fragoso?

  Are you getting back at me for bringing up the campaign finance?

• 35:16Speaker 01

  You know, if the shoe fits, what can I say?

• 35:18Sam Fragoso?

  My lord, well, my name is Samuel, by the way, so you're not that wrong.

• 35:20Speaker 01

  No, this guy was Sammy. He was, he and Suzie.

• 35:23Sam Fragoso?

  I want to talk about, before you were a proud Democrat, you're a Republican, born and raised in Oklahoma, living on what you've described as the ragged edge of the middle class. Do you think your skepticism and condemnation of grifters like Donald Trump and Elon Musk comes from the fact that you were raised by parents whom just three years prior to your birth had their savings stolen by a business partner of your father?

• 35:54Speaker 01

  Yep. You know, my three older brothers were kind of the first family. I was what was always called the surprise later on. I was a lot older before I understood what that really meant, but.

• 36:05Sam Fragoso?

  That's, that's to save the marriage child.

• 36:07Speaker 01

  No, this was the, I think something else went wrong.

• 36:11Sam Fragoso?

  What does that mean?

• 36:13Speaker 01

  They were surprised. And.

• 36:16Sam Fragoso?

  The no-protection child.

• 36:18Speaker 01

  I don't, I don't ask further, but they had, they had saved their money up and they tried this little auto business.

• 36:26Sam Fragoso?

  That's right.

• 36:27Speaker 01

  In a little town in Oklahoma. And Daddy was the one in the back who did all the car repairs and, and then he had this partner out front who was the one who would sell the cars and, and bring in the customers and so on. And ultimately, this guy ran off with all the money, left Daddy with the debts.

• 36:49Speaker 01

  And it just kind of broke my parents. You know, they, they, they'd made it through the depression. They'd made it through World War II. They had these three rambunctious boys who did all kinds of crazy things.

• 37:04Sam Fragoso?

  On the heels of the Dust Bowl.

• 37:05Speaker 01

  That's right, all on the heels of the Dust Bowl. But they were, they were a family. And, and I grew up in the shadow of what it's like after it's broken. And for a kid, kids are smart. Kids, kids smell it in the air. And you can smell what it's like when somebody has been cheated. When they no longer really believe that if you work hard and play by the rules, it's all going to work out okay.

• 37:36Sam Fragoso?

  And you felt that?

• 37:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it, I've always felt like it's the part of America that is special. That we are a country, that the, the secular religion is work hard, play by the rules. You can do this. And yet, what really makes a huge difference is what are the rules of this game? What's the board set up like? And there's a period in American history where it's set up to let America's middle class grow and succeed. It's not perfect. We don't get there all the way in all the ways we should, but it's headed in that direction.

• 38:18Speaker 01

  It's basically post-World War II up till Ronald Reagan gets elected in the eighties. And then the shift starts to take place. And it increasingly hollows out that solid middle class and money moves to the top. And billionaires start to take increasing control. You see a lot more concentration in industries. And for me to experience this kind of in a very personal way is here I am, I'm teaching, I'm teaching bankruptcy law, I'm teaching about families that go broke. And how they try to renew themselves by getting rid of their debts.

• 38:58Speaker 01

  But I'm living in a country that has said to Wall Street, hey, listen, you want to cheat a bunch of families across this country, have at it, boys. And that's exactly what they were doing. And they load a lot of risk into our economy. And I'm out there like waving every red flag and flashing lights saying they're going to bring down our economy. And when they do that, they're going to bring down millions of families. And sure enough, that is exactly what happened in 2008.

• 39:28Sam Fragoso?

  Before that happens, in 1978, Congress passes a law to allow people and companies to declare bankruptcy.

• 39:35Speaker 01

  Bankruptcy Reform Act.

• 39:36Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah, with a lot more ease. And come 1982, when you're a professor and a mother of two, you decide to embark on a fact finding mission to, quote, prove these people filing for bankruptcy were a bunch of cheaters and taking advantage of the rest of us.

• 39:52Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 39:52Sam Fragoso?

  As you and your colleagues travel across the courthouses around the country with a portable Xerox machine called R2-D2, because there were no electronic records, what did you find in the data of these bankruptcy cases? Did you find the cheaters?

• 40:08Speaker 01

  No, they were the families like, like my family. My family never declared bankruptcy, so I was sure that we were different from the families who were in bankruptcy. The families in bankruptcy surely were the cheaters.

• 40:22Sam Fragoso?

  And how did you think they were different? What was the distance?

• 40:24Speaker 01

  They were the cheaters. They were the ones who were layabouts, or they were ones who had gotten their money.

• 40:30Sam Fragoso?

  Weak willed.

• 40:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, weak willed. I guess in some sense, I thought, they deserve to be broken. I'm, I'm going to go expose these people. Shame on the laws for being so much more generous.

• 40:42Sam Fragoso?

  That sounds like a Republican, by the way.

• 40:43Speaker 01

  Oh, it did. It did. It sounded very Republican. And I sat in those courtrooms, I read those files, and I realized, this family's just like mine. Those families had had one of three things happen to them, and most had had two out of three. They had terrible medical problems, they had a significant, long job loss, or they had a death or divorce in the family. And that explained more than 90% of the bankruptcies. And like I said, many had had two. How long people had struggled to try to stay out of bankruptcy court, how they had borrowed from Peter to pay Paul, how they'd sold wedding rings,

• 41:25Speaker 01

  how they'd done everything they could not to have to go into court and declare themselves losers, dead flat broke, people who couldn't make it in America's economic system. And I came to understand, it's how I got into how the economy worked, that these were also people who were increasingly tricked and trapped into just crappy financial products. These were people who, when things had been a little better, had bought a home. And over time, what happens to these people? Somebody knocks on the door and says, you know, you need a new roof, you need gutters, you need new wiring.

• 42:10Speaker 01

  How about we refinance your home? And we can lower your payments. And never disclose that when you sign on the bottom line, you have just agreed that you're going to have about a one in five chance of losing the home that you live in and that you've successfully been paying for.

• 42:29Sam Fragoso?

  Which brings us to 2008.

• 42:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. That's the whole how we kept loading up this risk. We basically turned loose a handful of smart money boys off Wall Street to just go out there and like a plague of locusts on American families and just pick as many pockets as they could. And then they also cleverly took those mortgages and bundled them up and figured out how to make millions and millions and millions of dollars off those families.

• 43:08Sam Fragoso?

  We'll be right back with Senator Elizabeth Warren.

• 43:21Sam Fragoso?

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• 44:52Sam Fragoso?

  You said a problem that looks real but small at the margins in the 1980s has moved to the center by the 1990s, and by the 2000s is starting to hollow out America's middle class. Come 2008, 2009, when you're asked to come to Washington and to hold these banks accountable. You said that studying the Treasury's practices taught you that Obama's economic advisers were even more beholden to the banks than you understood. Explain that gap between what you thought the Obama administration was interested in and what they proved to be interested in.

• 45:31Speaker 01

  So, remember, let me just do a little more setting of the table. Millions of families have either lost their homes or are in the process of losing their homes. I came to Washington to set up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, but also there...

• 45:47Speaker 01

  To make the argument for how we can save as many families as possible, how we can be the lifeboats in the water. And we won't be able to save them all. Some are already gone. But we can pull a lot more families into the lifeboats. Because that's how I look at the economy at that point. We are in a crash. We're in a terrible recession. Let's save as many families as we can. I made my pitch to Tim Geithner, who then was Secretary of the Treasury. And he listens and he says to me, no, we've run the numbers and we don't have to do that. The banks are going to survive. And I was like, wait a minute. I get it.

• 46:32Speaker 01

  He said, we've foamed the runway. It was his view. We've foamed the runway enough that the banks will survive. So from his perspective, you want to save an economy, you save a half dozen Wall Street banks. You pump as much money as you need to in there. You foam the runway so they can land successfully and get this bad debt off their books and move right back to profitability. My view was the way you save an economy is you save the families that are dying out there financially. And Tim Geithner won and I lost.

• 47:10Sam Fragoso?

  When you were constructing the CFPB, Warren Buffett said, I think Elizabeth would do better if she were less angry and demonized less.

• 47:19Speaker 01

  You know, fine. I just don't care. It was a damn good idea. And you know how I know that? Because this is one we actually won on. We actually got it turned into law. And here's the deal. In roughly a dozen years of operation, it has uncovered about $21 billion in fraud. And it didn't just uncover it and say, oh, fraud. It actually made those fraudsters return the money directly to the people who got cheated.

• 47:50Sam Fragoso?

  Roughly around $18 billion.

• 47:52Speaker 01

  There we go.

• 47:52Sam Fragoso?

  Right.

• 47:53Speaker 01

  That is a big win.

• 47:55Sam Fragoso?

  Huge win.

• 47:55Speaker 01

  Huge win. You know how else it's a win? It shows you actually can make government work. Government doesn't have to just work for Wall Street, banks, or billionaires. We can make it work for everybody else.

• 48:08Sam Fragoso?

  But I do believe that it would have done more good if you were the one hired to run it. July of 2011.

• 48:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:17Sam Fragoso?

  President Obama brings you into the Oval Office. You guys walk out on a hot summer day.

• 48:23Speaker 01

  Oh, damn, it was hot.

• 48:24Sam Fragoso?

  What is that conversation between the two of you?

• 48:27Speaker 01

  So I have spent a year now setting up the agency, and it's time to give the agency its permanent head.

• 48:36Sam Fragoso?

  Right.

• 48:36Speaker 01

  But that's going to be someone who has to be confirmed by Congress. And, oh, I want that job. Damn, I want that job. Because I love this agency, and because I've built this agency now for a year. I've taken it from nobody, literally, to we're almost 1,000 people, and we've got all the pieces, and it's working, and we're screwing it together. I mean, it's really, it's like a construction site to do a lot of good. So the president says to me, "The Republicans will never confirm you." They actually had sent a letter to the president. With all that's happened since then, you can laugh about it, but at the time, it was just remarkable. They sent, they sent him a letter, because they were in the majority in the Senate. And they said, "If you name that woman,

• 49:21Speaker 01

  we will never confirm her." Which means the CFPB can't actually legally get started, because it won't have a confirmed head. And it was time to do that. We were bearing down on that time. So the president said, "I'm not going to nominate you. I'm not going to have that fight." And, you know me, I'm like, "Let's fight. Let's fight. Come on, let's fight. Let's lace up for boxing. Let's go punch him in the nose. You know, let's, let's do this."

• 49:46Sam Fragoso?

  And you tell President Obama what?

• 49:49Speaker 01

  I tell him, "This is what I want to do."

• 49:51Sam Fragoso?

  And he says?

• 49:52Speaker 01

  And he says, "No." And he says, "But go back to Massachusetts and beat the Republican who's in the Senate. He's coming up next year, 2012."

• 50:03Sam Fragoso?

  Which I know you do, but, but hold on, Senator. I don't want to discount the lived experience that you had. And I read that one of your advisers said, "That day, he saw you walk out of the office with tears in your eyes. Why did that hurt so much?"

• 50:21Speaker 01

  I saw how much good we could do, how this was so much the right vehicle to do the good. And I wanted him to believe in it.

• 50:37Sam Fragoso?

  And why didn't he?

• 50:41Speaker 01

  He had a lot of other things. Look, I want to say the other half. We wouldn't have had a consumer agency if it hadn't been for Barack Obama. There were fights in the room when Larry Summers and Tim Geithner would say they were doing what became Dodd-Frank. Well, we can get X that we want if only we will agree to throw this stupid consumer agency overboard. How about we do that? And it was Barack Obama who said, nope, I'm not getting out of here without getting the consumer agency. We're gonna, we're gonna make this thing happen. But I wasn't going to be the person to run it.

• 51:25Speaker 01

  And it, it wasn't that nobody else could run it. It was just, I could just feel it. I, you know, it was just, I could, I could still do this. Please let's fight and let me do this. But the answer was no. You know, the part of the sin of 2008 was that the bailout was all about the guys at the top and not about the 10 million families that lost their homes, the millions of people who lost their jobs, the millions of people who lost their savings. It was the further hollowing out of America's middle class and the strengthening of America's handful of billionaires.

• 52:08Sam Fragoso?

  You came to prominence in part because of how you dealt with those billionaires on C-SPAN. You interrogated and attacked JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon.

• 52:22Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 52:22Sam Fragoso?

  Let's look at the receipts.

• 52:25Speaker 01

  How much, in fact, did JP Morgan collect in overdraft fees from their customers in 2020? Do you know the number?

• 52:33Speaker 02

  I don't know the number in front of me.

• 52:35Speaker 01

  Well, I actually have the number in front of me.

• 52:37Speaker 02

  Upon request.

• 52:38Speaker 01

  1.463 billion dollars. That's nearly one and a half billion dollars that you collected from your customers. Now, do you know how much JP Morgan's profit would have been in 2020? If you had followed the recommendation of the regulators and waived overdraft fees to help struggling consumers? In other words, without that overdraft money, would your bank have been in financial trouble?

• 53:07Speaker 02

  We waived the fees for customers upon request if they were under stress because of COVID.

• 53:13Speaker 01

  Now, I appreciate that you want to duck this question. Do you know how much your profits would have been if you'd actually waived as the regulators recommended?

• 53:23Speaker 02

  We waived the fees every time.

• 53:25Speaker 01

  The answer is your profits would have been 27.6 billion dollars. I did the math for you. So here's the thing. You and your colleagues come in today to talk about how you stepped up and took care of customers during the pandemic, and it's a bunch of baloney.

• 53:42Sam Fragoso?

  John Stumpf?

• 53:44Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 53:45Sam Fragoso?

  From Wells Fargo?

• 53:46Speaker 01

  Yep, he deserved it. So when investors saw good cross-sell numbers, they did while this scam was going on. That was very good for you personally, wasn't it, Mr. Stumpf? Do you know how much money, how much value your stock holdings in Wells Fargo gained while this scam was underway?

• 54:07Speaker 03

  Well, first of all, it was not a scam, and cross-sell is a way of deepening relationships. When customers use.

• 54:13Speaker 01

  We've been through this, Mr. Stumpf. I asked you a very simple question. Do you know how much the value of your stock went up while this scam was going on?

• 54:22Speaker 03

  It's all of my compensation is in our public.

• 54:26Speaker 01

  Do you know how much it was?

• 54:28Speaker 03

  It's all in the public filing.

• 54:29Speaker 01

  Oh, you're right. It is all in the public records because I looked it up. While this scam was going on, you personally held an average of 6.75 million shares of Wells stock. The share price during this time period went up by about $30, which comes out to more than $200 million in gains, all for you personally. And thanks in part to those cross-sell numbers that you talked about on every one of those calls.

• 55:07Sam Fragoso?

  The list goes on and on. And when this would happen, these clips would go viral on social media.

• 55:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:13Sam Fragoso?

  And the articles would come out and they would say, Elizabeth Warren, Senator Warren eviscerates X person, destroys X person. And I remember at the time, I was in college.

• 55:27Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 55:29Sam Fragoso?

  And I shared those posts.

• 55:31Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 55:32Sam Fragoso?

  But then, as I was walking around this morning, 2025,

• 55:37Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 55:38Sam Fragoso?

  I thought, almost everyone that you eviscerated, their bank accounts were not eviscerated.

• 55:44Speaker 01

  No.

• 55:45Sam Fragoso?

  Their professional duties were not destroyed.

• 55:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 55:49Sam Fragoso?

  Their status, place, and lot in life were not affected by the viral clips.

• 55:56Speaker 01

  Right. They didn't get drummed out of the racket club.

• 55:58Sam Fragoso?

  No.

• 55:58Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 55:59Sam Fragoso?

  So I want to know, now that you've been in this for 12 years,

• 56:02Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 56:04Sam Fragoso?

  Do you think public shaming, which is what you did, and God bless you for doing it, but do you think public shaming is an effective tool to create change? Do you think it produces what you want? Does it produce the outcomes you want?

• 56:18Speaker 01

  All by itself, no.

• 56:21Speaker 01

  But I will offer two thoughts on it. The first one is it is a part of how you make change. Look, the Democrats in Congress who were there when I was doing this, who were there in 2013, 2014, our Democratic Party is different now from the one a little over 10 years ago. There are a lot more people who are willing to stand up and fight back. Is it everybody or are they fighting as hard as I want them to? No, but there is change. And part of why there is change is because I went after John Stumpf and what he done with Wells Fargo and people responded.

• 57:04Speaker 01

  It's not just that I did it, it's that you did it, Sam. You and a whole lot of other people who were in college clipped that incentive. I'm serious. It changes who we are and what we fight for. So that's part of what's changed.

• 57:18Sam Fragoso?

  And the other part?

• 57:19Speaker 01

  But the other part of Donald Trump, good golly, Miss Molly, I mean, we got somebody here, okay, I did grow up in Oklahoma, we got somebody here for whom there is no shame. Convicted felon. For most people, that would have been enough to say, you know, I'm retiring from the public scene. Over and over and over, a man who just brazen's it out and has taught others to brazen it out. So I want to say it's both things that have changed. Am I sorry I did it? Not at all. And if you gave me a chance, what would I do? I'd do it more.

• 58:01Sam Fragoso?

  You know, when Hillary Clinton lost in 2016, you gave a speech soon after and you said, what this election proves is that the American people want change.

• 58:12Speaker 01

  Yes. It was clear in the Democratic primaries. It was clear in the Republican primaries. It was clear in the campaign and it was clear on Election Day. The final results may have divided us, but the entire electorate embraced deep fundamental reform of our economic system and our political system.

• 58:39Sam Fragoso?

  By the way, all polling in 2014 and 2015 said the same thing.

• 58:45Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 58:46Sam Fragoso?

  They said, we don't really want Hillary Clinton. Some people actually even said, we kind of want Senator Warren. The Democratic Party went with Hillary Clinton. 2023, after the midterms, the Democratic Party says, look at this. Look at how we outperformed. This is a referendum on Trump. This is actually an indication that people want Joe Biden. They made a connection that is not true, grounded in no reality. Now, two times, in 2016 and 2024, both of the times we lost, the Democratic Party has opted not to change. Now, we switched to Kamala Harris, obviously, but that was about six months too late. Why is the Democratic Party so slow to pivot?

• 59:30Sam Fragoso?

  We have so many talented people. Why can we not get past our past?

• 59:36Speaker 01

  So I want to give up an answer to a different question.

• 59:42Sam Fragoso?

  Of course you do. It's because I, of course, because I asked the question.

• 59:46Speaker 01

  Of course, of course.

• 59:47Sam Fragoso?

  You love to reframe every question.

• 59:49Speaker 01

  I do. It's one of my superpowers.

• 59:52Sam Fragoso?

  You love to do this, but I'm asking you to answer my question because we don't have that much time left.

• 59:56Speaker 01

  I know, and I'm going to run out the clock here.

• 59:58Sam Fragoso?

  I'll walk out.

• 59:59Speaker 01

  Okay, okay. For me, this isn't about looking backwards because it just isn't helpful unless what we're answering is, are we going to do any better going forward? Have we learned a damn thing?

• 1:00:12Sam Fragoso?

  No, that was my next question.

• 1:00:12Speaker 01

  Okay, good. So we're just, I'm just right there with you on that question.

• 1:00:16Sam Fragoso?

  Okay.

• 1:00:17Speaker 01

  And that is, we're learning, but slowly.

• 1:00:19Sam Fragoso?

  Okay. Do you regret saying that President Biden had a mental acuity? He had a sharpness to him. You said that up until July of last year.

• 1:00:29Speaker 01

  I said what I believed to be true.

• 1:00:32Sam Fragoso?

  You think he was as sharp as you?

• 1:00:35Speaker 01

  I said I had not seen decline. And I hadn't at that point.

• 1:00:40Sam Fragoso?

  You did not see any decline from 2024 Joe Biden to 2021 Joe Biden?

• 1:00:45Speaker 01

  Not when I said that. You know, the thing is, he, look, he was sharp. He was on his feet. I saw him live event. I had meetings with him a couple of times.

• 1:01:00Sam Fragoso?

  Senator, on his feet is not praise. He can speak in sentences is not praise.

• 1:01:08Speaker 01

  Fair enough. Fair enough. Look, the question is, what are we going to do now?

• 1:01:16Sam Fragoso?

  Okay.

• 1:01:17Speaker 01

  And what we're going to do now is we got 47 of us in the Senate. And we are pulling ourselves together because it increases our power. We don't have as much power as we want, but we don't have no power. And we got to use all of our tools in the toolbox to do as much as we humanly possibly can. This is now for all the marbles, Sam. And I get it.

• 1:01:45Sam Fragoso?

  We could go back. Last time was for all the marbles.

• 1:01:48Speaker 01

  I get it.

• 1:01:48Sam Fragoso?

  In 2020, it was the soul of the nation.

• 1:01:51Speaker 01

  I understand.

• 1:01:52Sam Fragoso?

  How many times is it going to be for all the marbles? Can we just have a normal election?

• 1:01:57Speaker 01

  I'd love that.

• 1:01:58Sam Fragoso?

  How many marbles are there?

• 1:01:59Speaker 01

  We got a guy right now who is saying that he's flirting with not obeying lawful court order. But what he's doing is like a whole nother level of threat to the survival of our democracy.

• 1:02:16Sam Fragoso?

  I understand. I'm not trying to make light of that.

• 1:02:19Speaker 01

  I know you're not. And what I'm trying to do is say, God dang, we can spend our time looking backwards and saying, you know what parts we didn't get right? Fine, I will, I'll stipulate. You can have it. But the question is, what are we going to do now? What tools have we got? How much can we herd our Democrats together? And how much can we get real power in this moment by getting people across the country to weigh in, weigh in on their social security cuts, weigh in on the Department of Education cuts, weigh in on the healthcare cuts?

• 1:02:53Sam Fragoso?

  I agree. Let's talk about what we want to do.

• 1:02:55Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:02:56Sam Fragoso?

  The future of the Democratic Party. Where do you see it going? Do you think it is moving towards abandoning social issues?

• 1:03:04Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:03:05Sam Fragoso?

  Of talking less about race and gender inequality?

• 1:03:09Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:03:09Sam Fragoso?

  Okay. One prominent Democrat, Rahm Emanuel.

• 1:03:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:03:13Sam Fragoso?

  Former Obama Chief of Staff, has been positioning himself to push back hard against Trumpism. He's called the Democratic brand toxic, weak, and woke.

• 1:03:23Speaker 01

  Thanks, Rahm.

• 1:03:25Sam Fragoso?

  Wrong?

• 1:03:26Speaker 01

  We need to do what Donald Trump promised to do. We need to make the economic case. That is our job right now. We are fighting for the things that hardworking, middle-class families need, like healthcare and social security and public education. We need to get out there and do something really radical. Tell the damn truth.

• 1:03:47Sam Fragoso?

  We've been telling the truth.

• 1:03:49Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:03:50Sam Fragoso?

  You have been telling the truth?

• 1:03:51Speaker 01

  We need to do it louder. I'm saying, all Democrats need to tell this more aggressively, more loudly. That's a part of what we need to do going forward.

• 1:04:04Sam Fragoso?

  People will say, as I was going to talk to you, they said, "Where are the Democrats?" Well, it's actually amazing. If you look at the Democrats and their social media pages, including yours, including Bernie Sanders, including AOC, whoever you want to go down, you guys actually are all saying something.

• 1:04:22Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:04:23Sam Fragoso?

  It's just that it's not reaching the people that you need to reach. You have said Republicans do messaging, Democrats do substance. And I ask you, if a tree falls in a forest, what do we do to grab back attention? Because right now, we are not doing that.

• 1:04:42Speaker 01

  Fair enough. But let me just push back a little bit on this. Democrats all over this country are holding town halls. And why is that notable? Because Republicans can't hold town halls. Whatever else you want to say about Democrats, and you can say it, I get it. Much of it is well deserved. But we are not. Getting chased offstage and running down hallways and hiding our faces from our constituents. We are not told by our leadership, the way the Republicans are, "Don't go out and meet with your leaders because..." I mean, with your constituents, with your voters, because they are so damned angry about what you're doing and they hate what you're doing so much that

• 1:05:25Speaker 01

  it will create a lot of bad video of you running away from the very people who elected you. So, I get it.

• 1:05:33Sam Fragoso?

  I hear you on that.

• 1:05:34Speaker 01

  Democrats are not doing great, but at least we can get out there and stand in front of a crowd and not be chased offstage.

• 1:05:40Sam Fragoso?

  Do you ever worry that the Democratic Party, when we look back on this time, do you ever worry that Democratic Party will be seen as being on the right side of history without having made much of it?

• 1:05:55Speaker 01

  I worry that we know what is right, that we fight with good hearts, and that it might not be enough. All I've got is my heart and my 24 hours a day and as many people as I can bring into this. In a democracy, it's not just one person, it's all of us. We've got to fight for this.

• 1:06:37Speaker 01

  And we've got to fight, we've got to fight for ourselves, we've got to fight for our families. We've got to fight for the people who are going to lose so much if we don't beat this back. What Donald Trump and Elon Musk and his golden chainsaw are trying to do...

• 1:06:57Sam Fragoso?

  Who are coming after the CFPB as we speak.

• 1:06:59Speaker 01

  Yes, they are. They're just drawing a target on everybody who's got a credit card or a checking account or a Venmo account, just basically saying, we can cheat you guys. Do you know they put out something the other day and said they're not going to prosecute white collar crime? It's like, oh, so if some guy grabs your purse out on the street, man, you know, have the police go after him and lock him up. But if some executive figures out how to suck money out of your checking account so you can't figure it out, basically, they get to keep the money. That's the kind of country we want to be. So it's a big fight.

• 1:07:43Sam Fragoso?

  What chokes you up when you're saying that? What's the thing, what's the image that comes to mind that produces all that in you?

• 1:07:54Speaker 01

  It's the little kids I taught.

• 1:07:58Sam Fragoso?

  In New Jersey?

• 1:07:59Speaker 01

  In New Jersey. I was 21, straight out of college. You know, back then, those little kids didn't get to be in the regular classrooms. They had to be kept in a special room, walled off by itself.

• 1:08:16Sam Fragoso?

  They were often very scary, sad rooms.

• 1:08:18Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:08:19Sam Fragoso?

  My dad talks about them all the time.

• 1:08:21Speaker 01

  And as a country, later, we put money in and laws. And we said, public education is about creating opportunity for every single child. That's what we're going to do. And we've done that. And there've been so many kids who've built out who they are. Kids now who can live independently because they had that opportunity. Kids who've gone on to school, kids, kids who work, kids who do things, kids who make the most of themselves, kids whose families are really proud of them.

• 1:09:02Speaker 01

  And Donald Trump and Elon Musk want to take that back so that they could help finance some tax cuts for a handful of billionaires. I think about, I think about those kids who are going to get left behind if we don't fight back and fight for them.

• 1:09:24Sam Fragoso?

  Part of the features, the animating characteristics of authoritarians is they demonize people like me, the press, and they demonize their political enemies. Just this week, there was an arson attempt at Governor Shapiro's home. Do you fear that? Do you fear retribution?

• 1:09:47Speaker 01

  I just really work hard not to give that space in my brain. I just really work hard on that. I don't want to.

• 1:09:55Sam Fragoso?

  You don't want to because you think it's likely?

• 1:09:57Speaker 01

  I don't want to because of how it undermines what I need to do. Look, what I do every day is an act of optimism.

• 1:10:07Sam Fragoso?

  Right.

• 1:10:08Speaker 01

  Running for office is an act of optimism. It is a fundamental belief. It's a leap of faith. And for me, if I get out there and talk about these good ideas and I talk about who's going to be affected and I tell you the pieces, I believe that you and I together are going to build something better.

• 1:10:25Sam Fragoso?

  Those threats don't scare you?

• 1:10:28Speaker 01

  I'm just not going to give them space in my brain. I just, I will not. Any more than I'm going to give space in my brain to all the nasty things that these guys say about me and say about parts of my body and say about my voice and say about everything I do. I'm just, you know what? I can't change it. I'm not going to give these guys the satisfaction of thinking they took up a little rental space in my brain. Nope, sorry, guys.

• 1:11:02Sam Fragoso?

  The kids would say they're trying to live rent-free in your head.

• 1:11:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you know what? That's a very, that's a, that's actually a very insightful way to think about the world. Who are you going to let live in your brain?

• 1:11:13Sam Fragoso?

  My last question for you. In 2011, maybe July 31st, I think it was your last day.

• 1:11:21Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:11:22Sam Fragoso?

  At the CFPB. And you wrote an email to your staff saying, goodbye, this is my last day. And I have it here, and I thought maybe you'd want to read it for our listeners.

• 1:11:33Speaker 01

  I haven't looked at this since July 31st, 2011. Today is my last day at the Bureau. I leave this agency, but not this fight. The issues we deal with, a middle class that has been squeezed and business models built on tricks and traps are deeply personal to me, and they always will be. I will cheer you as you open a new chapter in our ongoing push for a strong and independent CFPB. You can realize the vision of a 21st century government that holds lawbreakers accountable and that enforces basic rules that make markets work honestly.

• 1:12:15Speaker 01

  An honest market will give companies that provide fair value to their customers a chance to flourish, free from competition with cheaters. And an honest market will give American families better information, better prices, and better products, and a chance to achieve real economic security. Now, it is up to you, and I couldn't be more hopeful about what lies ahead. Lizbeth.

• 1:12:42Sam Fragoso?

  Hmm.

• 1:12:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:44Sam Fragoso?

  In 2025.

• 1:12:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:46Sam Fragoso?

  Do you believe that is possible, what you said? Like, when Biden won in 2020, you went on the Ezra Klein Show, and you said, right now, as the Democrats control the House and the Senate, we have our toes on the starting line of big structural change, what you are talking about here. The door that is so often slammed tight and locked for big change is open. Not wide open, but it's open an inch or two. In 2025, that door seems to be closed pretty firmly.

• 1:13:20Sam Fragoso?

  How do we go about opening it up again? Do you think we can? Do you think we will?

• 1:13:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do think we can. And here's why. When I wrote that goodbye memo, I said, I believe in what you can do. But they hadn't done it yet.

• 1:13:37Sam Fragoso?

  Right.

• 1:13:37Speaker 01

  They've had a dozen years. And you know what? Damn, they went out and did it. They went out and actually helped 203 million Americans. They kept count of who got helped directly from the work they did. We did the proof of concept. The part we gotta fight now, and this is hard. The part we gotta fight is the public political part of this fight. And I get it. I wish I were better at this. I wish our team was better at this. But we start from the fact that we are on the right side. And we start from the fact that there are a whole lot of people who are in this fight with us. Nobody is in this alone. We come to it with different skills.

• 1:14:22Speaker 01

  We come to it with different motivations. Why we move at this moment. But I truly believe there are enough of us who are willing to fight hard enough that Donald Trump and Elon Musk will not be the final chapter in our democracy.

• 1:14:44Sam Fragoso?

  And will you be the next chapter in 2028? Would you run again?

• 1:14:48Speaker 01

  I'm not running. I'm here to pull as many people into this fight as I can. This is a moment, Sam, that's about where power truly lies in this country. Yeah, I do constitutional law 101 all the time. But all of it is underpinned by millions of people across this country who either decide

• 1:15:14Speaker 01

  That, you know, I just got to cover up my head with a blanket. Or who say, I'm in this fight and I will get in this fight. I will turn out. I will show up at those Republican, non-town halls. And I will make my voice clear because we do have our toes on the line again. Yeah, those guys have got a lot. I get it. You know, they got control of what looks like everything at this point. But handful of Republicans in Congress shift over to the other side. We got a lot of what we need. We can put a stop to what Donald Trump is doing. Donald Trump is not impervious to people who push back. He is not impervious to noise.

• 1:15:55Speaker 01

  Elon Musk can be peeled off from the Trump administration. We've got places and they are vulnerable because they are doing shit that people don't like. And in this country, that is a time when people can say, we've had enough.

• 1:16:18Sam Fragoso?

  Donald Trump and Elon Musk, they are not our last chapter, you said.

• 1:16:24Sam Fragoso?

  Well, I hope you are right. And I want to thank you for pulling me into the fight all those many years ago. And for sitting here with me. It has been a tremendous honor.

• 1:16:36Speaker 01

  Thank you, Sam.

• 1:16:37Sam Fragoso?

  Senator Warren, thank you.

• 1:16:39Speaker 01

  Thank you, sweetie.

• 1:16:40Sam Fragoso?

  Take care.

• 1:17:44Sam Fragoso?

  And that's our show.

• 1:17:46Sam Fragoso?

  If you enjoyed today's conversation with Senator Warren, please do share on social media, tag us at Talk Easy Pod. You can leave us a review on Apple, Spotify, wherever you listen. I want to give a special thanks this week to David Villar, Nathan Heller, Tara Duncan, Ashley Math, and the team at Jay Crew, the team for Senator Warren, without whom this episode would not have been possible, and of course, my guest, Senator Elizabeth Warren. To learn more about all the good that she's doing for the great state of Massachusetts, visit warren.senate.gov. For other politically minded episodes, I'd recommend Ezra Klein, Chris Hayes, and David Remnick. To hear those and more Lemonada podcasts, listen

• 1:18:29Sam Fragoso?

  on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. You can also subscribe to Lemonada Premium for bonus content. Just click the subscribe button on Apple Podcasts or head to lemonadapremium.com. Lastly, be sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram at Talk Easy Pod. Talk Easy is produced by Caroline Reebok. Our executive producer is Chinixah Bravo. Today's talk was edited by Matt Sasaki for the podcast, Ariel Gardner for the video on YouTube, and mixed by Andrew Vastol. It was taped out of Spotify Studios in New York City. Our music is by Dylan Peck. Illustrations, Chris Chenley. Photographs today are by Sarah Schneider. Additional research comes from Callie Conley and Pierce

• 1:19:12Sam Fragoso?

  Harvey. This episode was made with the good people at Lemonada Media, and I'm Sam Fagasso. Thank you for listening to Talk Easy. I'll see you back here next week with one of the best living actors we have, Viola Davis. Until then, stay safe, and so long.

• 1:19:35Speaker 04

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  32,000 pounds of frozen dead rats.

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