How Sen. Elizabeth Warren Is 'Fighting Like Hell' Against Trump, Musk & Big Tech Billionaires

How is Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) pushing back against the Trump/Musk “co-presidents” wreaking havoc in Washington? Speaking to Kara at SXSW, Warren talks about what Musk has to gain by shutting down watchdogs like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and other DOGE antics; why a crypto reserve would be bad for Americans and the cryptocurrency industry; and what Democrats are doing to fight back against this hostile government takeover. Plus: will Warren make another run for president again in 2028? This interview was recorded Saturday, March 8th, on the Vox Media Podcast Stage at SXSW, presented by Smartsheet. Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find us on Instagram, TikTok and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Kara Swisher?

  So we're doing an episode of On, so I want lots of enthusiasm.

• 0:17Kara 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 is the senior senator from Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren. Warren is a former law professor and one of the progressive warriors of the Democratic Party, known especially for fighting for consumer protections and holding big tech accountable. I've interviewed her a couple of times back in 2015 at Code with Walt Mossberg, where she swore she wasn't going to run for president, which she did, of course, in 2020, and in 2022 on Sway, when she talked about that bid and her next steps. I spoke to Warren last Saturday at the Vox Media Podcast stage at South by Southwest, presented by Smartsheet. She's widely credited with the creation of the

• 1:00Kara Swisher?

  Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, an independent agency that has basically been shuttered by President Trump and Elon Musk's Doge. She's also currently the top Democrat on the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. So I wanted to get her take on what's happening at the CFPB, on the rollback of litigation against fintech, and Trump's latest executive order, putting in place a new crypto reserve. And of course, on the billionaires she's been battling for ages, who are now bending the knee and getting a lot in return. As one of the party leaders who keeps telling Americans that Democrats are going to fight like hell, I wanted to hear more about when we should expect that fight to start and what tools

• 1:42Kara Swisher?

  Democrats have left. It was a great and lively conversation. Have a listen.

• 1:56Speaker 01

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• 2:40Speaker 02

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• 3:25Kara Swisher?

  Senator Warren, thanks for joining us for this conversation. Thank you. On the Vox Media Podcast stage at South by Southwest, presented by Smartsheet and for the live episode of On With Kara Swisher. So we sat down in 2022. And before that, you appeared at a Code Conference many years before. It's a very different time right now. And we're going to get into it. But all I remember thinking is, we talked about a lot of stuff in 2022. But in the first appearance, you came to Code. I have never seen tech people respond to someone like they responded to you, and not in a good way.

• 4:02Kara Swisher?

  When I was in the room, I could feel, it was mostly men, as you know, you could feel their balls doing this, the noise, there was a noise.

• 4:16Kara Swisher?

  And I tried to figure out why they didn't like you. And I was trying to figure it out for lots of reasons. And I finally, they were giving me all kinds of theories. And my theory was, you were a professor of theirs in college, who gave them a D they completely deserved.

• 4:31Speaker 03

  Actually, I think it might have been greed inflation, but I'll go with that.

• 4:35Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, right, right. It was an F, but it was a D.

• 4:39Kara Swisher?

  Right now, though, the tech people have shifted rather dramatically towards Donald Trump. And while I think they disagreed with you, they fear Trump, most of them, in many ways. Either they suck up to Trump and like it, or else they fear him. I'd like you to sort of give a sense of what's happening right now. Many of the programs you've championed, including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the CHIPS Act, antitrust are under scrutiny, under attack. I want your first-year 30,000-foot view with this idea of these tech people being with them. And at the same time, we'll drill down to the others. But where are we right at this moment?

• 5:17Speaker 03

  So, here's how I think of the world. The world is tilted, it's rigged. And it is rigged in favor of really rich people, and pretty much against everybody else. And that is a problem, partly if you're everybody else, and trying to put something together, trying to launch your own business, or, you know, trying to work and put together a budget and make it going forward. And that the real struggle that's going on, and I mean in a big way right now, is which way is our country gonna go? And this is what co-presidents Elon Musk and Donald Trump have really put on the table.

• 6:00Speaker 03

  And that is, are we really going to be a country that just hands it all over to the billionaires, a handful of people with power, and says, "You guys run this country however you want, and the rest of us will just pick up whatever you leave behind, and we'll try to make something out of it"? Or are we actually going to say, "No, we're going to fight this thing back again, and we're going to say, 'There's just a core set of rules here in this country that are about leveling the playing field.'" Doesn't mean you're necessarily going to make it. It doesn't mean that you can't make some

• 6:39Speaker 03

  dumb decisions and bet on bad businesses. But the real point is, you've got a fighting chance because the playing field is fundamentally open and level. This is something you and I have been talking about for years and years. This is not a new, fresh thing. But what has changed now? I mean, it may be out of whack, but is it more out of whack? Boy, it has now just gone into hyperspace. Right. Because the co-presidents have just decided, "There is no power down at the level of the people. There is no power..." Look at the Constitution. Can we do Constitutional Law 101? I promise, just for a half a minute. Okay. Okay. But look at the Constitution. It says, "Congress writes the laws, passes

• 7:22Speaker 03

  them into law." Those are the statutes. "The administration actually administers those laws." And the courts let anybody know if they get out of line and tells the administration either that they can't do certain things or they must do certain things. That's just the deal. That's the basic setup. And what's happened now is that Donald Trump and Elon Musk together have come in and said, "Constitution's so yesterday. Statutory law, not worried about that. We will get rid of agencies that we don't care about." So what they've done is they've put us into crisis.

• 8:02Speaker 03

  And here's where the trick comes in. It's not just they're saying out in front in big words, "Yeah, we want to give everything to the billionaires. We want to do tax cuts for giant billionaires." And then take it out of the hides of everybody else in this country. It's that they're not saying that out loud. They're driving in that direction while they create a sandstorm over renaming the Gulf of Mexico and buying Greenland and annexing Canada and playing red light, green light with tariffs with Mexico and Canada. So all of these, but lots and lots and lots of noise, Elon prancing around with a chainsaw.

• 8:46Speaker 03

  That all of that is a way to say, if you can create enough sand, then maybe one of two things will happen. People will just get focused on one little part or people will just shut down and curl into a little ball and just, "You guys go do what you want to do." And they will execute on the handover of our nation to just a few billionaires and we could lose the whole thing.

• 9:12Kara Swisher?

  So let's start with President Trump's address to Congress on Tuesday. The camera panned to you several times during the speech. I don't know if you noticed. You were often furiously typing on your phone, by the way.

• 9:23Speaker 03

  Yes, I was.

• 9:24Kara Swisher?

  I'm curious, what were you typing?

• 9:26Speaker 03

  Just making notes.

• 9:27Kara Swisher?

  What were you doing? What were you typing?

• 9:30Speaker 03

  Actually, I was. Occasionally, people that I work with, sometimes a few other senators, and say things like, "What an amazing point." "Huh, those are not the facts I'd heard." So what were you doing, a little bit of that?

• 9:47Kara Swisher?

  A little bit of that.

• 9:48Speaker 03

  A little bit of that, yeah.

• 9:50Kara Swisher?

  So he complained at the beginning of the speech that Democrats wouldn't clap for anything he said. But you clapped quite loudly when he was talking about the funding of war in Ukraine. And you kept going when he singled you out with his derogatory nickname for you, which is Pocahontas, which is back.

• 10:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:08Kara Swisher?

  You reacted, I thought, pretty well to that. Yeah, and Elon calls you Karen, correct?

• 10:13Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 10:13Kara Swisher?

  I call him Space Karen, but go ahead.

• 10:18Speaker 03

  You know, I think that the idea of the United States withdrawing its support from Ukraine is obscene.

• 10:36Speaker 03

  The Ukrainians are on the front lines, fighting for the survival of their nation. They are fighting for democracy. They're fighting for democracy for their country. They're fighting for the survival of Western Europe. Frankly, they're fighting for our own ability to defend against Putin, against an aggressor. It's just very straightforward, from my point of view. I've been to Ukraine, I've visited. I've visited personally with President Zelensky multiple times. These are people who have taken on a heroic fight. And they have fought it with a diligence, and a persistence, and a determination that is an inspiration to the world. I listened to Donald Trump, I really did.

• 11:18Speaker 03

  I listened to every word, and I was perfectly willing to applaud when he said the United States has given, I've forgotten the exact words, but great support to Ukraine. You bet, I applauded. And I kept right on applauding because I believed it is the right thing to do. He doesn't like that. He wants to turn around. You know, he's like all small, soft men.

• 11:47Speaker 03

  He thinks that if he calls you a name, boy, has he shown you. And, for me, that's just not what this is about. If I have the opportunity to say, once, and twice, and three times over, that the United States should stand with Ukraine against Vladimir Putin, I'll do it, and he can call me whatever he wants.

• 12:17Speaker 03

  You know, the bottom line is, I just don't care.

• 12:22Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 12:22Speaker 03

  You know, come on. Did anyone ever meet a bully back in 7th grade? That's who these guys are. And I think the thing that scares these guys the most, most of all, it's not whether or not you're the most clever or the most, whatever, it's whether or not you bend the knee. They want everyone to bend the knee. They want everybody in this country to bend the knee. They want the billionaires to come and bend the knee.

• 12:49Kara Swisher?

  They've done that.

• 12:49Speaker 03

  The other billionaires, yeah, they have. They want the leaders all around the world to come and bend the knee. And if you're somebody who's not going to bend the knee, that's actually a real threat to a bully. And here's the best part, I just did a rally over in, on State Capitol grounds here in Austin, Texas. And I asked them if they were ready to bend the knee, and not a one said they were going to bend the knee. They are in this fight all the way, and I think that matters.

• 13:19Kara Swisher?

  So when you think about what the different things he's doing, let's talk about some of them. Trump talked about new tariffs against Canada and Mexico, which he keeps turning off and on, as you said, red light, green light. Now, you said tariffs can be a valuable tool.

• 13:31Speaker 03

  I do.

• 13:31Kara Swisher?

  To protect certain industries, and President Biden kept some of the Trump tariffs against Chinese products. Talk about where they could be useful, and what's your main critique of tariffs right now, the way he's applying them? Some companies said they've already planned to raise prices in response, the stock market took a plunge. What is the use of them and what economic outcome are you anticipating right now?

• 13:52Speaker 03

  So tariffs are a part of the economic toolbox available to our country. And so, for example, if you're trying to get a little growing industry, trying to get it up and going, you might need a tariff to protect it from giant competitors overseas. If you're trying to onshore a supply chain that is entirely located overseas, in order to get people to make that investment and to get that up and running, you might need a tariff for protection. That's what it means, in order to give something. You might do it sometimes to protect some jobs, some critical skills here at home.

• 14:35Speaker 03

  It's targeted, it has a specific goal, and you're aiming it in places where it makes sense to aim it. A tariff on maple syrup? Kind of feels to me like you just sprayed the whole thing and all you're doing is not just driving up the cost of pancakes, a pancake breakfast. What you're really doing is you're opening the door to say to every corporation, now's the time to start raising prices again. And when consumers push back, just say, oh, it's the tariffs. And that starts pushing prices up against consumers.

• 15:16Speaker 03

  You know, and I say on this one, Kara, it's particularly important because remember, this was actually Donald Trump's message when he ran. He said on day one that he would lower prices, said it repeatedly, his words, not mine. And here we are, seven weeks in, he has done nothing to lower prices for families. Instead, what he's doing is he's out there trying to put things in place that would actually increase prices for consumers.

• 15:48Kara Swisher?

  So how does he get away with that then? Because he seems to say he's going to do one thing and then does an opposite thing.

• 15:56Speaker 03

  Well, I go back to bend the knee. You know, as long as everyone says the emperor's cape is beautiful, he kind of can do whatever he wants. And I think this is the importance. Look, we're fighting, as I see it, it's a three-front war right now. Part of it is back to those constitutional parts we're calling on the courts to say, courts, do your part. Donald Trump, Elon Musk, break the law.

• 16:22Kara Swisher?

  There's about 100 in some lawsuits, right?

• 16:25Speaker 03

  Exactly. You got to stay on it. Then the second part is we're fighting right now in Congress. And the big fight is exactly how I described. It's the tax fight. The Republicans want to give with Donald Trump $4.6 trillion in tax breaks to billionaires and giant corporations. And then they want to pay for it on the backs of old people in nursing homes and little kids with disabilities not being able to get their AIDS. I mean, it's just, it's horrible stuff that they want to move forward. So that's the fight we're having there and the one we're going to make public. The third one, though, is the rally in Austin today.

• 17:06Speaker 03

  It's the energy from people all across this country. And it's doing the individual part that lets the grassroots catch fire. So for example, instead of just say the words "federal employee", which might rhyme with waste, fraud and abuse, say, "I'm talking about my next door neighbor who actually does cancer research." Or "my friend who tests water to make sure that it's safe for my kids to drink." Or "the guy down the block who makes sure that when airplanes fly in the sky, they don't run into each other." And I don't want those people fired. I want those people doing their jobs. Don't bend the knee to Donald Trump.

• 17:51Speaker 03

  And so I think this is how it's all three parts we push back. We'll be back in a minute.

• 18:08Speaker 01

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• 18:53Kara Swisher?

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• 20:06Kara Swisher?

  let's talk about one thing you've been fighting for the Consumer Financial Protection Board it was created after the well it was created after the 2008 financial crisis it was your brainchild Elon Musk posted CFPB RIP on X in February and Doge the Department of Government Efficiency which I like to call doggy basically

• 20:26Speaker 03

  oh but he loves that

• 20:27Kara Swisher?

  yeah no he doesn't basically hung an out of business sign on the door so officially it was the CFPB's acting director Russivo who ordered employees to stop work there why do you think it is under fire so clearly is it about you is it about what it does

• 20:45Speaker 03

  no it's about the CFPB and it's about how good it is at what it's oh I'm sorry it's about how efficient it is that is the nature of the problem with the CFPB so let me back up just a little bit and do 10,000 foot view here okay so you may remember back around late 90s the early 2000s we had a whole bunch of consumer financial protection laws problem was they're scattered among seven different agencies and they're nobody's first job they're every agency's third or 10th or 54th job as a result nobody enforces those laws what happens well a bunch of guys get out there and get pretty damn lawless they

• 21:26Speaker 03

  build up these mortgage scams the mortgage scams get fed into the banking system and they blow up our whole economy Coming out of that, the idea behind the CFPB is not a bunch of new laws. It's to gather up the laws that already exist, take them away from those agencies, put them all with one agency, and then say to that agency, "You are responsible for enforcing the laws." So that agency now, been in place roughly about a dozen years, up and operational, it has found more than $21 billion in scams against the American people. And I'm not just talking fly by night. Wells Fargo, I'm looking at you.

• 22:08Speaker 03

  Um, Citibank, you can just do one after another. So the point is, what this agency did is they've said with each one of these scams, it's not just that we found it and we're going to fine you. You have to return the money directly to the people that you scammed. So that's $21 billion that has gone directly back into the hands of consumers who've got

• 22:32Kara Swisher?

  Right. So now the CFPB dropped a lawsuit filed by former director Rohit Chopra against, through the nation's largest banks over lack of safeguards on Zelle payments that allegedly resulted in $800 million in fraud. The agency also abandoned a lawsuit against Capital One over $2 billion in interest payments the agency alleged are owed to consumers. It has canceled or about to cancel nearly 200 contracts with vendors, people who train examiners to supervise banks, handle cybersecurity, expert witnesses in litigation. Why are they targeting this from your point of view?

• 23:06Speaker 03

  Okay, so since Elon and his little band of hackers have taken over the CFPB, they really have, they've tried to shut it down. And here's, here's the deal on what's happening. First, let's do the generic. And that is, I, there's nobody out there enforcing these consumer protection laws. So there's part one to the answer, and that is, It's a heyday right now for the scammers. Literally, the cops have been moved off the beat. That's part one, but now there's a special part for Elon in this. The Republicans in Congress are looking at this and saying, you know, and Elon, saying,

• 23:48Speaker 03

  you know, sidelining these guys may not work forever. So how about if we ram through a rule that says that if the CFPB comes back online, that is, if the courts do their job, you're not going to be able to regulate these payment platforms. Why would these two matter to Elon? Many of you remember, he buys Twitter, he loses buckets of money. He decides his plan going forward is not X, it's X money. He wants to unite those two things. And then what he wants to be able to do is to scam you in any way possible without a financial cop looking over his shoulder. So that's part two of what he's doing. You want to do part three?

• 24:33Kara Swisher?

  Okay.

• 24:34Speaker 03

  And that's where he's headed next. Because this is-

• 24:36Kara Swisher?

  Gotham City, it feels like, but go ahead.

• 24:39Speaker 03

  Okay, so here's where he's going next. And that is, we're about to mark up in the Banking Committee something called the Stable Coin Bill. And the problem right now with the stable, there are a lot of problems. It doesn't have good consumer protection. It doesn't have good, any money laundering to make sure it's not being used by terrorists and drug traffickers. Okay, those are fights we can have, but here's the specific little piece. The question is, we've always had in banking and financial instruments, you've got to keep money separate from commerce. You don't, you don't get to own both at the same time and tangle them up in terms of what you build going forward.

• 25:22Speaker 03

  What Elon, I think, would like to do, at least all the evidence points in this direction, and right now this bill says, is that Xmoney, or Amazon, or Google can issue their own stablecoin, united with the other information they have about you, so that they've got your purchasing, your social media, your financial transactions, and your actual money, as you start using money on their platforms, and on the platforms they start buying up, not just here in the United States, but all around the world.

• 26:05Speaker 03

  That is Elon's three-part play, and it's really about taking over every part of your life by one guy.

• 26:17Kara Swisher?

  So, he has Xmoney, obviously, and the other tech companies have the same thing. They're also moving into crypto reserves. This is, there's an executive order, Trump is basically legislating by executive order, running the country by executive order.

• 26:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, which, by the way, is not legal, yes, but okay, keep going.

• 26:35Kara Swisher?

  But he's doing it. He's doing it, it's happening.

• 26:38Speaker 03

  He's issuing executive orders.

• 26:40Kara Swisher?

  Right, okay, so he was gonna create a crypto reserve. You've written a letter to David Sacks, who is the AI guru, whatever he happens to be. What can you do to stop this? Now, the Biden administration was seen as too slow or too onerous on regulating the crypto industry. They struck back rather hard, attacked Sherrod Brown, put money into it, spent a lot of money on the Trump campaign.

• 27:06Speaker 03

  So, here's one.

• 27:08Kara Swisher?

  He initially thought crypto was a scam, Trump did.

• 27:12Speaker 03

  So, here's what I think is interesting. This one scrambles the table a little bit. There are a lot of folks who really want to see crypto be an alternative payment system, an alternative way to invest or speculate, I get that.

• 27:30Speaker 03

  But they are not happy, some of them, about this crypto reserve as well. And what's the reason for that? Because this is like the scam of all scams. Only it's right out here and open. This is like the United States of America, under Donald Trump's executive order, saying, you know what? My friend Elon bought X, and damn, the stock is just in the toilet. There are a lot of investors who are not happy.

• 27:54Kara Swisher?

  Well, there's no stock, but go ahead, yeah.

• 27:55Speaker 03

  Right. So what the United States is going to do is we're going to create an X reserve. Now, that's fabulous for whoever currently owns those shares of X stock. And frankly, it sucks for everybody else. Everybody else who wants to get in the business. Everybody else who wants to play. That is the ultimate in tilting the playing field to the rich guy and saying, we're going to shovel money into you. This crypto reserve of saying, okay, here are the winners. Who wants to beg? We're going to take you, you, you, you, and you. And it is your lucky day.

• 28:40Speaker 03

  And everybody else in this room, in this city, in this state, and in this country will pay to make you richer. That's all that this reserve is about. You are actually making it harder for Americans who would like to build a crypto system that is meaningful.

• 29:00Kara Swisher?

  Was the Biden position too slow to do this or too onerous on these companies?

• 29:05Speaker 03

  You know, I think of this a little differently. I think it was a breakdown much more at the congressional level, where on both sides, you had such a long string of crypto folks and legislative folks who said, we want everything. We want no regulation, but all the benefits of getting the seal of approval from the United States government, all the way down the line to, no, want to shut this down, can't do this at all. And when you've got people on both sides that aren't figuring out their own coherent, how to bring this together and actually make something happen. I've been saying for a long time.

• 29:51Speaker 03

  Look, I get it. You've got a new product out here. You want to advance that product. You have now grown to the point that that product needs some kind of regulatory structure around it. We've just got to do three things if it's going to be a financial product. One is it's got to have basic consumer protection. This isn't fancy. This is the same consumer protection we do, for example, in the stock market. Because right now it's the 1920s equivalent, you know. Rug pulls and pump and dumps, they even use the same names they were using 100 years ago for this in the stock market. You build something stronger by saying there's some basic consumer protection. And you drive out the cheaters. And that's kind of what makes the system work. Second one is anti-money laundering.

• 30:36Speaker 03

  You've got to put some curbs in place. They're not going to be perfect, but you put curbs in place that make it tougher for terrorists and drug traffickers and human traffickers and ransomware fraudsters to be able to use that as an alternative way to move money around. Again, nothing fancy. This is the same thing right now that every bank, every credit union, every credit card company, every stockbroker, every gold trader-

• 31:08Kara Swisher?

  Again, Anne Swenson, why was the Biden administration unable to do this? Because I think it had repercussions.

• 31:13Speaker 03

  Well, but what I'm trying to say is the Biden administration was partly unable to do this because Congress was unable to do it and the industry itself was unable to do it. It's that the fracture was everywhere in this one. The Treasury drew up, gosh, two years ago, what they call a punch list that just says, okay, here's what it takes to make sure, just the standard curbs, to make sure that terrorists won't say, yay crypto, what a great way to be able to move our money back and forth with no one being able to detect what's going on. Treasury did that two years earlier.

• 31:55Speaker 03

  And many in the industry and many in Congress said, "Nope, don't want to do that. We're off in this totally other space." And if you're in that other space, you can't build something.

• 32:06Kara Swisher?

  You called for Trump to fire Elon and address his conflicts of interest. He's been one of the largest beneficiaries of taxpayer dollars. He's got government contracts, billions and billions in government contracts. He's been targeting agencies that hurt his businesses. Some are alleging that he's using his position in government to pressure advertisers to advertise on X. The Journal just wrote about that. There are reports now that Trump is putting a leash on him now.

• 32:36Speaker 03

  Okay. Yeah, I'll believe it when I see it.

• 32:40Kara Swisher?

  An actual leash?

• 32:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:42Kara Swisher?

  Why do you say that? I agree with you. I think it's nonsense. I know that Marco Rubio allegedly pushed back against him in the meeting.

• 32:56Speaker 03

  Look, one of the things Donald Trump has learned to do so effectively is just to say, "Up, down, 7, 21, 19, random." And people hear what they want to hear and say, "Oh, good." Right? "Oh, okay, I don't have to worry about that. He's actually..." Are you kidding me? Don't... I don't want to hear Donald Trump's words. I want to see Elon sent out of the room. I want to see Elon told, not only do you not get to do any more of this, everybody who got supposedly fired by Elon Musk has not only got their job back, they've got

• 33:41Speaker 03

  their job back with an apology from Elon Musk.

• 33:45Kara Swisher?

  Is that going to hap-

• 33:46Speaker 03

  Then I'll believe it.

• 33:47Kara Swisher?

  Is that going to happen?

• 33:48Speaker 03

  I don't know.

• 33:49Kara Swisher?

  Do you think he is worried about the repercussions?

• 33:53Speaker 03

  Look, the one thing we know is that the bullies can't stand the pushback. You know how I know that? Watch the tariffs again. So what happens? Donald Trump, big man, going to put giant tariffs on Canada and Mexico, right?

• 34:10Kara Swisher?

  Yeah.

• 34:11Speaker 03

  And then what happens? The stock market says, yuck. And all of a sudden, whoop, tariffs are gone. So then he jerks it around again. What happens? Now we're going to do tariffs, he says. Stock market goes down. And what happened to the tariffs? Whoop, the tariffs are all gone. So the pushback, he wants to be popular. He wants to preside over an economy that works for billionaires. He makes clear every day what he wants. It is up to the rest of us to stop going along with the game, the way he structures it, and start recognizing, he wants our approval. Well, damn it, don't give it to him, right?

• 34:55Kara Swisher?

  Well, he certainly gets enough approval. In certain places, he's doing well. Others, the polling is unusual. A lot of it is anti Elon, which I think he's using him as a heat shield. And I think that's an effective heat shield.

• 35:07Speaker 03

  You know, I don't see it that way. I see it the other way around. And that is that Elon is beginning to pose a real threat to Trump. And Elon sits next to him, stands next to him. Hey, listen, those pictures are burned in our brains. Where Elon stands in the Oval Office and presides while Donald Trump looks up to see the guy who's really in charge. My own prediction about this is that the things that are bad...

• 35:40Speaker 03

  Elon is both out there doing them, giving a face, letting people all across this country not have to address what I thought Donald Trump told me during the campaign and why I voted for him and what I thought he was. You don't have to address that yet. What you have to address is what's happening in Washington and how bad it is and starting to fight back against that. And Elon is the easy way in because Elon is now the face of the cancer research that doesn't go forward. He is now the face of your neighbor, the veteran who can't get his veteran benefits, your mom who's been moved out of her nursing home, your auntie who can't get anybody on

• 36:24Speaker 03

  the line at the social security office after they screwed up her check. He is now the face of it, but he is the face on behalf of Donald Trump. So I think this is a way we wedge in here.

• 36:37Kara Swisher?

  So you believe what he was saying, that the cabinet secretaries should be in charge and not Elon, although he followed it by, and if you don't, Elon will make the cuts, which feels very mobbing.

• 36:49Speaker 03

  Yes, exactly. In fact, the quote I saw that I loved the best is as soon as it all came out, what had happened, Donald Trump's quote was, no, there was no disagreement in the room. So we're back to this game again of I will say, yes, no, maybe, up and seven. I mean, just random words all at once and people will, he thinks, will hear what they want to hear. I'm tired of hearing the words, let me see what you do. And right now, they're still trying to fire people and they're still trying to hurt people and they're still waging the fight in Congress to give those tax benefits to billionaires and to make elderly people, kids, veterans pay for it.

• 37:31Kara Swisher?

  All right, let's talk more about the broader swath of billionaires because there's plenty. I just interviewed Mark Cuban and he told me that all the tech billionaires are kissing Donald Trump's ring in order to get a lead in the race for AI dominance. And I know from talking to some of them, they, some of them are very big proponents of what Trump is doing, but others are scared. They want to be part of this and they don't want to lose out. Some are more performative, like a Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos. Others are like, I had to go to lunch, Kara. I didn't have a choice. One of them texted me, I hate myself more than you hate me. And I wrote back, I wrote back, I doubt it.

• 38:09Kara Swisher?

  What are your thoughts on this? Because this is the race for AI. And he can, I think he can determine winners and losers, just as he can in crypto. He certainly can in AI.

• 38:21Speaker 03

  So I actually think of this problem a little bit differently. And it goes back again to this question about how you tilt the playing field. So, yes, our AI-dominant players have told us how you develop AI. And that is bazillions of dollars spent in silos. And then they will develop this product. And then we look over at DeepSea.

• 38:46Kara Swisher?

  Yeah.

• 38:46Speaker 03

  And we say, oh, turns out, maybe there's another way. You steal some technology. I get that part. That's always very efficient. But you steal some technology and you have a bunch of businesses trying it. And they try it in a way that says, how could you do it cheap? How could you do it fast? How could you do it 90% right instead of 99% right? How could you do it in a way that lets another business model work? That's very different from US taxpayers. Will you put in money? So we're just going to build this one or three giant golden silos.

• 39:30Speaker 03

  So I, in this sense, reject the whole premise of the question. What I want to see here is I want to see competition. I want to see a world in which we have rules. We enforce our antitrust laws. So all the players get a chance. So somebody who's got a big idea, a great idea, a funny idea, a quirky idea, actually has a chance to get access to a database where they can run it without having signed their lives away for the next 50 years and every idea they will ever come up with to be owned by one of three giants. We want to have an innovative economy here in the United States.

• 40:13Speaker 03

  Then we got to go back to the idea that we need competition and we need a government that will enforce the rules of competition.

• 40:19Kara Swisher?

  You and Senator Hawley from Missouri have been calling for tougher chip export controls as a result. You blame big tech lobbying for this because Nvidia sold chips to the Chinese. Why do you think tougher export controls are important, including for national security? And is Holly an outlier, or do you think you can get bipartisan support for this? Now, the Biden administration tried, but the Chinese did get a hold of these chips.

• 40:43Speaker 03

  Sure they did. So, think of the export controls, just like you did when you're talking about tariffs. It's another tool in the toolbox. Can we keep China from stealing our technology forever? No. But can we slow them down? Yeah. But here's the trick. This is always the trick in Washington with these rules. So, we put in place some export controls that say, you can't sell this stuff with the fancy chips that are going to help develop AI. We put that in place. That's what the law said. Who do they then hear from? They hear from the company that's going to make money from selling those chips and letting the Chinese ultimately steal. There's a company that's going to make money from that.

• 41:28Speaker 03

  So, that company comes in and, boy, do they tell a song and dance about how fabulous it's going to be, and these are just little itsy-bitsy chips, they're not going to do anything, they're not very helpful, we just had them lying around. They tell whatever they need to tell to try to get the regulators to just, how about just a little hole in the wall? Maybe a little bit bigger. Oh, a little bit bigger hole in the wall. Who they never hear from is you. They never hear from the people who actually benefit from those export controls to slow down the theft and to keep some of that technology that you, the US taxpayer, paid for.

• 42:10Kara Swisher?

  Do you expect to get bipartisan support for this?

• 42:13Speaker 03

  Well, I've already got bipartisan support for this. I've already got Josh Hawley. And the thing is, there's an increasing number, I don't want to overstate, but there's an increasing number of Republicans and Democrats, because let's be clear, it's not that all Democrats are in the right place on this.

• 42:32Speaker 03

  An increasing number of Republicans and Democrats who are saying, "We understand the importance of competition, and we understand the importance of when you put a rule in place, like a tariff or like an export control, you cannot let a friend of the President, a friend of Elon, the company that hires a billion dollars' worth of lobbyists, come in and get an exception." Because every time you do that, it means the wall holds back everybody else in this country except you. And let's just be blunt.

• 43:15Speaker 03

  When those things happen, when they get those exceptions, that is corruption, pure and simple, and we've got to call it out for what it is.

• 43:22Kara Swisher?

  So Trump is reportedly meeting with some top tech leaders from HP and other hardware companies to discuss tariffs and export controls. Not that he's listening to you. But what would you want to tell him?

• 43:33Speaker 03

  I would want to tell him, "We have a lot of tools in the box here. We need to use those tools in targeted ways that we understand what we're trying to develop here at home." The chips and science bill. Evidently, Donald Trump hates it because Joe Biden liked it. I mean, it's like this is the test now. We said we're going to help make investments here in order to develop chips at home. Because here's the thing about our country overall. Look at where we are. Right now, on chips, what was it, back around 2000, we made more than 90% of all the chips that were in production.

• 44:18Speaker 03

  Now, we're in a place where we make 12% of the chips. And for the really fancy, high-end chips that you're going to need for AI and really fancy things, right now, we are making just a tiny fraction of those chips. If you think of chips as the basic building block for many of the things you want to do going forward, you should be alarmed. Let me do a second one around it. If you go to have a prescription filled right now, the odds are nine out of 10 that the drug you take was manufactured in Asia and most likely with ingredients that came from China. Gee, what could possibly go wrong?

• 45:00Speaker 03

  We get into it back and forth with China in a really bad way. Good luck on whether or not your antibiotic is still available. And do one more really quickly, and that is manufacturing, right? Our manufacturing capacity in the United States back in the year 2000, we had three times the manufacturing capacity of China. That meant we had lots of factories and lots of things and lots of train things that went up to be able to move those goods and services today. China has three times the manufacturing capacity of the United States of America. So understand this, we want to have a strong economy going forward.

• 45:45Speaker 03

  We want to let our people have an opportunity to innovate and to build great things and to build strong economic futures for themselves. You've got to have good ideas. You've got to have good things we invest in here at home, but you've got to think about this international competition and be willing to use your tools smartly so that we are building more of what we need to create a future right here in the United States.

• 46:10Kara Swisher?

  Is Trump too acquiescent to China?

• 46:13Speaker 03

  Who can tell? Early in the morning, yes. Late in the afternoon, no. After a cheeseburger, he's back to maybe, but that is the point. And understand, we can laugh about it, but the reality is money doesn't have to come here, including US money. Who builds a factory? On the hope that what he said in the morning is the part that's still gonna stick

• 46:40Kara Swisher?

  Sure.

• 46:41Speaker 03

  Late in the afternoon, there is a real cost to the chaos that's going on right now. In seven weeks, the damage that Donald Trump and Elon Musk have done to investment in the United States is something that this nation will be paying for, for years and years.

• 47:00Kara Swisher?

  So, one of the things you've been pushing at are the tax cuts that are coming. And for many years, you tried to get a billionaire's tax.

• 47:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 47:07Kara Swisher?

  You did not get very much traction on that.

• 47:09Speaker 03

  No, but at least people are thinking about it.

• 47:11Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, okay. They seem to be doing pretty well right now.

• 47:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, they are.

• 47:16Kara Swisher?

  Apparently Musk recently falsely accused you of having $67 million.

• 47:21Speaker 03

  Whoa, I wish.

• 47:22Kara Swisher?

  Yeah. Talk about that idolatry. You don't have 67 million. No, you have eight or nine, though. You're rich. You have some money.

• 47:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 47:32Kara Swisher?

  You have some dough. Your house has done very well.

• 47:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, it has. It has. We bought it 25 years ago.

• 47:38Kara Swisher?

  Yeah. But your bumper sticker was billionaires win, families lose.

• 47:42Speaker 03

  You bet.

• 47:43Kara Swisher?

  Why have you not gotten traction on this, from your perspective? This is a message you've had for a very long time, and they've never been more powerful than ever.

• 47:53Speaker 03

  Yeah. So, look, money talks. I get that. And Elon Musk has now shown the way. The game was already afoot, but Elon Musk bought a president of the United States for a little over a quarter of a billion dollars. And now he's collecting his return on investment. And that return on investment for him will be lower taxes, so he gets to keep more and pay for it on the backs of the rest of America, and less regulations, so that his businesses, when they break the law, as many of them evidently have already done, there's no regulator to stop him.

• 48:37Speaker 03

  So, he becomes unstoppable. And then, part three, next week, he gets to issue his own money and just take it off internationally. So, here's the thing. You raised me a fundamental question about how democracy works. You don't run for office if you're not an optimist. At least, that's how I see it. I was at the Iowa State Fair. I ran for president. Spoiler alert, I did not win. But I ran for office and I pitched. It's not just the billionaire tax. It was a two-cent

• 49:15Speaker 03

  wealth tax. It was just to say, for your money above $50 million, pitch in two cents for your first $50 million, free and clear. After that, could you just put in two cents for the dollars above that? And it is staggering what that kind of infusion of cash would give us in terms of universal childcare, in terms of universal pre-K, better funding for all of our public schools, free college education, canceling out student loan debt, healthcare. You can just do the whole thing. It would be astonishing what it would be.

• 49:53Speaker 03

  So, part of the reason I ran for president, I knew the odds were not in my favor and I got it. But I figured if I run for president, I could get up and talk about that every single day for as long as I'm in that race. So I'd been doing that and I go to the Iowa State Fair. And the Iowa State Fair, talk about it, jammed, I literally in the crowds and there's security running and so on. I would get lifted off my feet at various most, really kind of scary. A lot of people. So anyway, they put you up on this thing where you can see all the way down, three different directions. I'm saying blah blah,

• 50:35Speaker 03

  here's what I am doing. And I look out and you know, you can sense a disturbance and there's a disturbance and I'm kind of like peering forward and it starts to roll.

• 50:49Speaker 03

  And the disturbance is people chanting "two cents", "two cents", "two cents", "two cents", until the whole Iowa fairgrounds, it looks like to me, was stomping, clapping, and saying "two cents". Now, like I said, I didn't win, I get that. Um, Donald Trump is riding high right now.

• 51:22Kara Swisher?

  Billionaires are everywhere.

• 51:23Speaker 03

  Billionaires, boy, I saw them up on stage. I was sitting in the cheap seats, you know, the United States Senate, during the Trump swearing in. But I sat there and thought about, there are a whole lot of people around this country, I mean, a whole lot of people. You give them a chance, and they're ready to say "two cents", and I think that's a fight worth having.

• 51:46Kara Swisher?

  All right, so are you, are you running for president again?

• 51:49Speaker 03

  No.

• 51:50Kara Swisher?

  No?

• 51:51Speaker 03

  Absolutely not.

• 51:53Kara Swisher?

  Okay. We'll be back in a minute.

• 52:04Kara Swisher?

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• 52:49Kara Swisher?

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• 53:10Kara Swisher?

  Let's talk about the Democrats. We'll finish up, and then I have a couple of questions from the audience.

• 53:14Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 53:15Kara Swisher?

  You've said many times, "We'll win if only we fight back." That's the sort of thing you say.

• 53:18Speaker 03

  I believe that.

• 53:19Kara Swisher?

  But let's talk about that. During Trump's speech, there was an unfortunate visual protesting. That's how Scott and I saw it. Some of the members of Congress boycotted, but you couldn't really tell they were missing. Congressman Al Green heckled and was escorted out of the chamber. Some Congresswomen wore pink. People held up signs that said, "Save Medicaid, Musk's deal is false." There was some stony silence. It seemed to annoy Trump. I felt it was not an effective protest. Many did not agree. You may or may not agree. But is this a problem? It feels like you're bringing a knife to a gunfight. And I'm sorry to use that visual, but that's an old metaphor.

• 53:56Speaker 03

  So, look, I'm not, I'm just not here to criticize people who are trying to find their way to fight back against Donald Trump. Shoot, that's my whole point, is we all got to find our way to fight back. Do I want to see us coordinated? Do I want to see us be effective? Of course I do.

• 54:11Kara Swisher?

  Did you think that was effective?

• 54:13Speaker 03

  Look, I did what I thought was the right response. I listened to every word, and when he said something I agreed with, which is funding Ukraine, I clapped, and I clapped loudly. And evidently got under his skin. Good, nice work. So...

• 54:29Kara Swisher?

  You're being very polite here. You don't think it was a disaster?

• 54:34Speaker 03

  So, I think of this differently. Did you see what happened last weekend?

• 54:38Kara Swisher?

  Which one?

• 54:39Speaker 03

  How many Republicans had town halls? You know, that's the whole hallmark of our democracy. I don't know any Democrats who are having to run away down the halls and have pictures of them as they disappear while their own constituents are yelling at them, saying, "Come back here and explain why you're letting Elon Musk cut the VA in our town." I think the Republicans, right now, are on their back foot. And I'm just going to make the same point again, and that is, it's a fight in the court. We're more than 100 lawsuits. It's a fight in Congress over this tax bill. Billionaires versus everybody else. And it's a fight right out in public.

• 55:22Speaker 03

  It is a fight at every town hall, at every rally. We've got to have grassroots power back in this. And I think that's part of what's starting to happen now.

• 55:34Kara Swisher?

  Many people still do feel the Democrats are having an identity crisis. Maybe you don't think that. Some factions are calling it...

• 55:39Speaker 03

  I know who I am.

• 55:40Kara Swisher?

  What, I'm sorry?

• 55:41Speaker 03

  Well, identity crisis. I know who I am and I know what I'm fighting for.

• 55:44Kara Swisher?

  As a group.

• 55:45Speaker 03

  No, I actually disagree with you on that, Kara. I think we know damned well what we are fighting for.

• 55:50Kara Swisher?

  All right.

• 55:51Speaker 03

  We are fighting for an America that we do not hand over to Elon Musk and a few billionaires. We are fighting for an America where everybody gets a chance. Every single Democrat. So that's for me what this is all about.

• 56:05Kara Swisher?

  Is it a unified party? Because there's some that think there should be less focus on identity politics, more on the economy, to speak to voters swayed by Trump. There are some calling for more progressive ideas to mount an aggressive resistance. Do you think there's an overall strategy? The Republicans are very good at that. Whether it's heinous or not, they're very united.

• 56:24Speaker 03

  Hey, listen, Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line. But the way I see it right now is it's Republicans who are in disarray. The conversations right now are not Elon, keep it up, ma'am, we got your back. Did you just hear? You said what happened in the cabinet meeting.

• 56:48Kara Swisher?

  Well, behind the scenes. In front of the scenes, he says, does everybody like him?

• 56:52Speaker 03

  Yes, it's all behind the scenes, but it's behind the scenes because people are chasing those Republicans down the halls. It is behind the scenes because people are making those phone calls. They are feeling the heat. And as they feel the heat, they call the White House. And I get it. Everybody on the Republican side wants to stand up because it's what they always do. And they all say, we totally agree with each other. You bet we do. Yay. Just what they want is to see their local VA closed. Are you kidding me? They are sweating bullets. Over what has already happened. And if Elon keeps this up, the bite is going to get harder and harder and harder.

• 57:37Speaker 03

  And yeah, we are Democrats. We do this in lots of ways. It's a noisy way to go about it, but the reality is, never forget. We know what our values are and we are out there fighting for our values. We are not handing this country over to billionaires. We are fighting for a level playing field for American families.

• 57:59Kara Swisher?

  All right, let's get some questions from the audience. I asked on Blue Sky and Thread, I'm not on X these days. Just so you know. Good for you. Yeah, I left behind a lot of followers, but I don't like being called a cunt every day. Just my little thing, just my little thing. A lot of them are, why is the Democrat Party so feckless now? We need strong leaders and fighters, not hand-wringing sign holders. What do you say to people who are criticizing Democrats for not acting in the face of crisis? Another one is, why the hell did she vote to confirm Rubio? It's along those lines. Are the Democrats going to help us here? Are they strong enough to mount a unified force?

• 58:46Speaker 03

  We are in this fight. We are in this fight. Understand, this fight is at the local level. This is where it gets fought. We are here in Austin, Texas. Remind me, what party do your two senators belong to? How many reps do you have who are Republicans? They have not spoken up. You want to come turn the heat on Democrats, fine. I'm good, I'm ready for that. I love a good fight. But here's the deal. It's the Republicans who are right now empowering Donald Trump and they need to answer for it. It is the Republicans who are empowering Elon Musk.

• 59:27Speaker 03

  It is the Republicans who are evidently going along with a president or two co-presidents who Are not following the law, not following the Constitution, and going out of their ways to hurt the most vulnerable people in this country. Republicans need to be called out, and Democrats are increasingly doing that. Are we doing it enough? No. Are we doing it loudly enough? No. Have we done it as effectively as we need to? No. But we are not through. We are in this fight all the way because we understand the stakes of this fight.

• 1:00:11Kara Swisher?

  So would you mind answering that question? Why did you vote to confirm Rubio?

• 1:00:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, because the Marco Rubio that I voted for is not the Marco Rubio of six weeks later. I'm just going to be blunt. I've worked with Marco Rubio. I've seen what Marco Rubio stood up for. Look, he was not my fave, but I figure Republicans, Secretary of State, you could do a lot worse. I was wrong. Because what happened is he's gotten in, and the work that Marco Rubio did for years with USAID, this is, this is money for so little kids have access to medicine. This is money to stop AIDS.

• 1:00:56Speaker 03

  This is money to try to help starving people in the middle of a crisis. Marco Rubio used to be strong for that, used to stand up for that sort of thing. This is someone who thought that the United States should play on an international stage and beat back the autocrats. You'd have to have Marco Rubio here.

• 1:01:18Kara Swisher?

  All right, we have three or four more. We're going to go over just a timid. My deepest worry is that Doge Brothers attacked the federal government. Is the damage done to its computer system as in deleting and amending records, creating backdoors for future hacking? Worried about that?

• 1:01:32Speaker 03

  Yes, I am deeply worried about. I'm worried about, I want to do it at both levels. I am worried about what they do to the system. I'm worried that even if they don't touch the system, I'm worried about what they copy out of the system and then either take it somewhere else for their own uses or somebody else can hack into it. So I am worried in every direction, deeply worried.

• 1:01:56Kara Swisher?

  I would ask if she thinks Trump will use troops against people if there are large-scale protests like you were just talking about?

• 1:02:02Speaker 03

  I don't know. It's the question I've asked in the Armed Services, I said on the Armed Services Committee. We've asked this repeatedly, the Democrats have. Would you follow an illegal order? Would you fire on civilians? And right now, the Trump nominees are giving the, you know, dance-around answer and not giving an answer here, which is deeply disturbing. And we all vote no, and the Republicans all vote to push him in.

• 1:02:34Kara Swisher?

  So what if the, what is the Democratic plan of Trump defies court orders as the Federal Society article recently suggested they do?

• 1:02:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, look, I, I used to think that a constitutional crisis would be like a light switch. You know, everything's working, at least like it should. I mean, not like the policies, but constitutionally speaking, it's all working like it should. I think, though, it's actually a slope, and this is just one more place on the slope. And I think that the answer here is how much can we rev up the other three tools we've got? We've got the tool of the courts, we've got the tool in Congress of just putting the stink on every Republican that goes along with this, and we've got the tool of grassroots,

• 1:03:24Speaker 03

  just saying, no, this country belongs to the people, not, not to someone who wants to destroy our Constitution.

• 1:03:33Kara Swisher?

  Two more quick questions. What counter is possible for Trump trying to privatize the US? Post office, Amtrak, things like that.

• 1:03:43Speaker 03

  You know, this one I actually really push in Congress is the number one place to hit this. He cannot do these things legally without Congress. And if the Republicans want to go down that path, I get it. There are more Republicans in the Senate or Republicans in the House than there are Democrats, but we ain't giving it away for free. And so if they want to do stuff that really stinks, then the answer is, we're going to make sure that stink rubs off on every Republican that helped Donald Trump and Elon Musk along.

• 1:04:15Kara Swisher?

  Okay. Last question from someone. Are you yourself scared of personal retribution? I mean, it's all fun and games with your name and stuff like that, but do you yourself, you just answered a question about troops attacking Americans. Are you yourself fearful of your safety? I know a lot of Republicans have expressed that privately.

• 1:04:36Speaker 03

  Do you know the hardest part about the question you just asked is I don't want to publicly answer that question. That is the first question I've had I just don't want to talk about.

• 1:04:49Kara Swisher?

  Well?

• 1:04:50Speaker 03

  I don't want to talk about it.

• 1:04:51Kara Swisher?

  All right. Well, we will leave it at that. Senator Elizabeth Warren.

• 1:04:57Kara Swisher?

  Thank you, everybody.

• 1:05:03Kara Swisher?

  Shortly after I wrapped my South by Southwest conversation with Elizabeth Warren, my colleague Sean Ramaswaram took to the Vox Media podcast stage to interview Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. Warren campaigned for Walz and Kamala Harris last year, and like Warren, Walz has a lot to say about the past, present, and future of the Democratic Party and America. Check out the latest episode of Today Explained for Sean's conversation with Governor Tim Walz wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:05:30Kara Swisher?

  On the Kara Swisher is produced by Christian Castro-Russell, Kateri Yokum, Dave Shaw, Megan Burney, Megan Cunane, and Kalen Lynch. Nishat Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio. Special thanks to Kate Furby. Our engineers are Rick Kwan and Fernando Aruda, and our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following You've been stockpiling Canadian maple syrup. If not, you're still holding on to your two cents. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network and us. We'll be back on Thursday with more.

• 1:06:14Speaker 01

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