LINA KHAN Talks FTC, Monopolies, Biden

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:32Speaker 01

  Somewhere out there is a Chevy truck. And the person who drives it, well, is a Chevy person. You probably know one. Your buddy, your sister. Ones who always show up. They're the first to rise, the last to leave. They always have that little extra something. And maybe you've got it too. Chevrolet, together let's drive. Visit chevy.com/trucks to explore the lineup.

• 1:01Speaker 00

  You functioned kind of like as someone that enforced the law. You were kind of like a cop or like a, you know. Did you ever ask for a gun? You should have a badge.

• 1:11Speaker 02

  I know, we probably should have. You know, we did have investigators who like went undercover sometimes and they did have badges.

• 1:18Speaker 00

  Did you send guys to Burning Man to like figure out tech corruption?

• 1:23Speaker 02

  We didn't have that, that good idea.

• 1:25Speaker 00

  See, had I gone to law school, I would have had that great idea. They would have been on Molly and they would have been like, we're gonna make one company. The whole, the whole economy is gonna be one company pretty soon.

• 1:37Speaker 02

  I guess.

• 2:07Speaker 03

  Let's do it.

• 2:10Adam Friedland?

  Let me get over that real quick. My feelings being hurt. Hello, welcome back to the Adam Friedland Show. I'm Adam Friedland.

• 2:21Adam Friedland?

  Thomas just bullied me.

• 2:25Adam Friedland?

  Alright. Hello and welcome back to the Adam Friedland Show, guys. Adam Friedland here. First off, as always, I'd like to thank our members for supporting us here on youtube.com. You make the show possible. Seriously, guys, members get access to all of our episodes early before they're released to the general public, and if you join at the second or third tiers, you also get your name in the credits of this fine program. If you'd like to join the Friedland Family Foundation, you can do so by clicking the "Join" button here on YouTube, or by clicking the link in the description below. You can also support us on Patreon if you prefer. The link for that is also in the description. And also, guys, merch is now available. Go to theadamfriedland.show to check it out. We got hoodies, t-shirts, hats.

• 3:09Adam Friedland?

  The hoodies are fucking flying off the shelves, guys. Hop on those real quick before they sell out. You could conceivably wear an entire outfit of the Adam Friedland Show merch if you make your own pants and shoes. That is true. That's a funny line, Caleb. Leave that in. You deserve... Give it up for Caleb Piss, anyway.

• 3:30Adam Friedland?

  My guest this week is former FTC Commissioner LINA Khan. Lena's been in the news recently as she is the head of Zorron M'Adani's mayoral transition team. During her tenure at the FTC, she became a powerful enemy of major corporations like Amazon and Meta, transforming a famously toothless arm of the executive branch into an effective valve on corporate power. Effective valve.

• 3:58Adam Friedland?

  A valve is something that regulates like a stream.

• 4:01Speaker 03

  Regulates? Hmm, what does that remind you of?

• 4:04Adam Friedland?

  Okay, you did good copy, bad copy, that was good copy. Think of LINA Khan like Batman and think of Amazon like The Penguin, Meta, Bane, I guess, Oracle, Hugo Strange, Joe Biden, Ra's al Ghul, Apple, Killer Croc, and I will be Alfred Pennyworth, the butler. The point is Lena is one of the good guys and I'm Alfred. So please.

• 4:32Adam Friedland?

  Caleb, you crushed it this week. I was on the phone too much and Caleb wrote perhaps the best intro we've had thus far. Give it up for Caleb Pitts one more time. I love my team. Please enjoy my conversation with LINA Khan.

• 4:49Adam Friedland?

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• 5:34Adam Friedland?

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• 6:19Adam Friedland?

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• 6:40Speaker 02

  When I lived in England, I think I was Arsenal and maybe Man U at points, but I don't really remember very well.

• 6:47Adam Friedland?

  You're from the Shetland.

• 6:50Speaker 02

  I lived in Boulders Green, yeah.

• 6:51Adam Friedland?

  That's where the Frummers lived.

• 6:53Speaker 02

  Is it?

• 6:54Adam Friedland?

  That's where the Orthodox, right?

• 6:55Speaker 02

  Oh, the Orthodox, yeah, yeah, that's true, yes. Yes, it is a pretty Orthodox neighborhood. I think now it's a bit more, there are like a lot of Polish immigrants there as well.

• 7:04Adam Friedland?

  Thank God, thank God.

• 7:06Speaker 02

  No, it was a nice place to grow up.

• 7:08Adam Friedland?

  Dude, she's a gooner, do you hear that? Arsenal fan. Oh, really? Yeah.

• 7:13Speaker 02

  I don't know that I could faithfully still claim that.

• 7:15Adam Friedland?

  Stop being a lawyer, just lie. Have you learned to lie? You're allowed to lie now.

• 7:20Speaker 02

  It is like against my disposition at this point.

• 7:22Adam Friedland?

  I know, watching interviews with you, you're like, they give you opportunities to talk some shit and you're like, I know the rules for this.

• 7:32Speaker 02

  Well, I feel like once you've testified before Congress, where like the main goal is not to lie. It's like that becomes like really ingrained in you.

• 7:38Adam Friedland?

  I agree, yeah, people don't lie in front of Congress.

• 7:42Speaker 02

  It's bad if you do, so.

• 7:43Adam Friedland?

  You know what, guys, can we just do the interview now and then we'll just do the walkout later? Okay, because we're ready to do the interview.

• 7:49Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 7:49Adam Friedland?

  You've never told one lie in your entire life?

• 7:51Speaker 02

  I probably have, like as a kid or something, but.

• 7:54Adam Friedland?

  Not since you were a kid?

• 7:55Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 7:56Adam Friedland?

  I lie every, my whole life is a lie. This is a lie.

• 8:00Speaker 02

  It looks pretty legit, but.

• 8:02Adam Friedland?

  I, I, um, I wanted to ask you something I thought was really kinda cute. But about your, about the Starbucks thing when you were in high school.

• 8:12Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 8:12Adam Friedland?

  So you, you were in Westchester?

• 8:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, I lived in Mamaroneck, went to Mamaroneck High School.

• 8:17Adam Friedland?

  And so the kids were causing a ruckus up in Starbucks by your high school?

• 8:21Speaker 02

  So Starbucks said, but that's why we needed to investigate it.

• 8:24Adam Friedland?

  And what did you do about it?

• 8:26Speaker 02

  So there was basically a, you know, some stores outside of the high school, including a Starbucks. And people would, you know, go there and hang out there and buy coffee.

• 8:37Adam Friedland?

  At Starbucks?

• 8:38Speaker 02

  And then they started a policy that students, even if they purchased something, couldn't stay in the store. They couldn't sit down. Um, so I wrote a, a school newspaper story about it.

• 8:50Adam Friedland?

  You're Martin Luther King. But didn't you get in the New York Times?

• 8:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, it somehow became enough of a thing where the Times then reported on it and reported, cited my story or something.

• 9:00Adam Friedland?

  So were you a little bit sucking up to the popular girls that were at Starbucks?

• 9:05Speaker 02

  I, I don't remember that way. I was genuinely just curious why.

• 9:09Adam Friedland?

  Or you were the popular girls?

• 9:11Speaker 02

  No, I mean, I was a newspaper editor, you know, I don't know that that counted, but.

• 9:14Adam Friedland?

  Have you ever gotten a B?

• 9:16Speaker 02

  A B?

• 9:16Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 9:17Speaker 02

  Probably, yeah, in some.

• 9:19Adam Friedland?

  That's a lie. I got you to lie.

• 9:20Speaker 02

  No, no, I mean, I.

• 9:21Adam Friedland?

  I got you to lie.

• 9:22Speaker 02

  I took some hard math classes in college and probably didn't do so well.

• 9:25Adam Friedland?

  I need to get, I need to swear you in. You never got a B. You got a B in the hard math?

• 9:31Speaker 02

  Some hard math, yeah.

• 9:32Adam Friedland?

  How did it feel to get a B?

• 9:33Speaker 02

  Uh, it was humbling, but in a good way.

• 9:35Adam Friedland?

  Humbling. Did you take the LSAT, uh, June twenty, two thousand nine?

• 9:42Speaker 02

  Uh, no.

• 9:43Adam Friedland?

  Dino game?

• 9:44Speaker 02

  No, no, I took it later.

• 9:46Adam Friedland?

  Do you know the dino game? The logic game with the dinosaurs?

• 9:50Speaker 02

  I know the logic puzzles, but not with the dinosaurs.

• 9:53Adam Friedland?

  I, I took it right before you.

• 9:54Speaker 02

  Okay, I, I, I didn't go to law school till twenty fourteen, so I took it later.

• 9:59Adam Friedland?

  What'd you have in the LSAT?

• 10:00Speaker 02

  I don't remember.

• 10:01Adam Friedland?

  Come on.

• 10:01Speaker 02

  I really don't.

• 10:03Adam Friedland?

  You're being humble right now. You got 180.

• 10:05Speaker 02

  I don't, I don't think so.

• 10:07Adam Friedland?

  Straight up 180.

• 10:08Speaker 02

  I, I'd have to go back and check.

• 10:09Adam Friedland?

  Did you finish first? Were you like, done?

• 10:11Speaker 02

  I don't think so.

• 10:12Adam Friedland?

  You definitely did. So, I'd like, uh, I'd, yeah, I took it, uh, three times. It was an inflection point in my life.

• 10:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know. It was an inflection point for me, too. I was trying to decide whether to go to law school or whether to be a journalist, so.

• 10:27Adam Friedland?

  Your, your thesis in college was on Hannah Arendt?

• 10:29Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 10:30Adam Friedland?

  What was your, what was your, your area of focus? I think it's pretty interesting for the times we're kind of living in right now.

• 10:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was this close study of, um, a bunch of her work, including a book she wrote called The Human Condition. And, uh, in the book, she basically writes about how, uh, you know, technical, technological progress can lead to a lot of advances, but also require a certain degree of distance.

• 10:52Adam Friedland?

  Mm-hmm.

• 10:52Speaker 02

  And she has this analogy with the plane around how like, you know, airplanes like allow us to do pretty great stuff and like make physical distance shorter, but it requires, uh, an altitude that makes you see less. And I analogize how she talked about kind of expertise and what can get lost in it to how we got into the financial crisis.

• 11:14Adam Friedland?

  So that's like the most boring book she wrote? That's what your thesis was?

• 11:18Speaker 02

  I don't know if that was the most boring.

• 11:19Adam Friedland?

  I thought your thesis would be on her, her romance with, with Heidegger.

• 11:23Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 11:24Adam Friedland?

  The Nazi and the Jew.

• 11:25Speaker 02

  Right, right. I guess that was a component of her life.

• 11:28Adam Friedland?

  One thing I, I heard you say in an interview was that prior to, um, the establishment of the Third Reich as a centralized power structure, uh, that industrial conglomeration or like, uh, was a big component of it. Is that correct? Or am I trying to say words? I feel like I'm copying words I heard in, on TV. On Succession, maybe?

• 11:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, obviously, there are a lot of factors that facilitated the rise of Nazism. But the US, after World War II, actually commissioned various studies to be like, "What just happened and what factors contributed to it?" Including trying to figure out what was happening in the economy. And they did actually find that growing consolidation across the German economy had basically facilitated the rise of Nazism. You know, you had like more monopolization in certain types of rubber and steel. And generally speaking, there's long been a recognition that concentrated economic power can go hand in hand with concentrated political power. And, you know, I think that's an insight that has been lost more recently, but we're

• 12:34Speaker 02

  kind of being forced to reckon with again.

• 12:37Adam Friedland?

  So you think Paramount, if they buy Warner Brothers, maybe Barry Weiss will be maybe the kind of GOB will... She doesn't talk shit at all, because she knows all the rules. She knows all the rules, so I... Okay, so let's explain to our audience. You became a star even before you graduated law school. So you published an article about Amazon when you were in law school, and you kind of made some enemies.

• 13:05Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 13:07Adam Friedland?

  What was your thesis? What was your position that you were taking?

• 13:11Speaker 02

  So basically, I was writing about how the contemporary way that antitrust law gets interpreted, which is a very short-term focus on whether monopolies are raising prices, was creating all sorts of blind spots and used Amazon as kind of a vehicle to tell this broader story about changes in our antitrust laws. The Law Review article actually came out of a whole bunch of interviews I had done with two sets of market participants. One was the set of businesses that were selling on Amazon, and the other was financial analysts and investors that were looking at Amazon more through a long-term prism. And it was really interesting because at that time, this is like 2012, 2013,

• 13:53Speaker 02

  you know, the general consensus in DC was that Amazon is this company that is, you know, just delivering all these low prices. And there's kind of no monopoly power dominance concern here. But when you talk to those sets of market actors, they were like, yeah, of course, you know, this company is amassing structural power that one day it'll just be able to flip the switch. And that's the whole like investment proposition here. And it was just one of these instances where there was a real gap between how kind of the experts and the pundits were understanding what was going on in the economy and how when you talk to like real people that were doing business with this company, how they understood it. And that gap was really interesting to me. And so I decided to try to make it into a blog review article.

• 14:35Adam Friedland?

  So in essence, you're saying that they were dropping prices so low that like mom and pop were just couldn't compete? Is that what you're saying?

• 14:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, they were engaging in a bunch of business practices that like 50 years ago would have been illegal. But because there was this kind of Reagan revolution and antitrust, where we now basically assume that monopolies were good unless they were engaging in a very narrow set of practices that were bad, we'd kind of become blind to being able to see, you know, corporate dominance and monopoly power, unless and until it hit this like very narrow set of conditions.

• 15:08Adam Friedland?

  What do you make of the argument? Or like, like people would say like the Sears catalog is going to drive the general store out of business. Is it just that like, yeah, like Bezos kind of reinvented a supply chain, but I can get any crap I want tomorrow? Like, do you get crap on there?

• 15:23Speaker 02

  I, I'm not a Prime member, so I don't really buy stuff off of there.

• 15:26Adam Friedland?

  What do you mean you're not a Prime? What are you doing? You go with your feet? You go on your feet to a thing?

• 15:32Speaker 02

  I mean, that's the good thing about living in New York City, you know? You can buy a lot of stuff in person.

• 15:36Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, but you could also get any crap tomorrow.

• 15:39Speaker 02

  It's true. I mean, the thing is, it's, it's really not about, it's, it's, it's more about, you know, the antitrust and anti-monopoly laws were designed to basically create more checks and balances in our economic sphere.

• 15:50Adam Friedland?

  Sure.

• 15:51Speaker 02

  Because there was a recognition that like you don't want to concentrate economic power. And through competition laws, there's an assumption that firms, if they're having to compete for your business, they're going to try to make things better, be it through lower prices or kind of better service.

• 16:06Adam Friedland?

  Correct.

• 16:06Speaker 02

  And so we want to maintain competition. And there are fair ways to compete and unfair ways to compete. And our definition of what is unfair ways of competing has like radically changed over the last few decades such that companies like Amazon have been able to get away with things. And you know, when I was at the FTC, we ended up filing a lawsuit against it. After investigating it, we found that it was breaking the law and that now it is actually systematically raising prices for people, both consumers.

• 16:36Adam Friedland?

  Because they fucked everyone off.

• 16:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, because they can.

• 16:38Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 16:39Speaker 02

  And like the businesses that have to sell on Amazon now have to pay as much as one out of every two dollars to this company.

• 16:45Adam Friedland?

  Sorry for cussing also.

• 16:46Speaker 02

  It's not a good situation. And you know, a lot of that is because they don't face real competition.

• 16:52Adam Friedland?

  Do you think the game Monopoly is maybe problematic for people's understanding of monopoly power?

• 16:57Speaker 02

  It's possible.

• 16:58Adam Friedland?

  Because no one wins that monopoly and everyone's like, you're a bad guy.

• 17:01Speaker 02

  Right.

• 17:02Adam Friedland?

  Everyone's like, you know, I mean, it's a disaster. Your dad just relapsed on alcohol. He told your mom that she's just like her mother. Your sister's crying. That's what happens when you win a monopoly and you're like, I'm the best guy in the family.

• 17:15Speaker 02

  You know, there's a really interesting history of that game where it was actually designed as an anti-monopoly game and then it was like, you know, commercialized and made into a kind of a pro-monopoly game.

• 17:26Adam Friedland?

  Wait, so what was the objective? That everyone has different stuff?

• 17:29Speaker 02

  In the original version.

• 17:30Adam Friedland?

  In the original version.

• 17:31Speaker 02

  You know, I haven't played the original version, though I actually have a version of it, so I need to try it out.

• 17:36Adam Friedland?

  So you went back into the think tank world after law school?

• 17:39Speaker 02

  Uh, just briefly, yeah.

• 17:41Adam Friedland?

  Were you offered like a federal clerkship or something? I mean, it seems like from your resume, like you could have...

• 17:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was supposed to clerk a year out of law school and my judge ended up passing away a few months before. So then I kind of had to rejigger things and ended up actually working first

• 17:57Adam Friedland?

  I'm sorry.

• 17:58Speaker 02

  At the FTC for a commissioner, Rohit Chopra, who had just joined, who was doing incredible work. And then actually ended up joining as a staffer to a congressional committee where we did a big investigation of Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google.

• 18:13Speaker 02

  And so was there for a year and a half or so.

• 18:16Adam Friedland?

  And you started working with Elizabeth Warren or like in an unofficial capacity at the time? Is that correct?

• 18:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, not officially, but you know, she in 2016 gave a big speech basically saying, you know, across the economy, we have now extreme consolidation and she named companies, which, you know, in DC is unusual for kind of somebody to really name the company you're talking about and she did that across sectors and it basically helped give much more prominence to this issue of antitrust and anti-monopoly. And she became kind of an ally as somebody who agreed that we really needed to reinvigorate this area of law.

• 18:52Adam Friedland?

  And so from my understanding, well, two things. First is like, how did President Biden, how did you get drafted in the league at 32?

• 19:01Speaker 02

  It's a great question. I have no idea.

• 19:03Adam Friedland?

  You were the youngest by like 40 years, probably, in the government.

• 19:07Speaker 02

  Oh, in the government. I mean, there had been some prior FTC commissioners that had been in their 30s, but I think Chair, yeah, probably was the youngest.

• 19:16Adam Friedland?

  So how did you get scouted? Like, how did they know that you were the GOAT? It's really cool that President Biden was like, this is the one.

• 19:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:24Adam Friedland?

  And you like changed, we'll get into it, but you changed the way kind of a toothless part of the executive functioned, from what I understand.

• 19:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, how people get picked is like a total mystery.

• 19:36Adam Friedland?

  Oh, now you're lying. Now she's lying. We got her, guys. Let's clap it up. What happened?

• 19:43Speaker 02

  You know, you basically get a call being, asking you if you're interested in serving.

• 19:47Adam Friedland?

  From the monopoly man?

• 19:49Speaker 02

  From the federal government and.

• 19:51Adam Friedland?

  You got a call from the federal government?

• 19:52Speaker 02

  You get a call from somebody, you know, working in the White House who does personnel.

• 19:55Adam Friedland?

  Uncle Sam?

• 19:56Speaker 02

  They usually somebody who works in the Office of Personnel.

• 20:00Adam Friedland?

  HR?

• 20:01Speaker 02

  It's basically HR for the White House, who has to like figure out for all of the political appointees, who are we going to pick? So they call you, they ask if you're interested. If you say yes, you have to have all of this kind of background checks and have a lot of conversation with security people.

• 20:16Adam Friedland?

  They looked into the Starbucks, right?

• 20:18Speaker 02

  Probably, yeah.

• 20:18Adam Friedland?

  They probably like called someone at the Starbucks.

• 20:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, they call people who know you to kind of try to figure out what's going on. And then sometimes you don't hear for a while and you have no idea, am I in or am I out? In my case, I ended up being told that I had been picked as a commissioner and they were going to announce it like the next day.

• 20:34Adam Friedland?

  Had you spoken to President Biden before?

• 20:36Speaker 02

  No.

• 20:37Adam Friedland?

  Really?

• 20:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:38Adam Friedland?

  He wasn't like keto? Kiddo, the malarkey of you, you've got no malarkey.

• 20:44Speaker 02

  Uh, no, we didn't get to have that conversation.

• 20:46Adam Friedland?

  So you came into it, from what I understand, and as you alluded to, from Reagan till the time you came, which 2020?

• 20:54Speaker 02

  2021, yeah.

• 20:55Adam Friedland?

  2021, like, from, so for, what, 30 years, it was basically a completely, just, what, they did Herbalife, right? Was that their big hit for 30 years?

• 21:07Speaker 02

  Uh, they were very focused on, you know, frauds and scams, and, you know, with staff by very well-meaning people, but there definitely had been kind of a real narrowing in their ambition.

• 21:16Adam Friedland?

  Well, so you walked into the office, everyone's Hawaiian shirt, beer pong. Were people doing, uh, like Xeroxes of their butts?

• 21:23Speaker 02

  You know, it was still COVID, so it took a while till everybody was like back in. But no, I mean, you know, the staff there was very hardworking, there had been people who'd been there since, you know, for decades.

• 21:34Adam Friedland?

  She won't talk shit. They were definitely like, look at this homework nerd coming in, trying to make us work for the first time ever.

• 21:39Speaker 02

  No, I mean, there, you know, it was, I was an unusual pick for a bunch of reasons, so, uh, you know, it was a bit of an adjustment for the agency.

• 21:47Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 21:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:48Adam Friedland?

  How'd you get picked?

• 21:50Speaker 02

  It's a great, it's a great question.

• 21:51Adam Friedland?

  Because you're not Nepo, right?

• 21:54Speaker 02

  No, I mean, no.

• 21:55Adam Friedland?

  You're like the smartest one. They never picked the smartest one. Seriously. It's like a rarity, that's why I'm so fascinated by it.

• 22:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:03Adam Friedland?

  Especially it's so young. They hate youth in Hollywood, in ugly Hollywood, I mean, in DC. They have a contempt for youth.

• 22:11Speaker 02

  It was an unusual pick, and I think it really did speak to how, in a pretty small number of years, the kind of elite, even elite consensus about antitrust has started to change.

• 22:23Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 22:24Speaker 02

  And so, there was a growing sense that the kind of Reagan approach, which had become a bipartisan approach, right?

• 22:30Adam Friedland?

  Under Clinton and Obama, yeah.

• 22:32Speaker 02

  The incredible thing about Reagan was like... When they came in, the stuff they were pushing was seen as really fringe. And, you know, there were deep partisan fights. But then you fast forward 12 years after eight years of Reagan, four years of Bush, and the stuff that had been really fringe of theirs was now just the new common wisdom. And so they were pretty masterful in kind of getting their set of ideas and ideology to become the new mainstream. And it took until, you know, 2018, 2019, 2020 for there to be a greater recognition that that had been the wrong path and we needed to kind of reinvigorate this area of the law.

• 23:07Adam Friedland?

  Even from what I understand, people that were supporting the Harris campaign were kind of going at your ass a bit. Is that correct? It wasn't clear if Kamala won, if she would continue kind of your project.

• 23:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, look, I mean, she, you know, a president has the prerogative to kind of pick their own team. So they were not choosing who they were gonna have in place before they won.

• 23:34Adam Friedland?

  But you're a first-round draft pick.

• 23:37Speaker 02

  You know, I think it was an honor to serve and it would have been her prerogative to kind of choose the path forward. But it's true that there were people who were upset by what we were doing and that were kind of being very vocal about that.

• 23:48Adam Friedland?

  There were a lot of people who were upset.

• 23:50Speaker 02

  I don't know if I'd say a lot, but...

• 23:52Adam Friedland?

  I mean, the newspaper, I believe, wait, what did I find? There's like 53 op-eds against you after you came into the FTC?

• 24:01Speaker 02

  At least, yes.

• 24:03Adam Friedland?

  They were saying, why, you drove them nuts. You were living rent-free because it's tech. Was it big tech and hedge funds?

• 24:10Speaker 02

  There was some big tech trade groups. A lot of it was, you know, also the dealmakers. So parts of Wall Street that make a lot of fees off of mergers and acquisitions.

• 24:23Adam Friedland?

  But you're just some lady. I mean, you're what, five foot four?

• 24:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, 5'4", 5'5".

• 24:28Adam Friedland?

  And they're, look, "Brain Death at Conn's FTC and Lena Con Blocks Cancer Cures." "Hedge Fund That Made A Killing Betting Against Lena Con." "Lena Con Needs To See Shark Tags Kevin O'Leary." "Lena Con Whiffs Again." Why were you such a lightning rod? I mean, how are you like this, but then in the court, you're like that?

• 24:53Speaker 02

  I mean, I think there were a few things. I think...

• 24:57Speaker 02

  I think we had had several decades of elite impunity where if you were breaking the law, but you were in a C-suite, the government would go light on you.

• 25:06Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 25:06Speaker 02

  And, you know, even in places like the FTC, sometimes there had been a double standard where if you kind of found that there was some like small-time scammer or fraudster, you would like bring the full force of the law against them. But then if you kind of found that a fancy CEO was breaking the law and their company was publicly traded, you might go a little lighter.

• 25:24Adam Friedland?

  They're a contributor, you can't pick.

• 25:26Speaker 02

  And I, you know, I thought that was just really problematic. And so we were very clear that we were going to enforce the law in an even-handed way, no matter kind of what your political connections were. We just had to look at, are you breaking the law or not? And I think that approach to enforcing the law upset some people.

• 25:42Adam Friedland?

  Two things. Did President Biden, when you came in, give you that mandate? Was he like, go for it?

• 25:47Speaker 02

  The White House was very supportive of kind of what we were doing. President Biden did sign this executive order in 2021 that was pretty significant. I mean, he basically said, the last 40 years of kind of Robert Bork-style antitrust has been a total mistake. And I'm, you know, directing my government to basically turn the page on that failed approach. And that means the FTC, the DOJ, but also all of these other agencies need to really focus on taking on monopolies. So there was definitely a mandate.

• 26:19Adam Friedland?

  And they called you a hipster?

• 26:20Speaker 02

  Uh, so I...

• 26:22Adam Friedland?

  That was one of the labels that was attached to you. So you were like listening to Grizzly Bear, Animal Collective. What was it? Why, what was that? Why did they go there?

• 26:31Speaker 02

  Uh, you'll have to ask the people who came up with the term, but I think their, their view was the approach to antitrust that we wanted to advance was like a throwback.

• 26:41Adam Friedland?

  What was the other thing? Like neo-post-Brandycean or something?

• 26:45Speaker 02

  Right, neo-Brandycean.

• 26:46Adam Friedland?

  That's pretty cool. You functioned kind of like as in someone that enforced the law. You were kind of like a, like a cop or like a, you know? Did you ever ask for a gun? You should have got a badge.

• 26:58Speaker 02

  I know, we probably should have. You know, we did have investigators who like went undercover sometimes and they did have badges.

• 27:05Adam Friedland?

  Deep undercover in Wall Street?

• 27:08Speaker 02

  Usually, you know, usually not on Wall Street. Usually, kind of, if there was like various types of frauds or scams or that sort of thing.

• 27:15Adam Friedland?

  Did you send guys to Burning Man to like, uh, figure out tech corruption?

• 27:20Speaker 02

  We didn't have that, that good idea.

• 27:21Adam Friedland?

  See, had I gone to law school, I would have had that great idea. Because they would have been on Molly, and they would have been like, "We're gonna make one company." The whole, uh, the whole economy's gonna be one company pretty soon.

• 27:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:34Adam Friedland?

  And they would have been on Ketamin or whatever the hell.

• 27:36Speaker 02

  That is a very creative investigative technique.

• 27:39Adam Friedland?

  Can we go back to the FTC and try it? And can we cut that from the episode? Because I feel like we've practiced it just now. Go to Burning Man. They're all on drugs over there, talking about the singularity.

• 27:51Speaker 02

  I guess.

• 27:53Adam Friedland?

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• 29:20Adam Friedland?

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• 30:06Adam Friedland?

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• 30:51Adam Friedland?

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• 31:09Adam Friedland?

  So you took this toothless organization, you made it, you made it a potent organization for the first time. Did you have any structural changes that you had to enact in order to get the ball rolling there?

• 31:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, a few. I mean, first, we brought on more technologists because a lot of the economy is now becoming digitized. But you kind of need people on your team who understand how the stuff works. So, we brought in a bunch of them, we hired more lawyers, you know, we started litigating more, and so we brought on more litigators. The FTC is pretty small relative to the size of its job and mandate.

• 31:46Adam Friedland?

  I would imagine you just get outgunned. Like, they have 9,000 lawyers, you have like 12 guys.

• 31:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, sometimes the, like, in-house lawyers of these companies are greater than, like, the entire, like, competition bureau of the FTC.

• 31:59Adam Friedland?

  How many guys did you have?

• 32:01Speaker 02

  In total, we had 1,300.

• 32:03Adam Friedland?

  Oh, I thought you were gonna say 13. That would've been hilarious.

• 32:06Speaker 02

  But no, I mean, we are totally outmatched when it comes to resources and the amount of money they have. So, you kind of have to figure out how to navigate that.

• 32:14Adam Friedland?

  What do you view as, like, your biggest dub?

• 32:17Speaker 02

  Gosh, I mean, there are a lot of cases that are still pending.

• 32:20Adam Friedland?

  You sued Call of Duty?

• 32:22Speaker 02

  We did sue to block the Microsoft Activision merger. That merger did go through. We weren't successful.

• 32:29Adam Friedland?

  And now you can't, you can't get it on PlayStation? Call of Duty?

• 32:33Speaker 05

  I think you can, but I think you get it early on Xbox.

• 32:38Adam Friedland?

  Look at what you did, what they did today. You were trying to stand up for Caleb.

• 32:42Speaker 02

  Well, there have been a whole bunch of price hikes that I know gamers have been pretty upset about.

• 32:46Adam Friedland?

  Well, there's the Game Pass thing.

• 32:48Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 32:49Adam Friedland?

  Caleb, you wanna sit in for me and talk about this? I don't care. I hope that the-

• 32:54Speaker 05

  It's $30 now. It's very expensive.

• 32:56Adam Friedland?

  It's $30?

• 32:57Speaker 02

  $30, yeah.

• 32:58Adam Friedland?

  Look at what they're doing to my beautiful boy over here.

• 33:01Speaker 02

  You know, one of, we were very focused on healthcare markets, just because people depend on healthcare. And one of the initiatives we did was really try to figure out why our drug price is so high. And one reason they're so high is because pharma companies use all sorts of patent tricks.

• 33:17Adam Friedland?

  The orange book, right?

• 33:18Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. Wow, you went deep.

• 33:20Adam Friedland?

  I'm a lawyer, yeah, yeah.

• 33:22Speaker 02

  So, we called out those pharma tricks and... Three of the four big manufacturers of asthma inhalers dropped the price from hundreds of dollars to just 35. So there are thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people who rely on inhalers who are paying less today.

• 33:40Adam Friedland?

  And did you get them scared? Were there mergers that weren't attempted because they're like, cons coming?

• 33:47Speaker 02

  According to them, yes.

• 33:49Adam Friedland?

  Really?

• 33:49Speaker 02

  They would go on TV sometimes and say, "Back in the day, we didn't have to think about antitrust risk. We were thinking about our deals. But under this administration, we have to think about it right away."

• 34:00Adam Friedland?

  And I guess on the politics side, there were some Republicans that actually were like, "That rode with, that fucked with you."

• 34:11Adam Friedland?

  I mean, it didn't go along partisan lines.

• 34:14Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 34:15Adam Friedland?

  There was Josh Hawley was one of them, or no?

• 34:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, he was pretty supportive of a lot of the FTC's work.

• 34:20Adam Friedland?

  Who else on the Republican side were kind of like, supported you?

• 34:24Speaker 02

  You know, there were a lot of members who were really concerned about Big Tech in particular. Some who were concerned about these pharmacy benefit managers, these drug supply middlemen. So it was kind of issue by issue. But generally speaking, taking on corporate power when they're breaking the law is very popular. And there were Republican members that recognized that.

• 34:46Adam Friedland?

  You went after Meta while you were at the FTC?

• 34:49Speaker 02

  We sued them, yeah.

• 34:50Adam Friedland?

  Yeah. And so, what was the result of that?

• 34:55Speaker 02

  We're actually waiting to find out. The trial happened a few months ago.

• 34:58Adam Friedland?

  I would think that Trump would just stop that. Because he's like, he's got a new haircut.

• 35:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:03Adam Friedland?

  He's got a chain and a haircut and he does MMA. Case closed.

• 35:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. No, I think there was a big effort. I mean, I know Mark made several visits to the White House leading up to the trial, and there was kind of effort to get them to settle it. But they let it go forward. I mean, that doesn't mean they will see it all the way through, and I think the lobbying pressure is constant. And the type of access these people have to the White House is pretty unprecedented, so we'll have to wait and see.

• 35:31Adam Friedland?

  So if you went to the South Bay, would you like, wear a bulletproof vest or something? Like 50 cent?

• 35:37Adam Friedland?

  Do you know the song "Many Men" by 50 Cent? Have you heard it?

• 35:40Speaker 02

  No.

• 35:41Adam Friedland?

  But does that, as an individual, do you process that? Like, I mean, it is kind of crazy that, like, you drive them nuts.

• 35:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was, it was pretty striking.

• 35:53Adam Friedland?

  Have you got phishing emails, maybe?

• 35:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, you always have to be on guard with, with those phishing emails, you know?

• 35:59Adam Friedland?

  One thing I think most folks have heard about is that, you know, there was a liquidation in the civil service. I think something that's useful to, like, talk about is, like, having a robust civil service is how, like, planes don't crash into each other and, like, we don't get screws in our cans of tuna, you know?

• 36:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:18Adam Friedland?

  Like, I guess, like, what changes were made at your shop after you left? And, like, what have they chosen to pursue since you've been gone, the new commissioner?

• 36:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I think a lot of people have left, especially in the consumer protection part of the work.

• 36:34Adam Friedland?

  The Butt Xerox guys are back?

• 36:37Speaker 02

  I think they're, you know, they apparently are now trying to hire. Maybe they, they let too many people go, but there's been a real backsliding. I mean, you know, we were firing on all cylinders and taking on all sorts of, you know, big companies that were breaking the law. And there's definitely been a slowdown in activity there. They've also kind of shifted gears, so, you know, they allowed this big merger to go through between these two ad agencies. And one of the conditions of that was basically that they had to buy ads from Elon Musk, more or less, on his platforms.

• 37:10Adam Friedland?

  And Breitbart.

• 37:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, under the purview that they couldn't kind of discriminate on political grounds.

• 37:15Adam Friedland?

  It does make...

• 37:16Speaker 02

  So it does seem like they're, they're more eager to use the law to kind of advance their political grievances.

• 37:21Adam Friedland?

  And they pursue sex changes?

• 37:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're, they're doing some workshops to see if they should go after doctors.

• 37:28Adam Friedland?

  Workshops?

• 37:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:30Adam Friedland?

  Well, like, you go for a weekend to a hotel?

• 37:33Speaker 02

  I think it's like a bunch of bureaucrats in like a conference room for half a day, but yeah.

• 37:38Adam Friedland?

  What was it like being 40 years younger than everyone else, actually?

• 37:41Speaker 02

  It was pretty strange at times. I mean, there were definitely people who'd been there since before I was born and...

• 37:48Adam Friedland?

  Was it a bad hang?

• 37:50Speaker 02

  No, I mean, people, you know, I think it had been tough for some people because I had been known before I got to the FTC as a critic of the FTC. And so I think some people interpreted that as kind of, you know, personal criticism. And I had been critiquing, you know, the political leadership and the way they've been doing this. Yeah, there was a sense that like, wait, why is the hater now our boss, you know? So, you know, had to navigate some of that, but people really came around. And I think people were proud to work at an agency that was on the front lines of protecting people from corporate abuse. And so...

• 38:29Adam Friedland?

  Is it supposed to be an independent agency? Like ostensibly the Justice Department is supposed to be, but we're seeing it's not at all right now. But like, did you, is it like the president can't really mess with it, or is it like?

• 38:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, the president's not supposed to direct us, you know?

• 38:45Adam Friedland?

  I'm sure Trump is giving them their space right now.

• 38:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting dynamic because previously there used to be a lot of speculation about kind of who's heading what agency. But now it doesn't really matter as much because it's all being run out of the White House. So a lot of those decisions just, you know, it just doesn't matter.

• 39:03Adam Friedland?

  And what cases have they carried on from your tenure?

• 39:07Speaker 02

  So they're still continuing the case against Amazon, against Facebook. There are a bunch of cases against like ag monopolies, against John Deere. It was making it really hard for farmers to fix their stuff.

• 39:21Speaker 02

  They're continuing some cases against, we have one against Adobe that was making it really hard to cancel. Subscriptions.

• 39:29Adam Friedland?

  For PDFs, yeah.

• 39:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 39:31Adam Friedland?

  Acrobat.

• 39:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, so the vast majority, they've actually continued.

• 39:35Adam Friedland?

  Oh, really?

• 39:35Speaker 02

  The cases, but the place they pulled back are the rules. So, we issued a rule that would ban non-compete clauses for Americans. These are those contractual provisions.

• 39:45Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, they were like doing it to people at McDonald's.

• 39:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:48Adam Friedland?

  You can't work at Wendy's after you leave.

• 39:49Speaker 02

  That's right, fast food, security guards, janitors, healthcare workers.

• 39:53Adam Friedland?

  Why the fuck are they... What's the point of it?

• 39:56Speaker 02

  I mean, they would say it's because they're training in workers and they don't want to lose their investment, but to a lot of people, it seems like it's just to get greater control and power over the workers.

• 40:05Adam Friedland?

  I took introduction to micro and macroeconomics, so I'm kind of, I think I'm qualified. I don't want to speak from a position of authority unless I'm qualified, but I think I'm qualified here. But what, like, my understanding is the argument for consolidation is they say that it'll create more efficiencies that could be passed on in savings to the consumer. Is that kind of what you've been pushed back on?

• 40:32Speaker 02

  That's often the argument, yeah.

• 40:34Adam Friedland?

  Yeah. But it's stupid, no? Because it's like if there's one company, they could charge a zillion dollars and still, and make it for cheaper?

• 40:41Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 40:41Adam Friedland?

  And you say that to the judge? I could be a lawyer.

• 40:45Speaker 02

  I think so.

• 40:46Adam Friedland?

  Yeah?

• 40:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:47Adam Friedland?

  Do you ever give a closing argument?

• 40:50Speaker 02

  I know, we had very talented litigators that were in the courtroom. I was not personally making those arguments.

• 40:54Adam Friedland?

  So, you do the boring parts of lawyer?

• 40:56Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 40:57Adam Friedland?

  You don't do the razzle-dazzle parts?

• 40:59Speaker 02

  No, unfortunately.

• 40:59Adam Friedland?

  Lena, why are you doing the homework parts? You like, you do the worksheets parts?

• 41:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 41:06Adam Friedland?

  Oh, you love homework? Why don't you do the, like, give a speech?

• 41:12Speaker 02

  You know, we had very talented people who were

• 41:14Adam Friedland?

  And I will not!

• 41:15Speaker 02

  experienced at litigating and did that very well.

• 41:18Adam Friedland?

  You can't handle the truth. You never want to do, "I want the truth." You would be so good at that.

• 41:25Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 41:26Adam Friedland?

  Let me write for you.

• 41:27Speaker 02

  Maybe second career, yeah.

• 41:30Adam Friedland?

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• 42:12Adam Friedland?

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• 42:56Adam Friedland?

  That's chime.com/tafs. Chime feels like progress.

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• 43:16Adam Friedland?

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• 43:39Adam Friedland?

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• 44:23Adam Friedland?

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• 45:07Adam Friedland?

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• 45:13Adam Friedland?

  Who's your favorite Supreme Court Justice?

• 45:18Speaker 02

  I mean, Brandeis was pretty great.

• 45:19Adam Friedland?

  Nice. Jewish. Yeah, okay. What is number two?

• 45:23Speaker 02

  I don't know. I mean, Third Grd. Marshall is pretty great.

• 45:26Adam Friedland?

  Sick. Yeah, pretty cool.

• 45:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:29Adam Friedland?

  Go, let's go down the list.

• 45:31Speaker 02

  I don't know if I have them ranked beyond that, but.

• 45:33Adam Friedland?

  What did you do at law school? You didn't play with top five?

• 45:36Speaker 02

  We didn't actually, no, but really missed out on that.

• 45:40Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 45:40Speaker 02

  I mean, on the jury trial thing, it's interesting because, you know, we did, there was an effort to kind of bring some of these cases before juries. And the companies were really terrified of it.

• 45:49Adam Friedland?

  Mm-hmm.

• 45:50Speaker 02

  So the Justice Department brought one of their Google cases before a jury. They wanted to have a jury trial. And Google basically just gave a bag of money to the Justice Department so that they could avoid the jury trial.

• 46:01Adam Friedland?

  It was in a bag?

• 46:02Speaker 02

  More or less. I think he sent them a check, or maybe it was in a bag.

• 46:05Adam Friedland?

  It would have been cool.

• 46:06Speaker 02

  It would have.

• 46:07Adam Friedland?

  In a trash bag.

• 46:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:08Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 46:09Speaker 02

  And, um, and, you know, there was a recent survey, there was, uh, law firms are advising their clients, you know, to avoid jury trials because they're realizing that people's sentiments towards corporate America have turned negative.

• 46:20Adam Friedland?

  People hate companies.

• 46:22Speaker 02

  I think so.

• 46:22Adam Friedland?

  I think that's good, though, right?

• 46:25Speaker 02

  Uh.

• 46:25Adam Friedland?

  You're gonna follow the rules and not say that's good?

• 46:28Speaker 02

  I mean, I think.

• 46:28Adam Friedland?

  It's good.

• 46:29Speaker 02

  I think people are realizing that a lot of the things that's bad in their lives is sometimes being driven by corporations that are breaking the law.

• 46:37Adam Friedland?

  And have bought influence perhaps in our politics?

• 46:39Speaker 02

  Perhaps.

• 46:40Adam Friedland?

  Perhaps, you could say.

• 46:41Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 46:42Adam Friedland?

  Allegedly.

• 46:42Speaker 02

  Allegedly.

• 46:43Adam Friedland?

  Allegedly.

• 46:46Adam Friedland?

  Counselor, counselor. Aston answered. Aston.

• 46:53Adam Friedland?

  Hearsay. Have you ever fallen asleep in court and then objected when you wake up?

• 46:57Speaker 02

  Uh, I haven't had that experience.

• 46:59Adam Friedland?

  That's from a movie, right? If you ever fall asleep in court, you have to object when you wake up?

• 47:03Speaker 02

  Uh-huh.

• 47:05Adam Friedland?

  I think the, the, John Grisham? When you enforce, um, a policy as, when you were a commissioner, um, you oftentimes would file a lawsuit.

• 47:18Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 47:18Adam Friedland?

  Um, a lot of discussion has been made about how the judiciary is kind of, uh, it's a kind of, if, is there ever a fear that something could potentially go to the Supreme Court, which is kind of, um, It's understood to be quite partisan at this point at 6-3 to the other side. Is there a fear that you could actually fuck those initial regulations that you're trying to enforce?

• 47:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of strategizing that has to go into like, does it make sense to appeal this case? Is there a risk of making things worse?

• 47:53Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 47:53Speaker 02

  So we definitely have to think that through.

• 47:55Adam Friedland?

  But if you win and they appeal, they're like, we're gonna ride this to the top and then they're gonna let us make one company for the whole world. So what is the current state of the judiciary, like, in your estimation?

• 48:07Speaker 02

  You know, I'd say a few things, like, there are a lot of, you know, district court judges, appellate court judges, that are just trying to do their jobs and like be faithful to the law. I think there has been a general drift coinciding with more Republican appointees on the bench of like, just more hostility and skepticism of federal agencies when they're trying to use, you know, trying to make things better in the economy, more or less. So that's been a challenge. I mean, during the Biden administration, you know, there were dozens of rules that were basically blocked, sometimes by just a single judge in Texas. Even rules that were trying to, you know, limit overdraft fees or say that airlines can't lie about the price of a ticket, the FTC non-compete rule.

• 48:51Speaker 02

  You know, we even passed a rule that said companies have to make it as easy to cancel a subscription as it is to sign up.

• 48:59Speaker 02

  And a lot of those rules ended up being blocked. So there's just greater skepticism of agency power. I think this is gonna be a revealing moment as to whether that's selective skepticism. Like, are you only skeptical when it's Democrats in those agencies? Or is it actually a bit more consistent and principled?

• 49:15Adam Friedland?

  That's very fair and noble to say. Honestly, I mean, seriously, I mean, the court shouldn't be partisan, right? They should be enforcing the law.

• 49:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, interpreting the law, that's right.

• 49:26Adam Friedland?

  What is, if you had to look at the American economy, like, what industry do you think just fucks? Like, are my audience, or the people the most?

• 49:38Speaker 02

  I mean, healthcare, probably.

• 49:39Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 49:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:40Adam Friedland?

  They have the most blood on their hands, yeah.

• 49:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:43Adam Friedland?

  When you were, we were talking about the Orange Book. That was me, something I heard five minutes ago and I said to impress you. But, like, one of the ways that they raised the price of inhalers to $500 was that they would file a patent on like a strap?

• 49:57Speaker 02

  That's right. Unlike just pieces of plastic that have nothing to do with like the actual drugs. But there are all sorts of tricks. I mean, you know, there are people who have died because they can't afford their medicines in this country. And when we were at the FTC, we would kind of do these regular open meetings where anybody could sign up and come talk to us. And we would hear from people who would say, "I have a family member who's having to literally ration their insulin or their life-saving medicine because it's too expensive." And some of that was done through illegal tactics by the, you know, drug manufacturers, by these pharmacy benefit managers. And so, you know, let alone the fraud that we see in all sorts of parts of the healthcare system where they're literally defrauding the government and just like bilking money.

• 50:42Adam Friedland?

  Is it like, as a member of the civil service, right? How much do the politicians fuck up? Are they the biggest obstacle to like you guys like doing your jobs?

• 50:53Speaker 02

  You mean like?

• 50:54Adam Friedland?

  Like politicians?

• 50:55Speaker 02

  Like members of Congress?

• 50:56Adam Friedland?

  Members of Congress, yeah. Or even the president at this point?

• 50:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it varies. It's hard to paint in a, you know, broad brush. There are a lot of members of Congress that were very supportive of the FTC's work in both parties, even on the Democratic side, kind of a broad, you know, a big tent. And there were big efforts to make sure that these agencies were actually funded and had the resources they needed.

• 51:18Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 51:19Speaker 02

  But I would say that like, there have been trends that have just make it, made it so expensive to bring these cases. Like a single antitrust case, if you're trying to block a merger, you can have to pay an outside economist anywhere from $1 to $5 million. If you're trying to bring a case against a monopoly, you can have to pay an outside expert anywhere from $20 to $30 million, just for a single case. And, you know, the budgets of these agencies is, you know, less than half a billion dollars. And so it's just become this, it's actually become somewhat of a grift where it's like these outside experts that are just like raking in this money as all of this litigation has become so expensive.

• 51:57Adam Friedland?

  So if you need money for a lawsuit so that people don't die from a company.

• 52:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:02Adam Friedland?

  You have to go to Congress and be like, please.

• 52:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:05Adam Friedland?

  I'm but a poor boy, I'm a lawyer.

• 52:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:09Adam Friedland?

  You have to ask them and then they're like, they're like, they think they're better than you?

• 52:13Speaker 02

  Well, you have to, you know, as Chair of the FTC, I would have to go into Congress every year and testify before the House Appropriations Committee and they're the ones that decide how much money we get.

• 52:23Adam Friedland?

  Who was on that when you were there?

• 52:25Speaker 02

  Uh, there were a bunch of people.

• 52:28Adam Friedland?

  Freak show, House is freak show.

• 52:30Speaker 02

  It's different.

• 52:32Adam Friedland?

  I thought the House was the government. When I met Chris Murphy, he was like, yeah, it's the House, it's not, it's not a big deal.

• 52:39Speaker 02

  I mean, the House is the most democratic branch of government, you know?

• 52:42Adam Friedland?

  Do you think that they should start wearing nicer clothes again?

• 52:45Speaker 02

  I honestly don't have a very strong view on this.

• 52:48Adam Friedland?

  Don't answer that question. You're so nice. Yeah, I guess the healthcare industry and then who would you put second, I guess, that's, who are the top five most evil, you're not going to answer, but I'm going to say industries that have the most adverse effect on Americans' lives?

• 53:06Speaker 02

  I mean, within healthcare, there are a lot of different actors, there are the pharmaceutical companies, you know, health insurers. After healthcare, I would say in food and agriculture too, like the agriculture industry in this country is so consolidated.

• 53:19Adam Friedland?

  That was one of your first things, right? The chickens?

• 53:22Speaker 02

  That's right, the chickens.

• 53:24Adam Friedland?

  You want to tell them about the chickens?

• 53:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, so when I was doing some of this, you know, market research, one of the industries I had to study very closely was chicken farming. And that's an industry that is consolidated a lot and so you have, you know, millions of consumers, thousands of farmers, but they're just connected by basically four chicken processors. And so if you're a farmer, sometimes you, your entire livelihood depends on doing business with just one company. And that company has a ton of power over you, over your livelihood.

• 53:52Adam Friedland?

  So you mean like, small farmers sell their chickens to like, a big factory guy?

• 53:57Speaker 02

  To a chicken processor, yeah, like Tyson, you know.

• 54:00Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, disgusting.

• 54:01Speaker 02

  Tyson Chickens, Purdue. And, and it leads to all sorts of abusive tactics. There's also been a phenomena where-

• 54:07Adam Friedland?

  Like quotas? Is that, like, they say you have to make your, like, and they raise the quotas each year?

• 54:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, they can raise the quotas. They also can basically like penalize farmers by giving them bad chickens.

• 54:21Adam Friedland?

  Wouldn't they like sharecroppers?

• 54:22Speaker 02

  It's, it's, people have made that analogy before.

• 54:24Adam Friedland?

  It sounds like 1880 or something.

• 54:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it's really horrific. And people are actually paying, have been paying more for meat and chicken, even as the farmers are making less. And it's basically just the middleman taking a bigger and bigger cut.

• 54:40Adam Friedland?

  Mr. Tyson goes, "Good, that's good."

• 54:42Speaker 02

  Well, Mr. Tyson is the one taking more and more of it.

• 54:45Adam Friedland?

  Of course.

• 54:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:47Adam Friedland?

  Does it, does it make you cynical? Did it make you cynical? Like, as someone that was trying to enforce something that's like, obviously just being nice, like, to a guy that has a chicken farm? That Mr. Tyson's like, "I need, I need more chickens from you, otherwise I'm gonna..." What are they, serfs? Are they, the, Mr. Tyson's a feudal lord?

• 55:07Speaker 02

  There are certain parallels.

• 55:08Adam Friedland?

  It's feudalism.

• 55:09Speaker 02

  It's really wild, yeah. I mean, you know, I think, I think the fact that more and more people are recognizing that it's really screwed up, that so many of the parts of the economy are like this, and are kind of demanding that type of change, it's gonna take a while, but I think it is a positive sign.

• 55:29Adam Friedland?

  But they have way more money, and they can just keep doing it because they have more money?

• 55:35Speaker 02

  That has been the story so far, but I think if we have, you know, political leadership that is able to stand up to money, then maybe it could change.

• 55:45Adam Friedland?

  What was your, like, most cynical moment as someone that was trying to just simply enforce the law?

• 55:52Speaker 02

  I mean...

• 55:53Adam Friedland?

  You gotta be bummed some days. You're like, "Fuck this shit."

• 55:57Speaker 02

  I mean, I think I had a real sense of urgency because you never know how much time you're gonna have and time in government goes really quickly. And these types of windows of opportunity to like, really do serious pivots in how we've been doing stuff don't come around very often. So, I didn't feel like I had time to be cynical or bummed for too long.

• 56:15Adam Friedland?

  You just had too much work.

• 56:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:17Adam Friedland?

  It's kinda chill. It's nice to be busy, right?

• 56:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 56:21Adam Friedland?

  You can invest your brain in drama.

• 56:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, and like, you know, I was like, "Well, I'll think about that on the other side, whenever that is."

• 56:28Adam Friedland?

  What'd you get on the L side? Come on, stop lying.

• 56:33Adam Friedland?

  I read the... You're just lying to my face. Lena Kahn had been around when the typewriter was invented. Lena Kahn gets punched back. Lena Kahn finished yet, question mark? An unfond farewell to Lena Kahn. When you see the press, what did you think? Were you laughing?

• 56:51Speaker 02

  Sometimes.

• 56:53Adam Friedland?

  Sometimes you're like, "What, this guy's talking shit in the newspaper?" Who was the most... It was Wall Street Journal primarily?

• 56:59Speaker 02

  Their editorial board, yes.

• 57:00Adam Friedland?

  Their editorial board.

• 57:01Speaker 02

  They really fixated.

• 57:03Adam Friedland?

  On you? Do you think they had a crush, maybe?

• 57:06Speaker 02

  It's a good question.

• 57:07Adam Friedland?

  Did you ever clap back?

• 57:12Speaker 02

  Not directly. I mean, I think I did some event with them once, maybe, the Wall Street Journal. Yeah.

• 57:19Adam Friedland?

  Did you diss the... You did a... You had a burn?

• 57:22Speaker 02

  I mean, we kinda let our work speak for itself.

• 57:24Adam Friedland?

  You're so mature.

• 57:25Speaker 02

  A lot of it was just like, unobjectionable, you know?

• 57:27Adam Friedland?

  Do you have political ambition?

• 57:30Speaker 02

  Like, to run for like, Congress or something?

• 57:31Adam Friedland?

  Be the president?

• 57:33Speaker 02

  No, I mean, I wasn't born here, so it makes it easy on that one.

• 57:36Adam Friedland?

  You were born in England. Do you wanna be maybe the queen, then?

• 57:39Speaker 02

  Not especially.

• 57:40Adam Friedland?

  I can see you as queen. You'd be great. You had little corgis. You'd shake hands in a line. Would you be a senator? Would you be on a... Would you wanna be on the Supreme Court? Like, what do you... I guess, just from what I'm seeing, is like, you seem very honest and altruistic. And what is your project? Like, what message do you wanna get across?

• 58:03Speaker 02

  I mean, I think the current economy is really screwed up. And I think we need an economy that's much more fair and where people can get a fair shot. And... The current economy is not just like the product of some natural forces. It's like entirely rooted in laws and policies and political choices that we have made. And so I am, you know, my project is to make a case for changes in how we do law and policy so that we have a more fair economy.

• 58:29Adam Friedland?

  We had Chris Murphy on the show, and one thing I talked with him about is like, the remarkable thing that's going on right now is Trump is like, this is the law I'm breaking right now, you know, like, he's just saying it. And it's fascinating to watch because it's like, you're supposed to lie, right? And he's like, in this way, I'm doing some sort of fraud, right? It feels like the law at this point doesn't matter because it's so rampant. Do you think that the law, you want to make the law matter again? Do you think it can matter again? Do you think that there's a point where it, we can't go back?

• 59:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:05Adam Friedland?

  Can I think, four more questions?

• 59:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, in some ways, what we are seeing now is just like a caricature of being able to violate the law with no consequences.

• 59:20Adam Friedland?

  It's ridiculous. It's like TV or something.

• 59:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, but I think for a lot of Americans, they feel like there's been a version of this that's been happening for a while, right? Where they think-

• 59:29Adam Friedland?

  They're quiet about it.

• 59:30Speaker 02

  It was maybe a little bit more subtle, but I do think that there was a sense that if you were an elite, you could get away with certain things that non-elites couldn't. And I think this is kind of going to bring to the surface a question about what do we want the rule of law to look like in the future? And are we going to be enforcing it equally in a way that even if you're fancy and rich or connected, you actually have to follow the same set of rules and are not able to, you know, engineer a massive financial crisis that is kicking millions of people out of their homes and still kind of, you know, not really face consequences for that?

• 1:00:09Adam Friedland?

  I think I catch your drift.

• 1:00:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:11Adam Friedland?

  You're saying that Trump is doing 12-dimensional chess. He's saying the crimes to make it finally illegal to break the law. So you're saying he's kind of actually the hero Gotham needs.

• 1:00:23Speaker 02

  You know, I don't know how much foresight is going on there, but yeah.

• 1:00:28Adam Friedland?

  He's doing a great job, I agree.

• 1:00:30Speaker 02

  There is an opportunity, I think, here for Democrats as they think about, you know, what the future looks like.

• 1:00:35Adam Friedland?

  But, as I said before, like, if there are people that were kind of backing the Harris campaign that were kind of opposed to the work you were doing at the FTC, you know, to what extent can the Democratic Party coalesce around that as a project?

• 1:00:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a great question, and I think it's gonna be a real choice, right? Because what some of those people were really saying was that we actually don't like it when the government enforces the law against us.

• 1:01:03Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, we liked it with Clinton and Obama when they were...

• 1:01:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:07Adam Friedland?

  With the guys Xeroxing the butts and so...

• 1:01:09Speaker 02

  And honestly, I mean, that's not too different from what we're seeing with Trump, right? We don't want the law to be enforced selectively. And so when we were at the FTC, we would say, you know, "Is this corporation breaking the law? If so, let's do something about it." We weren't then thinking, "Oh, but are their executives big donors to the Democratic Party?" And, you know, I'm personally pretty disturbed by people who think that we should instead have a system where Democrats do stand for that type of selective enforcement. So I think it's gonna be a big choice for the party.

• 1:01:40Adam Friedland?

  You got 180, didn't you? Just look at it, you got 178, because you were humble. You were like, "I'm gonna drop 2 points to be a good guy." Just tell me the number. We'll bleep it. We'll bleep it.

• 1:01:54Speaker 02

  I truly don't remember, but I'm happy to...

• 1:01:56Adam Friedland?

  She's lying to my face right now. I thought you were a noble jurist. You're lying to me to be nice to me because I'm a stupid guy. I'll tell you mine. No, you... Okay, will you tell me? Will you?

• 1:02:11Speaker 02

  I mean, I'm happy to guess, but I...

• 1:02:14Adam Friedland?

  Guess mine, then.

• 1:02:15Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 1:02:16Adam Friedland?

  1.

• 1:02:17Speaker 02

  Okay. I don't know.

• 1:02:22Adam Friedland?

  You baited it. No, you promised me that you were gonna get more, that you were gonna tell me.

• 1:02:27Speaker 02

  If I had to guess, it would be something in the 170s, but I don't remember, for sure.

• 1:02:31Adam Friedland?

  She is full of shit right now.

• 1:02:38Adam Friedland?

  Just tell me. 179.

• 1:02:41Speaker 02

  You seem really fixated on this.

• 1:02:42Adam Friedland?

  You missed one, to be nice. Yeah, I'm jealous of you, because you are the son that my parents wanted. No, I really appreciate your time. And I think you contextualizing it as the fraud happening right now is kind of par for the course for what was happening previously is like an important point to make. Because it's like, I think a lot of the time, people view things as exceptional, and like, if we get rid of Trump, then everything will be fine again. But like, if, you know, if there was a kind of pathway here, I think is a better way of understanding it, perhaps.

• 1:03:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, look, no doubt. What Trump and the Trump administration is doing is a level of corruption and grift that is pretty unprecedented.

• 1:03:23Adam Friedland?

  No, you said he was a good guy earlier.

• 1:03:26Speaker 02

  No, I mean, look, it's, what we are seeing with this administration is like, truly, totally anathema to the rule of law and all the values of this country.

• 1:03:35Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:35Speaker 02

  And it's a level of corruption and grift that is unprecedented. I think for a lot of Americans, they've been feeling that the rules have been rigged for some time.

• 1:03:45Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:45Speaker 02

  And so, it's a question about, kind of, where do we go from here?

• 1:03:48Adam Friedland?

  I feel like we've had periods of extreme corruption, like, the FTC was started because of the robber barons and stuff like that, right?

• 1:03:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:55Adam Friedland?

  But there was an effort every time to like, kind of, make something that fixes it. And I feel like now, it's just like, it's like, we're just putting like, tape over like a leak that's coming into the ship. It feels a little bit that way to me, at least.

• 1:04:11Speaker 02

  I mean, I do think we need, you know, like, a New Deal-style

• 1:04:15Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:15Speaker 02

  ...level of ambition.

• 1:04:20Adam Friedland?

  You think I should, you think I should run for president?

• 1:04:24Adam Friedland?

  Okay. Do I have to do the thing? We're gonna close on it?

• 1:04:29Adam Friedland?

  The FTC thing? All right, because it's, because this, I, so our, it's a comedy show, so I have to just, I'm sorry about this.

• 1:04:41Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:04:42Adam Friedland?

  I just wanted to do...

• 1:04:46Adam Friedland?

  Should I do it, or no? She's so nice. Okay. FTC, does that stand for fart, tits, cock? Does that stand for fuck this crap? I'm sorry. Shit. Fat titty committee?

• 1:05:02Adam Friedland?

  Funny titty committee, friends that crap?

• 1:05:07Adam Friedland?

  Fart T C.

• 1:05:11Adam Friedland?

  We just need, for the audience, they're not, they're gonna like, I'm, I just needed to put in something immature for them because I've been so mature in this interview.

• 1:05:22Speaker 02

  Totally, no, you gotta play to your audience.

• 1:05:24Adam Friedland?

  178. I really appreciate your time.

• 1:05:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know, it was good fun.

• 1:05:28Adam Friedland?

  Should I go to law school?

• 1:05:30Speaker 02

  I mean, you know, it seems like you, you're really-

• 1:05:32Adam Friedland?

  Will you write me a letter?

• 1:05:33Speaker 02

  Uh, happy to, happy to.

• 1:05:34Adam Friedland?

  For an elder, for an elder, uh, student? I would be in your class, I'd be older than you, I'd be 38.

• 1:05:42Speaker 02

  I guess by, by a year or two.

• 1:05:43Adam Friedland?

  Who the hell do you think you are talking to an elder like this? She's gonna get me into law school, dude. My dad's gonna finally tell me he's proud of me. No, he loves the show, actually. What?

• 1:05:56Speaker 03

  Today was very educational.

• 1:05:57Adam Friedland?

  Because of the stuff I said, mostly.

• 1:05:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:05:59Adam Friedland?

  LINA Khan, everyone.

• 1:06:02Adam Friedland?

  Did you have fun?

• 1:06:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:03Adam Friedland?

  You've never been around such an unserious person.

• 1:06:06Speaker 02

  Uh, it was a very different interview than most of mine.

• 1:06:08Adam Friedland?

  What are you talking about? I'm the Charlie Rose of millennials. I thought that was really fun. Lena hated it, but I thought it was fun.

• 1:06:18Adam Friedland?

  Lena, re-

• 1:06:19Speaker 05

  Somewhere around here.

• 1:06:20Adam Friedland?

  Lena, you wanna watch Arsenal this weekend?

• 1:06:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, I, it's nice out there.

• 1:06:28Adam Friedland?

  Uh, are we rolling? Ladies and gentlemen, at 32 years old, she was, she became head of the FTC under Joe Biden. Give it up for former FTC Chair LINA Khan.

• 1:06:41Adam Friedland?

  Or is it commissioner? Is it commissioner or chair?

• 1:06:44Speaker 02

  Uh, you can call me Lena.

• 1:06:46Adam Friedland?

  No, were you the commissioner or the chair?

• 1:06:48Speaker 02

  I was the chair.

• 1:06:48Adam Friedland?

  The chair?

• 1:06:49Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:06:51Adam Friedland?

  Would, did you wanna change the name at any point? You could have been Grand Poobah.

• 1:06:57Speaker 02

  It's actually in the text of the law.

• 1:06:59Adam Friedland?

  Really?

• 1:07:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:04Adam Friedland?

  I really appreciate it. Yeah, I think, um...

• 1:07:12Adam Friedland?

  ...