Factually! with Adam Conover - The Hidden Plot to Legalize Corruption with David Sirota

Episode Date: January 7, 2026

It kind of seems like political corruption should be illegal, doesn’t it? Whether it’s happening on the right or the left, the whole filthy ordeal has made our government more dysfunctional for everyone. How did we get to this place where corruption isn’t just allowed but expected? This week, Adam talks with investigative journalist David Sirota about his new book, based on his podcast, MASTER PLAN: The Hidden Plot to Legalize Corruption in America. Find David's book at factuallypod.com/books--SUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/adamconoverSEE ADAM ON TOUR: https://www.adamconover.net/tourdates/SUBSCRIBE to and RATE Factually! on:» Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/factually-with-adam-conover/id1463460577» Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0fK8WJw4ffMc2NWydBlDyJAbout Headgum: Headgum is an LA & NY-based podcast network creating premium podcasts with the funniest, most engaging voices in comedy to achieve one goal: Making our audience and ourselves laugh. Listen to our shows at https://www.headgum.com.» SUBSCRIBE to Headgum: https://www.youtube.com/c/HeadGum?sub_confirmation=1» FOLLOW us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/headgum» FOLLOW us on Instagram: https://instagram.com/headgum/» FOLLOW us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@headgum» Advertise on Factually! via Gumball.fmSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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I don't know what to say. Yeah, but that's all right. That's okay. I don't know anything. Hey there, welcome to Factually. I'm Adam Conover. Thanks for joining me on the show again. You know, one of the most under-remarked-upon developments of this era of politics,

is the enormous amount of corruption that's going on. And I'm just talking about the fact that corruption is happening. I'm talking about the fact that it is happening out in the open, just like in front of us. Like earlier this year, the federal corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams was dismissed by the Trump administration. Trump's Justice Department straight up dropped the charges against him.

And it's not because any new exonerating evidence came to light. Trump just wanted Adams in his pocket. and he wanted him to fulfill his putative and horrible immigration policies. And this was a way to make him do it. And they literally said that this is what they were doing on the news. Like they went on the news and said, we are dropping the case because Eric Adams is going to do what we say. It was pure corruption out in the open.

Then there's the case of the border czar, Tom Homan. This dude was being investigated by the feds after taking $50,000 in cash in a paper bag from FBI agents who were posing as business executives last year in order to buy influence in case Trump won the election. He was literally busted in a corruption sting. That's pretty fucking corrupt. You know what else was corrupt? The Trump administration's decision to drop the investigation into Homan last month

just because, hey, he's our guy, what are you going to do? But it's not just Trump. There is a broader culture of corruption that has taken root in American political culture. Remember the Clarence Thomas scandal? Well, over the last few years, we learned that he received nearly two and a half million dollars in gifts from literal right-wing oligarchs who often had business before the court. And he defined these gifts as mere personal hospitality, which according to the law is not a problem, but it is a problem, obviously. You know, a couple of years back, any one of these cases would have been caused for a years-long news cycle of politicians condemning it. and the press having a field day.

Any one of these would have been a disaster, a humiliating push out of politics for the people involved. People would be fired. There'd be hearings and electoral consequences. But now these corruption scandals are happening right in front of our faces. And then nothing happens to the people involved. Well, you know, there's a couple columns that say that was bad. A few folks on MSNBC or whatever get angry.

And then nothing. nothing happens how did we get here how did we end up in a world where all of us just take corruption for granted because let's be clear that's bad for society it is bad when corruption is this endemic and this is not a left-right issue it makes the entire country work less well well the answer is that we didn't get here by mistake it was a concerted effort by some of the most powerful people in America over decades to legalize and normalize the corruption we see in our society today. And on the show this week, we have an incredible guest, the great investigative journalist David Sorota, who has written an entire book revealing the secret history of how this small

group of people caused all of American politics to become this corrupt. Before we get to this interview, which I know you're going to love, I want to remind you that if you want to support the show and all the incredible conversations we bring you every single week. Head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover. Five bucks a month gets you every episode of the show ad free. We also have a lot of wonderful community features. We'd love to have you there. And if you want to come see my brand new hour, a stand-up comedy,

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And now, once again, my guest today is David Sorota. His new book is called Master Plan, The Hidden Plot to Legalize Corruption in America. Please welcome, David Serota. Hey, David, thank you so much for being on the show, man. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Yeah, it's wonderful. I feel like it's been a long time coming. You got a new book out called Master Plan.

Tell me, what kind of corruption is legal in the United States, now? And is this a new thing? The kind of corruption that's legal is you can give lots of money to candidates, or at least their super PACs, and get them elected to office, and then they can do favors for you. And essentially, that's legal. And in some cases, you can give them gifts of money or Rolexes or Ferraris, and they can give you things in exchange in their job. as public officials, and even that's legal. And your question about whether it's new, well, it's, maybe it's not new, but it was created, the legal form of this was created through a very specific and deliberate plan over the last

50 years, started really 50 years ago, to create and change the laws to make all of this legal that the Watergate scandal happened. Watergate was basically the first, one of the first dark money corruption scandals. People think of it, you know, the break in and all that and the drama, but actually, a lot of it was about corporate money in bags of cash coming into the Nixon campaign and that being used for all sorts of shenanigans. And out of Watergate came some basic reforms, right? Like, hey, we got to clean this place up. You know, we got to make campaign spending more transparent. We got to put limits on it. But at the same time those laws were put into place, there was a whole movement that was starting kind of underground conservative movement to

not only kill off those laws that were being created, but architect a whole different way of looking at money in politics, a way that says that money isn't corrupting or vote buying. Money is constitutionally protected speech. And corporations are people who are entitled to the constitutional protections of using money to buy elections, ultimately culminating in Citizens United. So all of the corruption that we're immersed in, part of the reason why I think somebody like Donald Trump is so brazen about it is because he and his people know how difficult it is now to prosecute it or limit it or outlaw it because of those changes.

that have happened to the law in the last 50 years. Yeah. I mean, once corruption becomes endemic, it becomes so normalized that it loses its ability to shock. And then, you know, they can rightly say, well, everybody's doing it. Right. Once you go after them, well, we're. I was just doing normal business and politics.

Like, what's wrong about that, right? That's exactly what the argument has now become. I mean, there's a case right. Now, so the last term in the Supreme Court, there was a case about a local mayor in Indiana had been convicted of bribery because the local mayor gave a contract to a company, and then the company gave him after the contract had been signed, a municipal contract. The company gave him a couple thousand dollar payment. And he was convicted, but the Supreme Court overturned it saying, hey, well, listen,

he gave the contract, they gave him the money after. that wasn't a bribe, that was a gratuity. A gratuity. So they've narrowed down a tip. A tip. Right, exactly. Now at the Supreme Court, if you can believe it, there's an appeal right now. There's a case right now that they're asking the court to hear, which argues that there was a local official was convicted of getting $20,000 of campaign contributions while supporting a local development deal that the donor wanted. convict the local official was convicted of a of quid pro quo bribery, quid pro quo corruption. He's at the Supreme Court in an appeal that says, well, listen, my conviction should be overturned because, and he cites the situation with Donald Trump, where Donald Trump in the 2024 election reportedly went to oil donors and said, give me a billion dollars of campaign contributions, or at least to my super PAC, And I will give you all sorts of favors if I become the president. And this case at the Supreme Court cites that as proof that pay-to-play culture is now so pervasive

that it shouldn't be prosecutable, that if we allow the conviction at issue to stand, it could allow, for instance, in the future, an aggressive prosecutor to prosecute somebody like Trump for doing what Trump reportedly did with the oil industry and its donors. So, in other words, they're making the argument that it's so normal now that the existing anti-bribery laws, which are supposed to outlaw this, should be rendered by the Supreme Court as unenforceable. Because just de facto, the president is doing it. Therefore, it can't be illegal.

No, it's like everyone does it. Yeah. That, like, Trump is just doing. what everyone else does, which is what the guy is arguing at the Supreme Court that he did, that it's all so pervasive that the court needs to essentially end the law and the ability of prosecutors to enforce the law that was supposed to prevent it. So it's kind of like this sort of incredible self-fulfilling prophecy. If you make something so ubiquitous and pervasive, you can then go to the Supreme Court and say, hey, this is so ubiquitous and

pervasive, we should just basically codify it as legal. Before we get into how much sense that makes, because it does have a twisted sort of logic to it in a way, like the outcome is horrible, but you can almost understand the argument. Who's behind the effort to change American law this way? So we start the story in 1971, where it's Ralph Nader. And the late 60s, early 70s, Ralph Nader and consumer groups are having a lot of success, passing laws that regulate and crack down on the excesses of corporate capitalism, right? Ralph Nader with the auto industry, the food safety, all that stuff.

And there's a tobacco, and by the way, cracking down on cigarettes, or at least exposing cigarettes linked to cancer. And a tobacco lawyer named Lewis Powell, who's on the board of Philip Morris, also the president of the American Bar Association, he writes this memo to the Chamber of Commerce, and he's very incensed by Ralph Nader. He read a long article in Fortune magazine about Nader, and he writes this memo to the Chamber of Commerce saying corporations, big business and the free enterprise system are under attack. And we have to invest large amounts of money in politics, media, et cetera, et cetera, to protect ourselves, protect essentially the capitalist system that's allegedly under attack. And Lewis Powell, months after that, gets appointed to the Supreme Court by Richard Nixon. And Powell, integral to Powell's memo, is essentially this idea that the government has become too responsive to what people want, what the general public wants. And this is a problem for the, for the elite.

Does he literally say that in the memo? Like, ah, politics is doing what the people are asking for. I mean, he cast it as like, I mean, there's various passages where he's like, you know, too responsive and, you know, like the, you know, people like. Nader are very smart and they're getting, you know, large numbers of people involved in his movement. So the way I read it is like, look, democracy has become a problem for the elite. Democracy is producing too many things that the people want that the people in power don't want. And so we have to basically change the rules of the game. And one of the ways you change the rules of the game is you say, listen, if we don't have a lot of people, but we have

a lot of money, our side, the sort of corporate conservative side, then we have to make the system by which the government is elected more susceptible to what we have a lot of, which is not people, but is money. So deregulating the campaign finance system and making it harder to enforce bribery laws gives the people with lots of money and power a way to make sure. that the election system and the political system stops delivering the results that the sort of broad mass public wants and more of the policy results that the people with money and power want. So my point is only saying that if you want to protect corporate power, deregulating the campaign finance system to effectively legalize corruption and bribery, that's integral to the larger

project. And I should mention that soon after Powell gets appointed to the Supreme Court, you will not be surprised to learn. He helps engineer a radical, two really radical court rulings, one that says money in politics is not influence and vote buying that can be limited. Money in politics is now equated to First Amendment constitutionally protected speech. This is before Citizens United? Yeah, these are the building blocks of Citizens United. That's Buckley v. Valeo. And then Powell, soon after that,

This is again in the now late 1970s, there's an obscure case in Massachusetts where Powell, and we found the memos, all these, our book is all these secret documents that have never before seen the light of day. Powell engineers from behind the scenes at the Supreme Court a ruling in this Massachusetts case that essentially extends those First Amendment rights to spending, money is speech, extends those rights to corporations. That ruling called the Bellotti ruling ends up becoming the central foundation of Citizens United, which is authored by the immediate successor to Lewis Powell on the court, Anthony Kennedy. So the point is, is that this has been a long-term project. First, you equate money to speech, then you say

corporations have the right to those constitutional protections to spend. on elections. Then in Citizens United, you say that independent expenditures, even by corporations, are not corrupting forces. There is no even appearance of corruption, and therefore, they can't be regulated either. And here we are. So let's talk for a second about the sort of like philosophical idea behind why we might not want this. And the argument for it, because, look, there's a certain extent to which, you know, politics, power and politics is its own force, you know, when one has power, one gets what one wants, you know, and one can try to amass power. And sort of the, one of the things one does when one does politics well is trying to do

that, right? It sort of like, to do it is to do it to a certain extent. There is a certain amount of like, even in democratic politics, like, might makes right, I think, to some extent. And money is in our society a form of power. And so I can sort of understand, you know what it almost reminds me of is the idea that that should be unleashed is almost sort of like a free market approach to power, right?

Where the free market approach to the economy is those, like, you know, money should get to do what it does, right? Just let the money flow. Don't put any rules on where it flows. And the reason we don't like that is because we say, well, that means that people with a lot of money have a lot of power and they can immiserate everybody else, right? They can, a few people will become fantastically wealthy. A few corporations will control everything.

Everyone else is impoverished and miserable. And I guess you could say the same thing about power and money in a democratic system that one might make the argument, hey, just let money do what it does. Money is power and let power, those with power should have it, right? that's almost like the state of nature, right? But instead, we would argue, hey, we don't want that to be the case. Actually, that's an illegitimate form of power we're trying to banish from our society. Well, I think it's a distinction between the private market and the public sector or the public, the government, right?

I think we've made the bargain is, look, in the private market, it's a, it's a, essentially an auction, a bidding war, money is power, and that's what it's for. That's where, you know, the capitalism, commerce happens. And that a sort of a civilization in a democratic society says, okay, but the government is this other part that's supposed to police that and make sure that that doesn't get so out of control that it, that, that it runs roughshod over every other part of our society. So we say this other part is where it's not one dollar is one vote. It's one person is one vote. And I think that the folks in the conservative movement in the Powell memo era were basically saying, listen, a one person, one vote system is not working well for us.

We need to try to move it to more of a one dollar one vote system because that is a system that will protect us. And so they deregulated the campaign finance system, made it harder to prosecute bribery. But I think that clearly the problem with that is that then the entity that is supposed to police the excesses of commerce and business, then it becomes captured by commerce and business. So there's no protection anymore. there's either the cop isn't on the beat, metaphorically speaking, or worse, the government is actually helping the, you know, the worst parts of the system.

Right. The government becomes just an appendix to an apparatus of the capitalist system. I love your metaphor that, hey, you can be a capitalist or a free marketeer and say our economy should be, you know, the dollars are what matters, right? But we used to sort of believe, hey, there's this other sphere of human life in society that should not be run by money and we should preserve it as such. Right. The one that makes the rules, like to say money can do this, it can't do that. You know, you can't go this far. It can go that far. Right. Like that's what we rely on, we're supposed to rely on our elected officials for. And, and, and, and, and, and we made it

this, you know, long time ago, it's a rat, I mean, it was democracy is a radical concept that every human being, regardless of their financial wherewithal, has some stake in the game. And, I mean, to put it in business speak, is a shareholder of that other part, the one that's making the rules. That's obviously not the world we live in now, in part because of this master plan, which was, let's take over the rule makers so that they make. the rules for the people who are already in power and already have most of the money. And that's, so when I think of corruption, I think it's important here that like people

sometimes think, oh, you know, there's corruption and ethics and that's like a, that's like one issue. Then there's like health care is another issue. And, you know, housing policy is another issue. Corruption to my mind is the issue that connects and touches all other issues. Yeah. Your housing prices are exorbitantly high. your medical costs are exorbitantly high, your grocery prices are exorbitantly high, because the government, in a lot of ways, is not doing anything proactively to address those problems.

And the government is not doing anything, creating rules, doing law, you know, enforcement activities to address those problems because the people who under this new master planned system of deregulated campaign finance, They own the government, right? They own the government and they like higher prices for housing and medical care and groceries and et cetera, et cetera. So corruption is what is at the root of every other problem. And I think that's that that needs to be made a lot more explicit. You don't hear in our politics a lot of politicians making that very. clear and explicit. Corruption is sort of cast as this like either this sort of individual flaw of a political opponent. You know, Donald Trump is corrupt and he's like enriching himself.

That's sort of the allegation. There's not a lot of, listen, the corruption of Donald Trump or any public official taking a lot of health insurance money and then, you know, blocking a public health health insurance option from being added to the Affordable Care Act or blocking Medicare for all. Like the corruption of the politician getting all that money from the insurance industry actually affects everyone else's daily life. And I think that connection needs to be underscored over and over and over. You know, it ain't the 1800s anymore, folks. All your personal info can't be just tucked away under a loose floorboard underneath your prairie farmhouse where you toil on the sun-drenched fields. Nope. All of your personal info is out

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One more time, gusto.com slash factually. You know, buying a car is a big deal, so you shouldn't go in blind. And with the car gurus app, the new dealership mode is like having a personal cheat sheet in your pocket right there on the lot with you. You can instantly compare the car in front of you to similar options, see deal ratings and price history, and estimate your final price. That's right, it's everything you need at your fingertips, so you can feel confident you're getting the best deal. With Car Guru's Discover, you can skip the filters and describe what you're looking for in

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site according to similar web's estimated traffic data. Buy or sell your next car car gurus today with car gurus at Cargooros.com. Go to Cargoorys.com to make sure your big deal is the best deal that's C-A-R-G-U-R-U-S dot com, carguoros.com. You know, what I find interesting is that we do prosecute corruption at some levels occasionally. Here in Los Angeles, we have a couple city council members in prison, former city council members, in prison because they took payoffs from developers in order to get projects approved. They were busted by the feds, like the feds raided their offices, arrested them, put them on trial, and now they're in prison. maybe two or three. I think I forget exactly how many.

But obviously big cases. But you never see anything equivalently happen or very rarely, for instance, in the California State House, which is like a wash and oil and gas money and all other sorts of, you know, interest money, corrupt money. And you definitely never see it at the federal level. I mean, I guess there's occasionally... Yeah, Menendez. Menendez, I was going to say, yeah.

But it's very rare. And that was very much like, oh, here's one bad guy. We found one bad guy. And where was he from New Jersey? Right, right. So it was like, oh, he's from New Jersey. Well, whatever. Right, right.

Totally. It's just considered a New Jersey problem. Ah, Chris Christie, what a. Yeah, the bridge thing. Fuck it. You know, like it's, it's this sort of, we've all seen the Sopranos. That's New Jersey. But as opposed to it, us talking about it as a overall feature of our system.

And I can almost imagine one of those city council members in L.A. going like, why are you busting me? Like, I'm a small fry doing the same thing that these big fuckers are doing. I just oversee building development as opposed to health care. So that's exactly this case that we write about in the book about, you know, about that's being the argument that's being made. Oh, you know, it's like once in a while we go after some, you know, the prosecutors go after a seemingly egregious or sort of cartoonish example. but like this is the system and I do think that that gets to the question

of this being a feature, not a bug. Right? I mean, what we're talking about is feature not bug. That the current system essentially requires to raise enough money to be competitive in an election

requires candidates up and down the ballots to go to big donors. who want legislative favors from those candidates once they win. And the thing is, I know there are people who are going to listen to this and say, well, you know, once at a while there's a candidate who's like grassroots funded, like Bernie Sanders, AOC. And every election cycle, there's like a couple of big Senate candidates who raise lots of

grassroots money because their campaigns get celebratized, right? They become sort of national figures. And look, grassroots fundraising is great. The problem is that up and down the ballot, most candidates are not going to be able to become celebrity candidates, right? The candidate running for state assembly in California, most likely, good person, bad person, whatever, they're just not going to be able to become a national celebrity who can tap into a national, you know, thousands, tens of thousands of grassroots donors.

Like Bernie Sanders, he was running for president, right? So it's a systemic problem. So what are you saying to that person who wants to run in for, you know, California local office? You're saying go to the people with money. You're not going to be able to raise like, you know, $10,050 contributions. You're going to have to try to raise it from people who can give you like whatever the camp, you know, a couple grand, right? And get us have a super pack. And so down the ballot, the people with money and power have a lot more power to control elections because it's impossible in that system.

So that's a long way of saying, I think we need to be talking about, okay, well, what's the answer to this? Like, how do we cure this? And I look at New York City as an example right now of a flashing light of this is an answer in this way. Zoran Mamdani wins the Democratic primary against a huge amount of money, the unified opposition of the establishment in the financial and media capital of the world, right? I mean, this is really shocking when you think about it. And people have wondered, well, how did he do that? Like, is he a charismatic candidate? Was it his really slick ads? Did he have a particularly super compelling message?

I mean, all those things he definitely had. Those were all assets. But what he, what allowed those assets to reach the public was the fact that New York City has a public financing system of campaigns. This is so important that anybody who's worked on campaigns knows you can have the best candidate with the best message and the slickest videos. is if you don't have enough resources to get those assets in front of the voters, you will toil in obscurity.

New York has a system. It's one of, I think it's 20 plus cities and a couple of states have public financing systems, which say to candidates, hey, listen, if we will match the money that you raise, a certain amount of money that you raise from small dollar donations. In New York's case, I think it's by eight times. So if you get a dollar from a small dollar donor, the public gives you, I think it's seven or eight dollars. We will do a public matching fund of small dollars so that you can then ultimately have a competitive amount of resources to get your message out. And as long as you

qualify by raising a certain amount of achievable small dollar donations. The effect of this is to say if you want to run for office without taking lots of money from big donors who want legislative favors, we will offer you a way to do that. You're not going to get enough money to outspend your opponent, but you're going to get enough money to be competitive. And I look at that and I say, I don't care if you're a Republican, a Democrat, conservative, liberal. I'm not touting Mom Donnie in this situation for his particular politics. I'm saying if you want more candidates from outside that system who can actually be competitive, you look at New York. And that's the answer. To me, that, I mean, it's not a perfect answer.

But that's part of the answer. Well, they also have the ranked choice voting system. And there were a couple of extremely, extremely poor establishment candidates splitting the vote. It was as a very much of a perfect storm for Donnie. And also, I think people underrate the degree to which the Instagram algorithm helped him. And that were the algorithm slightly different. Like, it was crazy. I mean, I think you're, I think you're right, but without $8 million.

Yeah. I'm not sure. I'm not sure the algorithm. you know, I'm not sure he can make the ads. I'm not sure he can, right? Like, like, it's in this way, like, and the, the reason I bring up public financing is because I think we have to look at, okay, what is allowed, what can be done within the confines of the post Citizens United world that we live in, right?

Like, you look at Citizens United and you can say, well, you know, that's it. It's over. But actually, Citizens United, even inside of that, a lot. allows for things to make the system better. So I just mentioned public financing of elections. The Supreme Court has said that that is something that can be done. The Citizens United decision says we can pass laws that say you at least have to disclose all this spending so that we, the voters know who's spending what? Arizona is a swing state. Arizona, 70% of voters in Arizona when it was put on the ballot voted to put a law on their books saying that dark money spending can't be

dark anymore. You got to disclose. When we see ads trying to manipulate our vote, you got to say who exactly, and you got to make available publicly, who is funding those ads. The most interesting thing to me that's happening right now is this situation in Montana. I mean, it's really fascinating. This whole idea, and people have probably heard about it, you know, the idea that corporations are people. Yeah. That is the basis of all of, that's the basis of Citizens United, the basis of all these rulings, deregulating. campaign finance. And the basis is, is that, is that if corporations are people and, and, and, and money is

speech, then you can't regulate, you can't limit, you know, a person's free speech, a corporation's free speech. What's happening in Montana is there's a ballot measure that says, okay, let's, let's take a look at this first sec. The Supreme Court is basing its, it's, its idea that corporations. are people on state incorporation laws. A corporation is a creation, technically, legally speaking, is a creation of states. You incorporate in a state.

That's true, yeah. And states have basically said, they didn't all used to say this, but in the modern era, they say it, that essentially under our laws, corporations are people. Can I just take a second there? Part of the reason for that is, like, my understanding of the original reason of corporations being people is like it allows someone or a group of people to start a company that has its own financial life and then the company can go bankrupt and the individual people haven't gone bankrupt. There was an institution that has its own basically social security number, you know, its own EIN, its own, et cetera, which like it makes sense organizationally. But the idea that that should be extended to participation in the political process is obviously. ridiculous. But there is that sense as well, right? What the states would say is you get to create an artificial entity with the privileges of limited liability. And in the modern era,

business essentially said, we want all the rights of people. So the state codes are just like your people. But what states used to say in many instances was you get this limited liability. You get to create this separate entity, right? Like, if your company goes bankrupt, it doesn't necessarily mean you, the individual, that's a privilege, right? But we, the state, are going to say, we're going to give you certain powers, but not give you other powers. Human beings have rights, right?

Like, we have inherent rights under the Constitution. The state bequeaths power to artificial entities. It's a distinction with a difference. A corporation does not have rights. A corporation is granted powers. All of this is to say that what is happening in Montana is there's a ballot measure that says we Montana are going to use our state incorporation power to say every corporation in our state and any corporation doing business in our state. So even out of state corporations operating in Montana, they get all the rights that they currently have to do all the business that they want to do. But one power, There's one power we're not going to give them. We are not giving corporations the power to spend in or on election. And so this is a way to begin ending the Citizens United paradigm because Citizens United is based on the idea that states say corporations are people and thus corporations can't

be regulated. Well, what happens if a state says, you know what? corporations are people for 99.9% of everything, but the one power that we are explicitly not granting corporations in our state and operating in our state is the power to spend on elections. And the beauty of this is that, one, the Supreme Court has repeatedly stood up even recently, as recently as 2023, this court saying that corporations, that states have the right to determine the powers given to corporations. So it's using Supreme Court precedent for, for this purpose. And also, again, not all 50 states have to pass this for it to go into effect inside of the state, right? There's no like, I'm going to go incorporate in Delaware and then go back into Montana and do this. Now, you can imagine that blue states could do this through their legislatures right now. The reason they're at the ballot in Montana, and there are luminaries from both parties in that state supporting this, but they're at the ballot because they're

Republican legislature and their Republican governor would never do this. But you can imagine where blue states like California and the like could simply legislate this change right now. So I think they're on to something very, very important and very, very interesting. And I want to be clear. One other thing, this would not prevent billionaires from individually spending money. This is aimed at corporations. But the other beauty of this is, and this is, I love this, which is to say that billionaires could still spend, but they would have to spend money through political committees, as opposed to anonymously, political committees that would be subjected to disclosure.

So it's not going to solve like Elon Musk, fine. He still wants to spend money. You know, he is a human being. He does have, you know, rights under the Supreme Court paradigm. He's not a corporation. But now he's going to have to spend it. all the other billionaires and all the other, you know, entities, corporations can't, but billionaires, they're going to have to spend it through entities so that I can go on a

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and free item of your choice for life. When you said that blue states could pass this, you're making the assumption that the blue state legislatures aren't also in corporate pockets, which like in California, they certainly are. Oh, I'm not making that assumption. I'm only saying it that like the Republicans, the Republican states are never going to do this on their own. The Democratic states, at least the Democratic Party and their leaders have to sort of pay lip service and pretend. And I'm saying like if there's enough pressure to actually call out and put and and put these people on the spot, you could imagine a state doing this or at least it advancing in legislatures. I mean, you could imagine. Look, New York's, New York state, by the way, one of the most corrupt states in the country, after all the corruption scandals, has put in now a statewide public financing system of elections for the state legislature. They're having a gubernatorial election.

You could imagine the new elected officials there saying, you know, we're going to run this bill. We're going to run this bill to change our incorporation laws to say all the companies in our state and any out-of-state company doing business in our state, they have to, they can do whatever they want, but they cannot spend on elections. I mean, you can imagine that happening. That is a really fascinating response to Citizens United. I've never heard before that the power of incorporation is in the states themselves. Yes. And that, therefore, the states have power over how companies incorporate. And also, if you have a couple of big states do it, if you have New York and California do this, well, that's the same as when California puts in place admission standards for cars or something like that.

Well, listen, listen, you can imagine, you can imagine somebody saying, well, look, could the Supreme Court whip up a new precedent that says states? I mean, the answer is the Supreme Court. can always try to whip stuff up, right? Donald Trump can declare himself the king. I mean, an asteroid could head towards Earth and blow us the entire planet. But you got to try. You got to try. And again, I go back to this.

The beauty of this proposal is that there's a century of Supreme Court law that, by the way, the Supreme Court wants to preserve for various other reasons about corporations being artificial entities created by states. So the Supreme Court would really have to twist itself in knots to try to say states now, I mean, literally in 2023, there was a thing about, there was a case about what states and what they can grant and they, the court would have to really, really try to find some way to thread a needle to say states are now not allowed to determine what their own chartered corporations are allowed to do. Right. I mean, the chartering of corporations was kind of like the original thing that states did. One of the very first. guests I ever had on this show. It's a law professor, I believe in Adam Winkler, who had a book called We the Corporations that was about this.

Yeah. Amazing book. And some of the very first things done by European settlers at all in North America was to form corporations. And those were done like through the states, right? Yes. Or the bodies that became the states. And the thing is, is that the state has the ultimate power over corporations.

Really, it's very, it hasn't been used very much. but states can basically say if you if you violate your corporate charter you no longer exist yeah right like that like that's it but uh okay let let me uh continue to push you a little bit I'm going to push you a lot for someone who I fundamentally agree with please please please let's do it you know when it comes to when it comes to power I'd be worried that that's a little bit of a you know legalistic hey we found the loophole to stop you guys and the corporations will just like, well, fuck you. We have billions.

We already have the relationships. We have the lobbyists. We have, you know, the river flows where the river flows, man. You know, and, you know, power will get its due and just, like, run roughshod over anything that you put in this way, you know? Like, is it, sometimes it seems like, my God, this is just the way of the world and it's too late, you know, when you look at these things. Look, I think when we look at our, the last century of history.

And we say, you know, there was this a more vibrant middle class, more shared economic prosperity, certainly wasn't perfect. There was, you know, the Jim Crow laws and the like. So far from perfect. But in the New Deal era, when there was more shared prosperity, certainly, you know, than this gilded age, the current gilded age and the prior gilded age, I think what you were looking at was a society that had. had more competing countervailing forces. There were more vibrant unions. There was a more vibrant, frankly, progressive movement. There was corporate power.

In other words, there was more of a balance of power, of competing interests fighting with each other, which created a different equilibrium. We are now in, it's not really an equilibrium, but the stasis we are in is one where there is far less countervailing power to corporate and oligarch power. And that is the central abiding problem in our society right now. And rebuilding that countervailing power is the work of a lifetime. It is not something that is going to change overnight. I think people want instant gratification.

They want problems fixed immediately. And I am as impatient as it comes. But this is the work of entire generations and life. lifetimes. And I do think that as explicit as Trump's corruption is, that in some ways it does us a favor, not the corruption itself, but in being as explicit, because no longer do we have to convince anybody that the system is endemicly corrupt. No longer, I think, do we have to make an argument and convince people that things are unsustainably unequal and and kind of miserable for the financially speaking for the average American, the average American. So the argument

is over. Now it's just the work has to get done, right? We're beyond the denial phase. It's true when the Trump and his associates are caught, they don't even say we didn't do it anymore. Now they just say, you do it too or somebody else did it too. That's their only answer. I mean, this past week, you had J.D. Vance on the Sunday shows. They asked them, you know, about that report, reportedly caught on tape, $50,000 in a paper bag given to Bordersar Tom, Tom Holman before he was appointed to the Trump administration. Why would you put it in a paper bag if you're giving someone, like the paper bag makes us seem worse? I know. Totally. And, you know, but I thought Vance's answer was really instructive if you, if you listened carefully to it. You know, then they don't, they're not going to prosecute it. And it was, you know, apparently it was reportedly in exchange for Holman saying that he was going to get the, the donor was a sting operation, but get the donor, you know, government contracts if he got a top job. And, and the Trump Justice Department didn't prosecute it. And Vance said, I thought it was really important. He said, he said something to the effect of, look, there was no evidence. that there was a legal conduct. And if you really hone in on that for a second,

my takeaway is the Supreme Court has so narrowed the definition of illegal bribery. I'm not necessarily saying Vance is right, but I feel like he's alluding to that, right? That it was only, it was less than a year ago that the court said, if you take, if a public official

takes money after they give a government contract to a donor, that that's a gratuity. It's not illegal bribery. In other words, I think Vance, in some ways, is alluding to the fact that what we perceive to be bribery has been legalized. Yeah. And so I think, like, they're not really, there's no real pretense anymore. And I do think the question is, okay, if that's the world we live in. in? Are we just going to accept it? Or do we want to say that that's not the world we want to

live in? That's not what we're going to accept. I think the people who are benefiting from this system want us to basically say, this is the system, this is the water we're immersed in. This is the David Foster Wallace metaphor. You know, the two fish are swimming around. You know, this is a famous speech. Two fish are swimming in the water. Another fish swims by say, hey, guys, you like the, how do you like the water today? One fish turns the other. Say, what's water? Right. that we're so inured to the corruption we're immersed in that we just assume it's not really corruption. It's just life, right? My hope is, and maybe it's a hope beyond hope, that Trump and the Trump folks having so little pretense wakes us up to, wait a minute, it doesn't actually have to be like this.

And the thing is, is that I'm old enough to remember the time that I felt like that idea. actually, for a short while, became salient in American politics. 1999, 2000, John McCain, a lot of people might not be old enough to remember this. John McCain had been singed by the Keating Five scandal. Very embarrassing scandal. A bunch of senators actually ended up losing their jobs over it. It was basically an influence peddling scandal where a donor, an Arizona donor, was using his power to get senators to try to push a regulator away from his business.

McCain gets sort of nailed. He doesn't go to jail, but he gets sort of flagged. It's embarrassing. And he comes to the anti-corruption campaign finance cause with the zeal of a convert. You could argue he only came to the cause because that was the way to save his job. He had to basically say, not only was I wrong, but now I really understand this whole system is screwed up and disgusting. thing, and now I'm going to try to fix it. Whatever the reason he came to it, he almost won

the Republican nomination for president on an anti-corruption crusade against both parties. So I bring that up only to say, back then before that happened, you know, in the middle of the 1990s corruption scandals, you know, the Clinton-Lincoln bedroom, all that. You might have said, you know, like, what's ever going to raise the profile of this issue? McCain comes along, you know, ignites this whole thing. Passes the McCain-Feingold bill, which was a real campaign finance reform, like with real teeth. Yeah. He had so much momentum that he got George W. Bush, like Mr. Big Money in politics, was shamed into signing it.

And the Rehnquist court actually ratified it, stood it up. Mitch McConnell tried to take it down. Now, of course, soon after, Sondred A. O'Connor and William Rehnquist are replaced with John Roberts and Sam Alito. And then Citizens United happened. Okay. So this thing is like a pendulum. So I think we're sitting, maybe we're sitting on the precipice of, you know, that's it. It's over. Like corruption will never be elevated as a salient issue. Or maybe we're sitting like right before a political party or some candidates do what John McCain did. I mean, it's a classic thing that does happen in democracies. Corruption becomes

an issue. The public is incensed. And you have new leaders sweep in to say they're going to root out corruption. It happens in, if you look at elections happening overseas, it happens all the time. It's happened many times in American history. It happened after Watergate. Exactly. It's a pendulum. It's a pendulum. And I think, I think that like, like, we don't know where in our story we are. Right. I think we like to tell ours. I mean, you know, we like to tell us, you know, we storify everything. Like, everything's a movie. Like, okay, are we like at the end of the second act or are we at the end of the first act? Like, is this, is this, is this, the end or is it like right like i i think we have to move through life presuming that we're not

at the at the final scene of the movie right yeah like i tell people about our our movie don't look up you know um could people like the the last scene for those have seen it you know where they're sitting at the table and it's sort of the there's just waiting for the asteroid to come in and i i say to people about that movie look i don't think we we as a society are at that table yet i i i think we are like we still we're at the part of the movie where the scientists are trying to to wake everybody up right the movie is more uh it's not prophecy it's cautionary right and i think we have to look at the story of corruption as we are we don't have to say that we're at the end of the story it may feel like we are but it's like you know the cliche it's always darkest

before the dawn right like i just refuse to believe that this is it i mean i i have a vision sometimes that you know i'm i'm i'm in my 40s 30 years from now we'll look back at this period and it'll be like when we looked back in the 90s at McCarthyism we'll be like we'll be like oh that was bad here's why you don't do that kids we'll make movies about how bad it was it's the same thing for watergate right people you look back i mean you look back at imagine how that must have felt like the president is like firing justice department officials who were the independent counsel and there's like suitcases of money and they brought they literally did a physical armed robbery of a of the opposing uh party but you know and the the the the

the um the going at the ellsberg situation they're going into his doctor's office right like I mean that must have felt insane and and frankly scary yeah but now it's all funny like they make movies as oh it's hilarious and like how these guys are zany care It must have been, like, can you imagine being on like Nixon's enemies list? I mean, that must not have been a comfortable feeling. For real, but here we are. But the public was shocked by it at the time. And my worry about what's happening right now is that we've lost our capacity for shock.

I mean, I talked about in the intro, the Eric Adams case, right, where they just, they just did the corruption on television. I mean, they're out there going like, yeah, we're dropping the prosecution because we hope he's going to fulfill our. policy objectives, right? And then they do it. And people are like, for one day, oh, that seems kind of bad. And then just nothing fucking happens. And that was, you know, months ago. And every day now there's something like that. And the cynicism that breeds is really hard. I think part of the responsibility is for their, and it's, look, it's harder than ever because of the algorithms, the control of the media, et cetera, et cetera. And you got billionaires taking over the, you know, I mean, not that corporate media has ever really been, but, but, you know, like,

directly taking over it in an oligarchic sense. Yes, yes, the information environment is more rigged than ever. But I do think it's like, there isn't a consistent story being told by any kind of opposition of here is how the corruption affects you in your life. Like, you're pissed off about high housing prices, medical costs, you're being priced out of your neighborhood, et cetera, et cetera. This is how it connects. to corruption. Right now, corruption seems like these sort of specific instances of like gross

behavior. It's not like, hey, I can't afford food because of the corruption, right? And there's not a consistent story breaking through to really connect the two things, even though they are connected. And to me, that's like the real responsibility of an opposition party is to really be making that case. That is a great point. Is there anybody who's attempting to make that case at all right now? So I wrote recently about this. I saw an interview with, and I'm not saying these are like perfect people.

But as an example, I saw John Ossoff, the Democratic Senator from Georgia, not only saying that Citizens United was the worst decision in modern Supreme Court history, but also that like, you know, this idea that like corruption is the reason why your housing. prices are high. Ossoff actually was on Pod Save America and said something that might have made his made it made their audience, their liberal audience like not happy. And he basically said, and I'm paraphrasing here, look, we can get rid of Trump. But the real problem is billionaire money and corporate money. That that problem will still be here even if Trump has gone. Right. And it sort of is discordant with the Democratic message of, you know, Trump, once we get rid of

Trump, everything's fine. Right. He's actually saying, no, like everything's not fine. Like Trump is problem, but like the real problem is the money. I saw Chris Murphy as another example, the senator from Connecticut, say, look, we used to, as the Democrats, we used to talk about campaign finance reform and anti-corruption, and now we don't even talk about it anymore. And so when we once and a while when we mention it, people don't even believe we're serious. So I'm, I guess I see a few examples. You know, I get the Bernie and AOC anti-Oligarch rally, which implicit in that is oligarchs have too much power in our politics. Yeah. Right. So, so I, I see, like the little seeds of it.

Yeah. And the question is whether it's going to become like the organizing message of the opposition. Right, because you also see Democrats saying, oh, the problem is we like lost too many the billionaires. How do we get them back? Right. And that's the opposite of the message. Like the idea that the oligarchy is going to save us.

I mean, that's the, I mean, who is it? Like, it was Kamala Harris. Right. Kamala Harris on our book tour was like, I couldn't. Again, paraphrasing, but it was something to the effect of, you know, she's on her book tour explaining why they, you know, why she lost. It's like, you know, I just can't believe really shocking to me that all these billionaires and oligarchs have not been willing to stand up for democracy. And I think even Obama in his interview with Mark Maren said something similar. Yeah, I was like, wait a minute, you can't even be serious.

Like, you think the oligarchy, which financially and politically benefits from the ever faster concentration of power, the ever accelerating corruption, you think they're going to stand up against it? Like, they're the winners right now. They're not unhappy. Like, they're winning. Like, and it's not, you know, it's not to say that every billionaire is like a terrible bad. I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is they're not the solution. The solution is not, let's find our own billionaires.

Like, that is not the way to solve this. Well, and it confuses the problem of corporations with the problem of people, right? Like, I just listened to Obama interview and he says, you know, we all have the capacity to stand up. If you run a company, you can say, hey, I'm not going to do what you say, Mr. Trump, like that. And like the problem is not the people who are. run the companies. You know, I look at like Tim Cook, right, who like, I don't know, for some reason to me, he seems like personally a decent guy, you know, he's, he's a gay man, et cetera. I don't, just for whatever reason, I get a good vibe from Tim, right? But he runs one of the

largest companies in the world and the company has needs. The corporation has needs. The corporation has goals. The corporation has incentives. And Tim Cook could drop dead today. And it wouldn't matter. The company would keep doing the same thing. And this would just be- I would go a step further. Not only does the company have those needs, the company has a fiduciary legal responsibility to do things and not do other things. Meaning they have a legal obligation to pursue profit at all costs, no matter what the cost to the broader society are. So if that's going to be the legal paradigm, then you're not, you can't expect individuals in that, in, in that inside of that system, I mean, at the edges maybe, but you're not going to, you're not going to get systemic

defensive democracy. Yeah. When you are from a, you know, a trillion dollar corporation or a multi-billion dollar corporations, when they are legally obligated to do whatever they can to maximize profit. Right. Instead, you're going to get Tim Cook giving a, uh, a glass statuette. to Trump and kissing his ass, not because he personally wants to, but because the corporation's sort of structural like, and

its entire being has been leveraged by Trump in order to get it to, you know, to create sort of an unholy alliance. You know, there's that, there's that old saying. The purpose of a system is what it does. Right?

Like, like, what is happening right now arguably, not arguably, it is, the endemic corruption, the sort of authoritarian assault on what we understand our democratic institutions, Smaldi, and democracy itself, that is the purpose of the system as the system is structured now. The system is structured the way it is now because of what we document in our book, Master Plan, that the system was changed. So what we are getting is what the system is designed to do. So the only way out of this is to change the system again.

There's no perfect fixes and it's going to take our whole lives. But at least we now with it in our face, we can, there's no denying what the problem is. And that's why it's so useless to think about it in terms of individual people defending democracy and standing up. because we can demand that all we want, but actually the individual people don't really have power to, except in some maybe small, I don't know, Bob Iger and Jimmy Kimmel. Sure, that's personalities.

But overall, generally, when we're talking about stopping this kind of thing, the system was changed and we need systemic solutions. And the problem is we can't appeal to people because the problem is people do not have power. corporations have power. We need to adjust the system however we can in order to make sure that people have power again. But we're starting from a real deficit. As you say, it's going to take a generation.

But we're starting from a place where people do not have the power where the corporations do. It's a real David versus Goliath situation. Look, it's a bad situation. Yeah. But I also take the longer view here, which is like, try to imagine how bad the situation was for workers in the, I don't know, Like, I'm just, you know, the 1920s. Right. Right.

I mean, I'm here in Colorado. Down the road for me is Ludlow, Colorado, where workers were literally gunned down for trying to strike, trying to get better working conditions. I bring that up only to say, like, things have been bleak before. And out of all of that came like the labor movement, ultimately came the New Deal, ultimately came the great society, ultimately came, you know, the conditions for a broader, more prosperous middle class. It took a long time and things were arguably bleaker than they are today. I mean, things are pretty bleak today. So I just think like taking the longer view of

where we are in the American story is part of frankly staying sane. Now, I would say You know, part of the difference is like, yeah, the information environment is as bad as it was back then. Although back then wasn't great either, right? Back then it was like, you know, Citizen Kane owns the newspaper and, you know, like that wasn't great either. Yeah. Well, but also, David, yes, things were worse in like the late 19th century. And then after, you know, 60, 70 years, we had the new deal. We had all those programs you're talking about.

We had labor unions. and things were a little bit better in many ways by the 50s and 60s, right? But then over the succeeding 60 years, all those things were demolished again. And so to take the even longer view, that's where I start to get a little dispirited and I hope that you have an answer to it, where I say, oh, my God, we're just like, we just have to do FDR again. And like he did it and that entire movement did it, right? And it was the work of generations.

And then it was all undone. You know, like we have lost so much. ground. And it makes you wonder, okay, well, that means we've done it before. We can do it again. But does that mean that the victory is only temporary, you know, and that, hey, the forces of capital will one day win again? Because it sure seems like the people winning to the extent that they did. And there were lots of problems in the 50s through the 70s. But, you know, the people won on some fronts. Well, was there victory a blip, you know, against the forces of capital and corporations. Yeah, I mean, there's this philosophical debate. Was the New Deal era an anomaly? Or was it like a glimpse of what we, of what we can create and what we still can recreate? I mean, I, you know, where I come down is I still think that can be, that kind of thing can be recreated. And I, look, I go back to, and it's a really painful thing to think about. I think the pivot point moment in a lot of this.

was 2009 and 2010. So I think you had this, you know, the financial crisis. And I did a whole audio series about this called Meltdown. It was essentially, how do we go from Obama to Trump? And my view is this, is that Obama is a financial crisis, Obama campaigns on a very popular, everyone forgets this, a very, very populist set of programs. And by the way, if you would have asked in 2006, 2007, can a, can a black guy named Barack Hussein Obama get elected president?

People would have eye rolled you. Yeah. And he gets elected, to my mind, because he ran a populist campaign at a moment of serious crisis. And he gets in with a huge mandate, absolutely enormous mandate. and he proceeds to make, he and his team proceed to make a choice to defend their Wall Street donors who are foreclosing on millions and millions of people. And this is the seed of the Tea Party, which becomes the seeds of the conditions that create Trump. Obama gets lucky in 2012 that the Republicans nominate like a guy who looks like the person who's firing.

them and laying them off, Mitt Romney. He gets so lucky that that's the candidate. But I guess my point is, I look at 2009 as the moment where the Democratic Party had it been prepared for that moment, had work really gone into creating the conditions for that moment to go better, that the Democratic party could have said, this is our FDR moment. And the party's leaders and the infrastructure around the party. And frankly, the party's voters who were very excited about Obama and wanted to believe that he would do things on his own without pressure, they believed that that would happen with, I feel like 2008 was seen as the end of a fight. Oh, yeah. Rather than the beginning of a fight. Oh, yeah. Right. And that moment was like, okay, well, listen, if we experienced that moment

and had it gone a different way, we might be living in a whole different world. There might have been Trump. There might have been a kind of like a mini new deal or something new deal-esque. Like that was the moment. So my point is like that wasn't that long ago. Yeah. Like there might be a moment like that soon, soon enough.

And hopefully what we've now unfortunately gone through since that moment will say, hey, we can't screw that up again. Like this is it. I don't know if I agree with you. you that the Tea Party was a response to not, you know, regulating the banks better or whatever. The Tea Party was also a racist reactionary backlash. Don't misunderstand me. Okay. The Tea Party, I wrote a book called The Uprising at the time where I said, listen, all, this was 2007, like, this anger can go in one of two directions. It can go sort of left, left of center, FDR populism, or the right will channel it for itself. The Tea Party movement was a cynical opportunity of the right, saying, look, the Democrats are not going FDR. They're not solving

your problems. Obama's doing these meetings hanging out with bankers. Tim Geithner is like, you know, saying the people, you know, people with foam on the runway for the banks and were mainly focused on saving Wall Street. Millions of people are being thrown out of their homes. The Tea Party comes along and says, listen, everyone's mad and you should come join us. In other I don't think the Tea Party was like, at least at the organizing, the sort of leaders of it, I don't think they were, they were legitimately angry at the banks. I think they saw an opportunity, which is same thing with Donald Trump. Like Donald Trump echoed populist themes because he saw an opportunity. I mean, here's the crazy thing. I mean, think about this. In 2016, by the time,

you know, all this has happened, Trump is running for president, the last poll of that, of that election. and ABC News poll shows that Trump is losing to the Democrats on every issue except one issue. Corruption. Trump ends up winning. Now, in fast forward to now, Democrats, maybe they have a shot to win the midterms,

who knows? Recent Reuters poll shows the Republicans have a similar lead on the issue of corruption. Wow. That they had in 2016. So I guess my point in saying this is that It's not that the Tea Party actually was an anti-bank, anti-bailout movement. It's that if you don't, if you don't deliver on the populism that you promise, you will create the opportunity for the right to do what it wants.

And there's a famous quote that I want to read you. It's one of my favorite quotes. It's the FDR quote. And it's a quote I wrote. about in in in 20 2000 I'm trying to find here it is here it is it's it's and and Zoran Mamdani actually echoed this quote and this is FDR in 1938 and he's talking about it really gets to this point and FDR is on the radio and he says democracy has disappeared in several great nations not because the people of those nations disliked

democracy but because they had grown tired of unemployment and in security of seeing their children hungry while they sat helpless in the face of government confusion and government weakness through lack of leadership. And finally, in desperation, they chose to sacrifice liberty in the hope of getting something to eat. And so what I take away from that quote is if you get into power and you promise people you're going to deliver and then you don't deliver, like as I as I, as I, as I. view it in 2009 and 2010, people's hopes are raised. And then you don't deliver. You create the

conditions for right-wing con men to come in and say, come with us. We're going to, you know, those guys are lying to you. We're the real solution. You also pointed out what I think is an underappreciated difference between the right and the left or Democrats and Republicans, which is when Republicans get in office like they just did with Trump they continue to be angry like it has really struck me how they run the country

they win everything and yet they're still like the left the blah like they're mad they wake up mad every day and fury drives them and as a result

they've like destroyed everything it's the permanent campaign I mean listen yeah but the Democrats get in and they give up they say oh Obama's in there. All right, we did it. Oh, Biden got in. Okay, got rid of Trump. I can take a nap.

Listen, the most interesting, the most interesting campaign that should be studied over and over again by Democrats is not FDR winning in 1932 during the Great Depression. That's essentially Obama, oh, eight, right? Like, it's a crisis. The Republicans have screwed it all up. We got this. The amazing thing about FDR is how he gets reelected in 1936 in the middle of the Depression. So then we, so, well, how did he do that? Like, So he, like, he gets in and like, now, now he's going to be blamed for the ongoing problem. What, how did he do it? Of course, that's the campaign that he said the most famous, one of the most famous lines in political history.

You know, I, I welcome their hatred. He gives the campaign speech where he said all the powers of organized money are against me. Uh, I've been trying to pass all this stuff. We've made some progress, but I can't pass it because the power of organized money is against me. they've never hated somebody more than they hate me. And I welcome their hatred. And his argument was electing me didn't solve the problem. I still got, I'm still mad.

I still got, I got, I got, I got, Joe Biden ran the opposite campaign. Remember, he gets in and he's like, half their campaign was everyone's wrong that the economy's bad. Literally. Like, it was like the liberal commentary. It was like, people just misunderstand. Like, the economy's actually better than me. What are you talking about?

The message should be the economy is not as good as it needs to be. The obstruction is the Republicans. They're the problem. Help us get reelected so we can continue to do more. I can't do what we need to be done because the obstacles are still there. Instead, it was like you're all stupid that things are actually good. Like, of course you're going to lose. Rather than running away from Lena Khan, right, say, hey, look at what we've done here.

But we lost a couple times because these people are so fucking powerful. and that's why you're getting fucked and those people want Donald Trump to win so elect us again so we can kick their asses. Right. Those people hate Lena Con, we welcome their hatred. She hasn't done enough. And she hasn't done enough because they're trying to stop her. But the problem is that structurally within the Democratic Party,

half of the party, right, cultural liberals who live in San Francisco, I talked to some of them. I was at a conference with some folks. I found myself talking with some venture capitalists. Very nice. I got along with them great. They're my kind of people, same age. we probably all read the New Yorker right and they're like Lena con's got to go like she's

destroying you know the M&A market and shit like that right because they that's what they believe and that's half the party right or some big chunk of it well it's not no it's actually not half the party I one it's much of the donor class that's for sure and it is the donor class is who the politicians are surrounded by right like the politicians rely on the money from from the donor class and They are immersed in a world where they hear that a lot more than they hear from regular people because they're on these, you know, the cocktail fundraising circuit. But that is not most of the like rank and file party.

And I do think there's this like sort of myopia where you're like surrounded in your, as a politician, in your hermetically sealed bubble and you lose touch with the fact that like all the people with money at like fancy fundraisers are not actually like the voters. Yeah. Right. But I don't think it's just, to be fair, I don't think it's just like they misunderstand. It's like, again, to go back to the master plan here that we detail in our book, in a deregulated campaign finance system, the people who can give you lots of money have a bigger, if you're a senator, have a bigger voice and more influence with you about what they want because they can either spend you into the ground or buy your seat for you. Yeah. Well, maybe part of the answer is for. the folks who are on the Democratic Party

to realize, like they don't actually need that much money, at least for the presidential campaign. You know, like people were pointing out that Kamala was like putting their logo on the Vegas sphere. Like, how does that do anything, right? I mean, that's like when you have so much money, I mean, it's like, it's like Brewster's millions. Like the movie, one of my favorite way, where you

literally have to burn money. You have too much money. You have to burn it. Like, I do agree with you. Certainly at the presidential level, it's different at the, you know, go down the ballot. Of course, yeah. But at the presidential level, you're right. Like, you're, by virtue of being the Democratic nominee, you're going to be a celebrity. Okay.

I mean, you need some money, right? You don't need, but do you need a billion and a half dollars? Like, do you need to, I'll put a more fine point in it. Do you need to throw away your populist argument being amplified by people like Lena con in order to go from I have a billion dollars to I have a billion and a half dollars? Like, do you really, is that really a good decision? Like, I don't think that's a good decision. Like, you know, like, do you really need to put J.B. Pritzker on the convention stage bragging about being a billionaire?

I mean, that was one of the most shocking moments of the entire. I mean, that was when I was like, okay, like, this is, this is so bad, right? Like, you're attacking, you know, you're attacking Donald Trump for all sorts of things. Fine, that's totally fine. That's what you should be doing. And then you're like, Donald Trump's not a real billionaire. I know because I'm a real billionaire. and the whole crowd or, you're like, what are you cheering for?

Like, this is, this is how you're going to lose. That's, oh, he doesn't have as much money as he thinks he does. I am really an inherited billionaire. I'm a Hyatt. I'm the, you know, the son of the Hyatt fortune. I know what a billionaire was like, that was the Democratic Party's message. I mean, look, FDR was a wealthy man as well, but it's still, it's not a message to run on, right? FDR was not running out there being like, I'm a, I'm a cent a millionaire.

That's why I should be president. I'm a centimillionaire. And I do think Zoran's campaign is hopefully a tonic to this because it's like, this is, as I've said on this channel many times, this is how a political campaign should be run because their emphasis is on their fucking knocking every door in New York City. 100%. To me, I look at that campaign. And again, like, I don't even like forget about the slick ads or the message plus. having competitive resources to win a race, a citywide race in the financial and media capital of the world is, like, it can't be overstated how big a deal that is.

And it should not be interpreted as just he's a charismatic candidate or he had nice, you know, nice ads. It's he had a message and he had enough resources to at least make voters hear the message. Like, that is it. You know, like there's a, I've worked on a lot of campaigns. Like in state legislative races, there's like formulas for this, right? You know, the further down the ballot you go, the less time you have with each of attention you have with each individual voter to the point where over a course of an election cycle, somebody running for state legislature probably has essentially one minute of attention, right? So what you have to do is you got to hit enough voters doors twice and send them, I think it's three or four pieces of mail, right?

of just to make the, I know who you are, right? Yeah. So Mamdani had enough resources to at least be like, hey, I'm Zoran, Momdani. Here's my message. I got one minute with you. And it shows if you can reach enough people with a compelling enough message, you can win. But those resources cannot be understated. How can people themselves be a part of, you know, the pendulum swing back towards enforcing corruption?

Besides picking up a copy of your book and supporting some of the. leaders that we're talking about. I think anybody listening to me right now should ask the first question they should say, listen, I live in a city, I live in a county, I live in a state. Do we have public financing of elections? If not, why not? Is it a blue state, a blue city? Let's try to start making that happen. There is a real movement to do that. 26 cities have it. Some states have it. Can we expand our system? To me, involving yourself, and look, it's not a sexy answer. I know it's not like, that's not sexy, it's technical. It can be a game. changer. I think if you're living, again, I focus on the Democratic states because like, you know,

the Republicans, it's a harder road in the Republican state. You should still try to do it in the Republican states. But if you're living in a Democratic city or a Democratic state, can we change our state and corporation laws to say corporations can't spend in elections anymore? Can we put a ballot measure like Arizona did to say, hey, listen, corporations are going to spend, billionaires are going to spend, but they got to at least tell us who they are. The thing that Arizona passed, like, there are plenty of ways to plug into all of these causes. And I think the other thing I'll say is, like, I know the screen in your hand, your smartphone screen, is telling you that the only place you should focus on is the national presidential or Senate, you know, Senate races. Like, that is a bad message.

Start at home where you are in your local community. I am, for instance, I am the spouse of a state legislator, right? Like the amount of important stuff that happens in our legislature for our state, our city, our community. I mean, it's actually, I mean, it's not that the Congress stuff isn't important. It is important, but like the state stuff is like really important. And it gets no attention. I guess part of this is like try to be deliberate about what you're focusing on as opposed to letting the algorithm decide what you focus on. Because here's the other benefit of that.

If you start focusing locally, you will have a much larger amount of agency and power than you will trying only to interface at the presidential or Senate level. Like call up your city council person. My guess is if you got five, you know, three, five, ten of you to call up. your city you're going to get a meeting with your city council person you're going to I mean they're going to be paying attention they're going to I mean they have a smaller jurisdiction sure but like you try to do that with like your senator never or your governor they're like I'm I'm who like get get out of here right so like don't don't let the algorithm mislead you and mislead your focus away from where you can have the most agency I thought

you I agree with that it's a message I've trumpeted for years I also thought you were going to say, and so I will add, don't let the screen in your hand tell you that all that matters is what you do on the screen. 100%. We have been so lied to where we think add to story is anything. It's, man, listen, I learned that on campaigns. I remember, like, on my wife's campaigns, it was like, you could tweet whatever you want. If you're not knocking 10,000 doors, knocking.

physically knocking, walking neighborhoods, you're not reaching anybody. I mean, it's not nobody, but like, you're not reaching who you need to reach, right? Like, like, I mean, look, the work of politics is a lot, is filled with a lot more friction and is a lot harder than just clicking something on a glass screen. Like, I'm sorry, that's the way it is. And frankly, that's the way it should be. yeah i mean this is life it like life is in 3d motherfuckers you know what i mean like exactly like exactly it's that you can you can touch it you know it's uh and you shake someone's hand

you look in their eyes and that is different that is more powerful than uh than anyone looking at a tweet and it's it's we have been lied to by these platforms where we think that the only sphere of civic engagement or that even a sphere of civic engagement is these platforms like when you post about your issue on instagram the only person you're helping is Zuckerberg you know um it doesn't fucking matter i mean it's not to say don't do that but it's to say like that that's at best that's like the icing yeah like the cake is is the much harder stuff and i you know that's the way it should be it should it should be hard right like i mean i i i hate to bring up the cliche you know it's the the tom hanks quote it

It's the hard that makes it great. Like, it should, if you want to change something in your community, you should have to go out. Yeah. And not the doors. I got so much after the writer's strike, which I was very visible on on social media, because I was explaining it to people, right? Um, I have people from other activist groups, you know, come to me and say, hey, can you help us blow up our issue on social media?

And I'm like, well, I, I can try, but like, we didn't win that because of social media. We won it because like 10,000 people said, we will not work. for five months. I mean, members talk to members. Like, it's a real human experience. Yeah, and we did that in person. We did that, like, in meetings and things. So go out there, get involved, run whatever it is.

Yeah, and run for office, for sure. I mean, you know, and by the way, be ready for when you run for office for it to take over your life. It will. I promise you. That's where all the gray hair comes from being married to somebody who does that. Jesus Christ. Well, David, thank you so much for coming on the show to lay all this out for us.

you make an incredibly compelling case beyond the book itself, which is called Masterplan. Folks can pick up a copy of course at our special bookshop, factuallypod.com slash books. Where can people find you in your work? Levernews.com. Go become a subscriber to the lever. We do investigative journalism, document-based journalism.

We try not to do just like pure opinion. It is like actual investigative reporting. And I think one last boost for it, It's the kind of reporting that we try to include all of the source material so you don't have to believe us. You can go check our sources. By the way, it's the same thing for the book. The book has an extensive footnotes so that, you know, you'll read a passage. You'll say, that sounds crazy.

That sounds like a conspiracy theory. That sounds like bullshit. Like, there's no way that they got together in a smoke-filled room across from the White House and plotted how to implement Lewis Powell's memo. When you read that, you'll see a footnote. and in the back, you'll see a link to the actual document where they're actually talking about them doing that. We did that so that you don't have to believe me. You can look at the documents yourself.

David, thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you. Thanks so much for having me. Well, thank you once again to David for coming on the show. Once again, the URL to pick up a copy of his book, factuallypod.com slash books. And every book you buy from that link supports not just this show, but your local bookstore as well.

If you'd like to support the show directly in all the work we do here, head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover. $5 a month. Get you every episode of the show ad free for $15 a month. I'll read your name and the credits. This week, I want to thank Ryan Copsil Roth, Robin Ward, Alex Womack, Grant King,

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