No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Trump caught in bombshell grifting scheme

Episode Date: July 1, 2026

Trump’s financial disclosures betray the jaw-dropping grift that he’s engaged in. Brian interviews Congressman Jared Moskowitz and University of Michigan law professor Leah LitmanPre-order my new book and grab tour tickets: https://www.harpercollins.com/pages/thedayafterWritten by Brian Tyler CohenProduced by Sam GraberRecorded in Los Angeles, CASee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Trump's financial disclosures betrayed the jaw-dropping amount of grift he's engaged in, and I interview Congressman Jared Moskowitz and the University of Michigan Law Professor Leah Lippman. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. Donald Trump's 2025 financial disclosures just dropped, and the big reveal is that he made over $2 billion off the presidency so far in his second term, with $1.5 billion of it coming from crypto alone. So his document was 927 pages. long. For comparison, Biden's financial disclosure was 11 pages. But let's say hypothetically,

you wanted to make the argument that Donald Trump is a businessman. After all, remember when he said this? I don't feel good about turning down money because my whole life I've been greedy, greedy, greedy, greedy, I've grabbed all the money I could get. I'm so greedy. But now I want to be greedy for the United States. I want to grab all that money. Quote, my whole life I've been greedy, greedy, greedy, greedy. I've grabbed all the money I could, but now I want to be greedy for the United States. So, listening to that, I get how some people could hear that and think, you know, this is what Trump does and now he's doing it for us. But his financial disclosure paints a much different picture because the reality is that his greed is still limited to just one person. In 2024,

his total revenue was $622 million. In 2025, that ballooned to $2.2 billion. dollars. Here's some of his other financial windfalls. He took in $635 million from the Trump meme coin while retail investors watched it crash from $74 bucks to a $1.68. He took in $594 million from World Liberty Financial token and stable coin sales, which is a crypto venture that he founded with his sons, $65 million from selling equity in that same company, over 80 million in media settlements from ABC, CBS, Meta, and YouTube. His total crypto haul was $1.4 billion in a year, and all the while, his net worth nearly tripled from $2.4 billion to $6.3 billion since taking office.

And I just, I got to say, like, Jimmy Carter sold his peanut farm to prevent the optics of impropriety. Meanwhile, Trump is swimming in money with conflicts of interest quite literally everywhere. His kids are getting rich. His deals with the UAE and Qatar are likely being funded by them. keeping money into his pockets via crypto. Like, this is all such a blatant, severe violation of the emoluments clause that you would think the Constitution didn't even exist, all of which would be bad enough unto itself.

But couple that with the state of the country and the hoarding of wealth looks just as egregious as it sounds. Like just today, we found out that the U.S. added only 57,000 jobs in the last month. That is anemic. And May's job figures were revised down 43,000. April's job figures were also revised down 31,000. add in the fact that prices have risen since Trump took office on gas, on electricity, on housing, on rent, on food.

Add in the fact on top of that that we're spending billions to pay for a war in the Middle East that Trump swore he would avoid. Add on top of that, the fact that the Epstein files aren't so much being released as they are being suppressed even more. And suddenly Trump's already egregious hoarding of wealth seems outright disgusting. And I make this point a lot, but I'm going to make it again. We can expect this from Trump. Doesn't absolve him, but he has been a con man his entire life.

So this is all as predictable as the sun rising in the morning. But he would not be able to get away with this without buy-in from the rest of his party. The entire GOP has looked at this and decided that it is perfectly acceptable. And I'm not going to ask you what you think they would say if Obama or Biden did the same thing, because we already know the answer. They would be apoplectic and rightfully so. But the fact that they can't bring themselves to utter a peep as their God King triples his net worth in a year

at the same time that every single problem they campaigns on fixing has been exacerbated is a testament to the fact that the entire party is there to serve not you but him. Something to remember if they ever claim to be populace again. Next up are my interviews with Jared Moskowitz and Leah Lippman. But first, a reminder that my new book The Day After is available now for pre-order. So if you'd like to support my work, that is the best way to do so. and I'll also be on tour.

So if you live in New York, D.C. or L.A., now is the time to grab those tickets. I have moderators for every event. So in New York, I'll be with Don Lemon, D.C., I'll be with Jim Acosta. L.A., I'll be with John Lovett. So if you'd like to see us both on stage, if you'd like to get your book signed in person, take photos, grab those tickets now while they're still available.

I'm going to put a link to both pre-order the book and grab book tour tickets in the show notes of this episode. It's the same link for both. You can find lots of options to pre-order the book. book and you can also find options to grab booktort tickets at that link. Okay, here are my interviews with Jared Moskowitz and Leah Littman. July is brought to by Ethos. So I just had a conversation with a friend just the other day, so excuse the morbidity here,

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That's ETHOS.com slash BTC. Application times may vary, rates may vary. How do House Republicans make the case that you're fighting for affordability when you go back to your districts? Affordability, what are you talking about? Well, affordability is the big... I'm going to go to tomorrow. I'm going to, well, over the fourth.

I'm going to give me a couple big lobster tails. I'm going to get me some nice rib-eyes. I'm going to sit in my backyard with my family, my neighbors. And we're going to be enjoying the fourth, celebrating 250 years, the birthday. We're going to be celebrating the greatest president in my lifetime, Donald J. Trump. Maybe watch some fireworks.

Won't be up here. It's going to be too hot, right? And I'm in bed at 11 o'clock. I heard the fireworks ain't going off to 11 o'clock Eastern on the 4th of July. I probably have to sleep through that one. But listen, everybody understands. You're going to see a little increase in energy prices because of Iran. I mean, come on.

People aren't stupid. You realize that when you have a conflict that ran. But I think in the end, the short-term increase in some of the costs of energy, you know, gasoline and stuff, is temporary. But President Trump has made it very clear to these companies. Don't be gouging. No price gouging. I think that the overall goal and objective is to make sure Iran never has a nuclear weapon. So I'm okay with the increase in fuel because you knew it was going to happen with, obviously, with oil and the strait and everything.

But it's a temporary issue. You think the 60% of Americans who are living paycheck to paycheck can afford lobster tails and rib-eis and all of that? Maybe not. Maybe the 60% of America don't work as hard as I do either. I mean, I don't know. I'm joined out by Congressman Jared Moskowitz. It's Congressman, that was Troy Nell, one of your Republican colleagues, basically criticizing the prospect that somebody wouldn't be able to afford lobster tail and steak on the 4th of July because they just simply don't work as hard as he does. So can you give a little bit of an overview right now in terms of what you've seen in Congress

that lends itself to this idea that Troy Nels is perpetuating that nobody works as hard as these Republican members of Congress? I mean, what a joke. I mean, look, he's just parroting his boss. the president, right, who said affordability is a hoax. That's worked out real great for the president, said that a couple of times. And his aides said, you need to stop saying that, Mr. President, because it's a real thing. People are struggling in this country. And then here comes Troy Nels. He walks down the marble steps to the Capitol and says, I'm going home and having lobster tails and rib-eye.

And, you know, the reporter says, you know, what about the people who can't afford it? And he says, well, you know, forget the 60 percent of Americans who can't afford it and don't work as hard as me. Work as hard as you, Troy. I don't know if you know this, but in the first six months of the year, Congress has only worked 44 days. We have only worked a total of 44 days. In fact, I'm home now. We're supposed to be in D.C. Yet again, the speaker sent this home. This time, they didn't have the votes to get the votes to stop people from voting. Okay? It's the wildest thing. They were trying to stop people from voting with their, you know, Save America Act, right? Want to make it harder for American people to vote, but they didn't have the votes for that.

So they canceled votes. It is, again, the least productive Congress. And we're only beating the 118th Congress, which was the least productive Congress before them. And so, yeah, look, Troy Nels is so out of touch. But so is the president. You know, a billion dollars he made in crypto, $750 million he made in stocks. He's flying a plane donated to him by the Emir of Qatar, you know, that's lined in gold. You know, and so, you know, the American people are hurting.

That's why you're seeing results around the country. People are talking about affordability, gas prices, grocery prices, health care. It's all too expensive. And my friends across the aisle are dramatically out of touch. Just a quick note here to say that if you appreciate my work, which is and always will be 100% free, a small ask is if you could please pre-order my new book the day after, which explores how Democrats must finally wield power if they're fortunate enough to get it back. I'll also be on tour in D.C., New York, and

L.A. mid-July. You can grab tickets to the tour and you can pre-order the book at the same link, which I'll put on the screen and in the post description of this video. You can also find them at brian tylercoen.com slash book. Again, I'll never paywall a single piece of content, but this is the one time that'll ask for some support for a book that I really think meets this moment. Thanks so much. Talk about the housing bill, because this was a moment that really was supposed to be a big, a big celebration for even the Republicans. This would this would show that Trump was making good on his own promise during the campaign that he would make housing more affordable. So big bipartisan bill passes the House, passes the Senate. They're preparing for this

big signing ceremony. And Trump balks on signing this thing because he wanted to use it as a hostage to get the Save America Act passed. Are you hearing anything from your Republican colleagues about the fact that he's making their reelection campaigns more difficult because he outright refuses to hold true to any of the promises that he himself made on campaign? Listen, he made several promises during the campaign, but he said that he would do two things on day one. One, he would fix the cost of living, and two, he would end the Ukraine war. He's done neither of those. In fact, they're worse than they were than he took office.

They finally pass a bipartisan piece of legislation that could bring down the cost of housing. I was happy to support it. And the president snatches defeat from the jaws of victory decides after the speaker set up this beautiful signing ceremony in the Capitol. He had the seal out for the president to show up. The president says, I'm not coming and decides to hold the bill hostage. Meanwhile, the hostage taken didn't work. It failed. And we were sent home because he couldn't even convince Republicans to go along with this scheme.

And they're mad because they wanted to go home and say, we did this to bring down the cost of home ownership. We did this to bring down the cost of living. And they can't even do that because they can't even get the bill that we passed on a huge bipartisan note signed by the president. signed by the president, who, by the way, remember, every week is infrastructure week and every week is housing week. He literally took the housing guy and put him in charge of national security. And so another failed attempt by my Republican friends, again, least productive Congress in American history. And we're only beating the last Congress of the 118th, which was the least productive Congress in 100 years. Well, I mean, I understand that this isn't going to make housing more affordable per se, but really what matters is that Trump is doing well.

And in fact, we just got some new news that his net worth has tripled, that he's made over a billion dollars thanks to his crypto investment. He's, he's, you know, making money hand over fist with his meme coins and stable coins. So what do you say to his voters out there who believed him when he promised that he was going to be looking out for the little guy? And as you said, all of the problems that they were contending with in 2024 have been exacerbated, whether it comes to high prices, high gas costs, food costs, grocery costs, clothing, electricity. We have a brand new war in the Middle East that he promised we would never get into. The Epstein file still haven't been released. All those problems are even worse.

But Trump himself has seen his net worth increase three times higher. Yeah, I mean, listen, we don't have to say anything about it. His voters have seen it. That's why you've seen this split in MAGA. That's why the president's poll numbers are at all. low's, right? They've seen it. They've seen while they're struggling. Let's not forget the farmers, what the terrorists have done to the farmers, right? You know, president's policies have hurt his people, the people he said that I'm going to make life better for you. Not only is there in life

not better, the only life who's better is the president. And now apparently Eric and Don Jr's going to be better because today the president said he's going to give them the Congressional Medal of Freedom. Let's actually play, let's play that clip right here. They're the only father and son pair to receive our nation's highest military award for courage above and beyond the call of duty. Now, as I see my two beautiful son sitting there, I think I'm going to give one to myself, one to them, and we'll have a threesome, okay? I'll pick out one of the two. I'll give them the Congressional Medal of Honor for something for their genius at hunting. and I'll get one for

taking on Russia, Russia, Russia, or something. All right, well, that was, that was, that was interesting to say at least. Brian, I'm going to go shower, okay. I'm not really sure what, what that was about. I mean, was the president of the United States offering up a threesome with his children not on your bingo card this morning?

It was not. And I'm, I'm going to reserve comment on, I thought it was bad when he was like, I'm going to give my family the congressional Medal of Freedom. And then he doubled down. And he was like, and then we're going to have a threesome. Well, you know what? Why stop the party there at just the Medal of Freedom, you know? If everybody's riding high, might as well just go to its natural conclusion, I guess. Again, just out of touch. Americans are struggling. And he's talking about giving gold medals to his children. You know, Republicans have the ability to serve as a check on him. Now we have

just a few months until midterms, he's obviously acting in such a way that puts on full display that he doesn't give a shit about what happens to him or his party during midterms. Why won't any of these people serve as a check to him, stand up to him, act as a co-equal branch of government and try not, for once, contracting every ounce of their autonomy over to him? I mean, Mike Johnson couldn't even bring himself to say that he was blindsided when Trump reneged on the housing bill. why don't these people help themselves?

Why do they just insist on heaping every ounce of deference onto the guy who's screwing them over in this upcoming election? Well, look, Speaker Johnson cosplay is a speaker, right? He's only doing what Trump allows him to do. He doesn't have autonomy. But look at the Senate. The Senate's a complete disaster, right? After the president removed basically Bill Cassidy by primaring him, same thing with

John Cornyn, okay, and then you've got members that are retiring. I mean, the only time people decide to stand up to the president, is either when the president beats them in a primary or they decide to retire. It's too late for them. They've let the president run over them. They decided when they refused to stand up on Epstein and let the president, you know, run with the talking points for three or four months on how that was a hoax and, you know, we shouldn't release it and, you know, it was a democratic ploy and all that.

And then eventually he lost his entire party and they eventually had, they eventually turned against him. It was clear at that point they weren't going to stand up to them. since them, none of them have. And so it's too late for them. They own the last 18 months of the second term of the Trump presidency. They don't even have committee hearings anymore because they don't really want to talk about it right now. What is their message?

What are they telling voters that they've done in the last 18 months? They've accomplished nothing. All they've done is made things worse for the American people. And so the reason they don't have an agenda to run on is because the president has not allowed them to do that. And so they're never going to show any autonomy whatsoever. Donald Trump owns the party. There is no Republican Party. There is no platform. It's whatever Donald Trump says in the morning. And when Donald Trump says, hey, I'm giving my kids, you know, medals of freedom, and then we're going to have a threesome. That's the policy of the day. Right.

You know, you represent a Trump plus nine district. What have your conversations with voters been like? And have you spoken to any independent or Republican voters since you've been back in your district? Well, yeah, look, they gerrymandered my district. and turn it into a district that Trump, you know, won one by nine points. And so people are very mad about that because they did the gerrymandering in two days. People didn't really get to go up and testify. We didn't have a process, right? Unlike some states that put it to their voters, this was done completely like by the legislature,

similar to Texas. Texas did over a period of weeks. Florida was done in like two days. Yeah. And so the voters are very mad about that. They don't even know what districts they're in, quite frankly. They didn't even know what happened. So a lot of time I'm educating people that,

hey, you're now in the new district or you're no longer in the district. I'm no longer going to represent you if I win re-election. And they're like, well, when did this happen? How did this happen? But look, affordability is not a hoax. It's the number one issue. It's the number two issue. It's the number three issue.

Americans are struggling. The American dream is slipping away. Young people feel it more than anybody else because they're dealing with their future of AI and what their opportunity is going to be. and they're seeing, obviously, costs go up and wages be stagnated. So it's a real challenge for young people. And that's why you're seeing them more involved in the process than ever before. This is where Democrats have to have a message that when we get power,

when Akeem Jeffries gets that gavel, we're not just going to fight against the president, which we will, but we have to come with positive legislation to make people's lives better. And what does that look like? lowering the cost of health care, lowering the cost of prescription drugs, looking at Medicare for all. I mean, that right there would do a tremendous amount, going back to housing, lowering the cost of housing. I mean, you start there, you can really make a tremendous impact on people's lives. Yeah, I think that's well said. Congressman, I appreciate your time. Thanks so much. Thanks, Brian.

No lie is brought to you by common power. Last year when the GOP started early redistricting, they made it clear that earning Americans votes was the least of their priorities. And after gutting the Voting Rights Act, they have doubled down on their attempts to rig the midterm elections. Common Power believes that Democrats can still take back the House and the Senate by focusing on two things. One, policies that benefit the working class and tax the rich, and two, expanding the Democratic coalition. As Republicans rely on rigged maps to win, common power is how Democrats fight fire with people power. Common power is the organizing force for training and deploying volunteers to, door knock for Democrats in over 20 battleground states and over 50 races this year alone.

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obviously we've seen the rest of the Supreme Court decisions get handed down. So I want to talk a little bit about what we've seen. But first and foremost, something that was especially striking for me was in this birthright citizenship case. I know that a lot of people are going to basically applaud the fact that this was a win for the Constitution, a loss for Trump who was trying to... Do not congratulate. Do not congratulate. But like a loss for Donald Trump. But at the same time, this was, depending on how you look at it, either a six, three or a five, four decision, you know, with Brett Kavanaugh kind of floating on both sides of this question, depending on what the specific narrow ask is. But how can you have three justices who are willing to defy the plain text of the Constitution and say, that birthright citizenship could be upended given the fact that it's written right there in the

founding document. It's actually worse than that. Four justices said that. So this is a six to three, five to four of it. So what happened is six justices and those six included Justice Kavanaugh said that the executive order violated the federal statutes that Congress had passed guaranteed birthright citizenship. But then Brett Kavanaugh split off from that six to say, actually the Constitution wouldn't

prohibit this executive order, meaning that if Congress repealed these statutes guaranteeing birthright citizenship tomorrow, Kavanaugh together with three other Republican appointees, would have said this executive order can deny birthright citizenship to some people who are born in the United States in violation of the plain text of the 14th Amendment and really the foundation of our post-Civil War constitutional order. That is terrifying. The Supreme Court should not be in a position to just nullify entire constitutional amendments because they disagree with reconstruction. And again, one vote. Imagine if something happened to Chief Justice Roberts. Imagine if Donald Trump had picked someone other than Amy Barrett to be on the Supreme Court.

We could be living in a world where the court could have just dismantled the foundation of our multiracial democracy. And that is terrifying. I think just as terrifying. We're going to get into some other decisions. But there was apparently an erroneous story published this morning by NPR, where Nina Totenberg had written that Samuel Alito had announced his resignation. That was ultimately rescinded by NPR. So the question I have for you is, do you think that this was a pre-right in the sense that they have pre-writes for any and all Supreme Court justices announcing their retirement? Or do you think that this was an embargoed story that they hit go on too early?

Because I know what my opinion is, but I'm curious what yours is. Yeah. So I think there are some mixed messages. is. On one hand, maybe it's a pre-write and it could have been instigated by some kind of sloppy miscommunication. Sub-subsequent statements indicate that maybe NPR heard that the Chief Justice was announcing retirements and then went ahead and hit published on the story, even without hearing Alito's name. But there's also some evidence on the Wayback Machine, for example, that this was a story that was scheduled to be posted Friday, in which case that looks like an embargoed

story that went out a little too early. So my slight inclination is embargoed story, but I don't know if Sam Alito is frankly petty or petulant enough to having seen this NPR too early publication, now choose to delay his retirement so as to make them look even more foolish. I mean, it does harken back to some degree to the fact that the decision overturning Roe was also released early. And then there was a lot of triangulating out in the pundit sphere where we had to determine whether it was a mistake, whether it was on purpose to acclimate people. This kind of feels in the same world as that. In any case, I think that if Samuel Alito has made up his mind, he's probably not going to allow this, you know, this either early release or whatever it is,

to change his decision. I tend to think regardless that these people probably see the writing on the wall and they recognize that so long as there is a Republican president in office and a Republican-controlled Senate where they're guaranteed a conservative replacement, then that would be their best bet to go out. At the same time, look, they have, this is the moment where they're able to do a lot of the things that they've been angling to do for decades and decades and decades, and they're getting it done, whether it's gutting the Voting Rights Act, whether it's overturning Roe, whether it's basically opening the floodgates for money to pour into politics. So there's a part of me that thinks, why leave when the parties, you know, when we're in the middle of the party, so to speak?

Yes, no, I think that that's right. And that seems to be part of the rationale, honestly, for why Clarence Thomas doesn't appear to want to go anywhere anytime soon. He's having a great time, as he says, making the lives miserable of the liberals who made his life miserable. And he is seeing many of his dissents become the law. Just today, the final day of the term on Thursday, the Supreme Court made one of Justice Thomas's dissents in a campaign finance case, the law. When it invalidated these anti-coordination limits that prohibited political parties from effectively funneling money, to candidates directly allowing the mega-rich to evade the limitations on the amount that they could give directly to a candidate. So Justice Thomas is having a great time. I'm sure Justice Alito is also having a better time than he was having, let's say, 10 years ago. He's still not winning everything. And so I'm sure that still makes him very mad. But I think he is also very political. And he has to look at the electoral landscape and realize that there is a chance that Republicans will lose the Senate. And that would mean Donald Trump could not nominate whoever he wants as Sam Alito successor. Yeah. It's worth asking here, too, given the fact that it almost feels like an

inevitability that we're going to see some, you know, 40-year-old hard line, right-wing justice, take the place of someone like Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas or even, you know, John Roberts is 71 years old, you know, maybe not old enough to be president of the United States in our current environment, but certainly pretty old, you know, to look at these people and recognize that, you know, they're likely going to be replaced by somebody much younger, which would entrench a six-three majority, at least a six-three majority for the foreseeable future, which I guess raises the question. And it's a question that I brought up in my new book that's coming out in just a couple of weeks, which is court expansion. And, you know, I had sat down with Gavin Newsome, a view

months ago and he was pretty cool to the idea. And recently, he's warmed up. And just the other day when I interviewed him after he read my book, he was basically of the mind that, you know, we're done winning arguments. It's time to just win. Can you just give me your sense of where you stand on the idea of court expansion, given the fact that the inevitable backlash to that, the pushback to that is going to be, oh, well, if you expand the court, then you're going to, you know, enter a slippery slope where first it'll be 13 justices and then Republicans will add 10 and Democrats will add 10 more. And then before you know it, we have as many people on the Supreme Court as we have in the U.S. Senate. And I guess the alternative would just be surrending our constitutional order to

the weirdos on the Supreme Court who are dismantling our democracy, undermining the institutional legitimacy of our democratic institutions, again, on the verge of nullifying our entire constitutional order, destroy the Voting Rights Act, destroying campaign finance regulation, incapacitating Congress, telling Congress, actually we Supreme Court have just decided to abolish independent agencies and hand this president even more power, even as he is abusing that power corruptly. So if that's the alternative, then of course, the only solution is Supreme Court expansion. I don't think Supreme Court expansion should be the only Supreme Court reform that Democrats adopt and enact in the event that they take back power. But I do think it is essential.

And the way I put it to people is, look, imagine all of those amazing laws that you want. the Democratic Congress to pass and a Democratic president to sign. Now, seriously ask yourself, will this Supreme Court let those laws stand? And I don't see how you can look at this most recent Supreme Court term when again, they have nullified the Voting Rights Act, abolished independent agencies, overturn precedents that are nearly a centuries old and say, ah, yes, I think that this Republican right-wing supermajority would allow a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress to govern. It's just you cannot say that after looking at the decisions. I see you've given this no thought at all.

I'm of the exact same mind. First of all, to have a Democratic majority, that would be a Herculian feat unto itself. To have a Democratic House, Democratic Senate, Democratic White House. Then to actually pass legislation, as we've learned, is no easy feat even with Democratic majorities. If all of those things go according to plan, if you decide that you, are making the conscious decision to leave this 6-3 conservative court in place, then you're basically saying, I want to allow in place this rogue branch of government

to have a permanent veto power over everything we pass. And so I guess the difference here for elected officials on the left is to consider, do we want to just get caught trying? Do we want to have symbolic wins that are only going to last five minutes before the Supreme Court inevitably strikes them down? Or do we want meaningful lasting change? And if it's the latter, then inherently, you need to be willing to expand this court to a court that isn't going to immediately

strike anything down that doesn't comport with its political ideology. No, I think that that's exactly right. And even in the event that the Supreme Court wouldn't immediately strike down the legislation, we have seen these guys play the long game. Three years ago, John Roberts decided he would not use that case as the occasion to nullify the Voting Rights Act. Why? Well, it was a year after the court ruled Roe v. Wade and their public approval ratings

plummeted. And so he stayed his hand only for three years later to decide the time is right now, right? The public eye has kind of moved on. And so I'm going to fire the kill shot on the voting rights act. And so that's what he did. And so you cannot basically bank on winning a Democratic majority, winning a Democratic White House. And then counting on the Supreme Court to hold its fire for all eternity when Democrats try to govern. No lie is brought to you by better help.

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off at betterhelp.com slash no lie. That's better help.com slash no lie. So I want to talk about NRC, the National Republican Senate Committee versus the FEC and the implications for money in politics, which is prior to this moment, something that we viewed as a major problem, just how it was at that point. So what is it going to look like moving forward now? So basically what happened is the Supreme Court invalidated this anti-coordination limit that was a way of preventing the super rich from evading the limitations on the amount of money that they could give directly to candidates.

And the way it used to work is political parties could not funnel money directly to candidates and allow candidates to decide how the money would be spent. And that's because the contribution limits vary. So an individual can only give $7,000 to a candidate directly. But they can give $40,000 to a national political party and $10,000 to every single state political party. What that means is if the political party can funnel money to the candidates, then effectively you can get a single individual directly giving over $500,000 to a candidate. That, of course, is a recipe for corruption. And that is what the Supreme Court enabled today by striking down the limitations on coordination and thereby allowing super-rich

individuals to give to parties only for parties to funnel that money to candidates. Now, in terms of the ultimate goal, which is to get money out of politics, how much more difficult does this ruling make that broader goal? Or if it's going to happen, it's going to happen, of this Supreme Court ruling. Does that, does that question make sense? I think so. So I guess what I would say is in the short term, you should understand this decision as giving Republicans another big leg up in the midterms. And that's because Democrats are far outpacing them on small donor donations, small donor contributions. And so what that means is Republicans need their big donors to basically step up and make up the difference. And this decision allows their big donors, again, to effectively evade the contribution limits by giving money to

to candidates. That is a recipe for more corruption. And I think that this decision is another reminder because you talk about how people want to get money out of politics. Of course they do. The question is, will the Supreme Court let us get money out of politics? And it's clear from decisions like NRC versus FEC that the answer is no. So again, if you want to try to address the fundamental problems that are ailing our constitutional democracy, then you have to do so, not just by passing legislation, but also by protecting that legislation from the Supreme Court. One more case that I want to talk to you about is the slaughter case, which allows Donald Trump, I mean, this case had to do with the FTC, a member of the FTC, that Donald Trump wanted to fire.

But the idea that basically other than the Federal Reserve, the president has carte blanche to fire anybody within the executive branch, even in these institutions that were created as independent agencies to retain their legitimacy. and so that they would be shielded from interference by the White House, the exact kind of interference that Trump wants to engage in. So what kind of ramifications do you anticipate this will have? Because this is something that Trump came out in the immediate aftermath of and started basically beating his chest as this massive consolidation. I believe the words he used was something along the lines of, this is the biggest

consolidation of executive power in 100 years. And so what are the ramifications of this decision now? I mean, I think he is basically correct. respect because what this decision does is it hands the president, the power to control what these previously independent agencies can do. And these agencies exercise huge amounts of power. We're talking about the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, the Commodity Futures Trade Commission, and all of these agencies that are supposed to protect consumers from fraud and actually enforce the law against corporations. And so we know how this administration has

been using their power, namely to give their friends a pass from the law and to penalize their enemies. And so this is giving the president the power to effectively goad even more agencies to exercise their powers that way. You know, if you think about it, if you think back to the inauguration, think about all of the corporate executives, you saw, you know, Jeff Bezos at Amazon, Altman at AI, you know, et cetera, et cetera, Mark Zuckerberg. Those are all corporations that agencies like the Federal Trade Commission, you know, are engaged in investigations or applications of the law against. And if you are telling the president, well, you can order the FTC around, nothing will stop him from accepting money from these companies and then ordering the FTC

to go easy on them. In terms of some of the cases that the Supreme Court has announced it will hear next term, is there anything that was especially striking for you? So the court announced that it is going to decide whether it is constitutional for governments to ban possession of AR-15s and other semi-automatic assault rifles. That is terrifying, given how much of a wing that this court is on gun rights and the Second Amendment. Now, in terms of that question, I mean, is the Supreme Court doing it so that they can officially establish precedent that would, that, you know, that will filter down to every district court and appeals court basically, you know, if and when, I think there is a, it's fair to say,

if and when they rule in favor of allowing, you know, the proliferation of AR-15s, is that so that it'll make it easier for district and appellate courts to be able to point to Supreme Court precedent to basically quash this issue if it's brought up in any courts, lower courts across the country. Yeah, I mean, they are issuing gun rights decision after gun rights decision that will make it easier for lower courts, especially lower courts that are populated by some of the extreme ideologues appointed by Donald Trump to invalidate even more gun control measures. What about voting rights? Is there anything on the docket for voting rights in the upcoming Supreme Court term? Yeah. So the court is going to decide whether Arizona can require proof of

citizenship, you know, as part of the voter registration and voting process. And just nothing good to expect there, I worry. Is that kind of along the same lines as being extrapolated to include voter ID eventually? Like if you have one group of people who's forced to prove citizenship, will that kind of create a slippery slope where then you'll have voters that have to show ID in the event that they go to polls as well? Yeah. Well, so if a state like Arizona requires voters to prove citizenship, that's going to require them to have documentation that would establish their citizenship, something like a passport, for example. So yes, it's absolutely just like one method,

and especially draconian method of voter identification. Is there an argument to be made that by virtue of requiring somebody to show this documentation that isn't free that is akin to a poll tax? So that has been an argument that litigants have made. And I think the problem is that this Supreme Court says, well, rules that are facially neutral, rules that don't themselves impose a direct tax when you're, go to vote, we're just not going to treat those as effective equivalence of or substitutes

for a poll tax or a racially discriminatory measure. And so, yes, that's an argument that is absolutely available, but it's not an argument that's going to succeed at the Supreme Court. Right. Leah, for those who are watching and listening right now, where can they hear and see more from you? Strict scrutiny is available anywhere you get your podcast on YouTube or podcast feeds with new episodes dropping every Monday and then some additional ones whenever the Supreme Court does something extremely nuts. And then I also just released the paperback version of my book, Lawless, that came out June 16th. And there's an entirely new section on the Unitary Executive Theory that this court has doubled down on.

Well, I'm going to put that link in the post description of this video. I'll also put it in the show notes of the podcast. Leah, as always, thank you so much for taking the time. Highly recommend for anybody who's watching listing right now, especially with the Supreme Court very much in the news. This is the number one place to go to hear all things Supreme Court. Leah, appreciate the time. Thank you. Thanks again to Jared Moskowitz and Leah Lipman.

That's it for this episode. Talk to you on Sunday. You've been listening to No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen. Produced by Sam Graber, music by Wellesie, and interviews edited for YouTube by Nicholas Nicotera. If you want to support the show, please subscribe on your preferred podcast app and leave a five-star rating in a review.

And as always, you can find me at Brian Tyler Cohen on all of my other channels, or you can go to Brian Tyler Cohen.com to learn more.