No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Trump puts his fear of Kamala on full display

Episode Date: August 4, 2024

Trump ducks his debate with Kamala and faces the consequences of that decision. Brian speaks with Senator Elizabeth Warren about the attacks against Harris from the right, whether she thinks Biden's Supreme Court reforms will pass, and the dangers of Project 2025; and the FTC chair, Lina Khan, about the invaluable work being done to protect consumers. Book tour tickets and pre-order Shameless: https://www.harpercollins.com/pages/shamelessShop merch: https://briantylercohen.com/shopYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/briantylercohenTwitter: https://twitter.com/briantylercohenFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/briantylercohenInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/briantylercohenPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/briantylercohenNewsletter: https://www.briantylercohen.com/sign-upWritten 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.

Today we're going to talk about Trump ducking his debate with Kamala Harris and the broader consequences of that decision. And I have two interviews I speak with Senator Elizabeth Warren about the attacks against Kamala from the right, whether she thinks Biden's Supreme Court reforms will pass and their dangers of Project 2025. And I interviewed the FTC chair, Lena Kahn, about the invaluable work being done to protect consumers. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. So we've been ping ponging back and forth all week about will Trump debate, won't Trump, debate and what's become clear to me is this. Donald Trump has no intention of debating Kamala Harris whatsoever. And so his strategy here is just to slowly keep moving the goalpost to the point where the conditions are just so unacceptable, so unfair, so tilted in Trump's favor that it would

actually outweigh the benefits of doing the debate itself. Trump initially claimed that he would totally, definitely debate, but that Fox News should also host one. Then he claimed ABC might be too biased. Then he said he's involved in litigation with ABC so he can't do the ABC. debate, and then he just said it's Fox News or nothing. So again, the goalpost shifted every single time that he posted his remarks. But let's be clear, he always had no intention of doing the ABC debate. And this pivot to Fox was always inevitable. Now, in terms of whether Kamala should do it, I'm legitimately torn here because on one hand, Fox is an outlet that was just forced to pay $787 million for lying on Donald Trump's behalf. So the notion that this outlet should be allowed

to host a debate involving Donald Trump is kind of a joke. Like, in one of his post, Trump actually advocates for Brett Baer and Martha McCallum to host, and he did that because these people present as moderates. But choosing the least bad people does not make them not bad. Remember, Brett Baer argued for Arizona's 11 electoral votes to be taken out of Joe Biden's category where they belonged and into Donald Trump's category where they didn't. And that's exactly what Trump wanted them to do, knowing that once they corruptly did this, it would be way more difficult to then remove those votes because of the sheer amount of pressure.

Brett Baer is not some neutral arbiter here. He is also a stooge of Donald Trump and the Republican Party. There's also the fact that Trump wants a full audience. He can't hack just go and head-to-head with Kamala Harris, so instead he needs people there to feed his insatiable ego. And because his fans have no scruples and would cheer him on like rabbit hyenas no matter what he said, then it would give the impression to the viewing audience that Trump is killing it, even when he just is uttering straight nonsense.

But Trump needs that. He needs the theatrics to trick viewers into thinking that he's overperforming when in fact he's underperforming. But he uses these things as a crutch because he knows that he's inept. So those are the arguments against it. The argument for it, well, all the help in the world still won't erase Trump's idiocy and Kamala's effectiveness as a communicator. Like even with friendly moderators, even with a raucous crowd, the one thing that Trump won't be able to rig in his favor is just Trump. It's still going to be him trying to defend an indefensible record, like appointing three Supreme Court justices who gutted abortion rights and also only managing to pass a tax cut for millionaires and billionaires.

And overall, just him being the guy who's going to bizarrely advocate for an imaginary cannibal and complain about water pressure and flushing toilets and windmills. You're not going to change that. That's Trump. You can pretend that he's got like a new tone or that he's a unity candidate now. He always reverts back to who he is at his core, which is an unhinged, petty, vindictive, deeply bigoted man who believes that the world revolves around him and is led solely by his extremely fragile ego. So even in the worst conditions, Kamala will still be at

an advantage because her opponent will still be Donald Trump. And Kamala herself, for her part, has been prosecuting the case against Trump super effectively. From the prosecutor versus felon framing to the abortion rights champion versus abortion opponent framing, to the order versus chaos framing. She's already shown that she's a dynamic and effective speaker and perfectly capable of taking it to Donald Trump in any environment. So it does remain to be seen what ultimately happens, but already one thing is clear.

Donald Trump has sacrificed his one last remaining strength that he had going for him, and that's this idea that he's strong. Like, let's face it, he's got no legislative chops, he's got no foreign policy experience, he's a terrible speaker, he's clearly in the throes of some cognitive decline. The last inkling of virtue that he had was his strongman bona fides. And now, in one fell swoop, thanks to this whole debate saga, that's just vanished.

And so he looks deflated and small and weak. So even if he somehow finagels his way onto a debate stage at Fox, he's still not going to be able to get that back. The emperor has no clothes, and at this point, the whole world can see it. Okay, quick notes, if you want to see me live, I'll be in Washington, D.C. with Jen Saki on August 14. and I'll be in L.A. with John Favreau from Potta of America on August 26. There's still some tickets left for both of those shows, so head to the link in the show notes or go to Brian Tyler Cohen.com slash book to grab them. Also, my book, Shameless, is coming out in just over a week now, so if you'd like to support my work, that is the best way to do it. As you know, I don't

put these episodes behind a paywall or anything like that, but this is the one time that I will ask for support. So you can go to the same link in the show notes, or again, Brian Tyler Cohen.com book. And again, thank you so much. Okay, here are my interviews with Elizabeth Warren and Lena Kahn. Now I've got Senator Elizabeth Warren. Thanks so much for coming back on. Oh, I'm delighted to be with you. So it took all of five minutes before Republicans went all in against Kamala Harris, attacking her for the crime of laughing, saying that she's the DEI vice president. You yourself ran for president. You faced a lot of similarly misogynist attacks. What's been your reaction to everything that we've seen from the right?

You know, I want to start by saying, I am so excited about this moment. Kamala Harris has brought our party together, and she is going to take it to Donald Trump, and she's going to win on November 5th. And I think the Republicans are just losing their minds over that. So, you know, it's like they're trying to play the golden oldies here. You know, they want to play some hits, you know, that are ugly and nasty. And my view is keep laughing, Kamala, you know, people are so ready for turning the page on the ugly old politics of Donald Trump and really ready, I think, for a leader who takes some joy in what we can build together. So in my view, the Republicans are actually helping make the case.

For Kamala Harris. I mean, how many, I get it. There are people who listen to those ads and, you know, but they're already there anyway. Right. My view is they are reminding us all of why we do not want Donald Trump back in the White House and why Kamala Harris is truly offering us something different. And so I'm just feeling really excited about that. Yeah, it's also, it's a rough state of things when the best attack that you have on your opponent is that, is that they're laughing, is that there's too much enjoyment happening right there. Exactly. And she's not entitled to be joyful and to bring us along in those happy moments together. So I'm, I'm, I'm, Republicans just keep it up. Well, to that point then, the Harris

campaign, meanwhile, has been really effective at highlighting the weirdness of the Trump vans ticket, if not Republicans more broadly. You know, these are guys who are bizarrely, obsessed with dictating your health care choices, your reproductive choices, who you can marry, who you can sleep with, whether or not you can masturbate. Why is it important that we not be represented by people who are so ill-adjusted and weird? You know, so I think of it this way. It's, it really is the case that there have, there've always been groups in America that want everybody else to follow their position in a democracy, that's fine. You get out and you make the case, and if you win, you win, and if you don't, you don't. But what's happened over on the

Republican side is a very intense group that is very much outside the mainstream, has started driving that party to ever further and further places out. And, you know, it started in the Supreme Court. We can date this on the economic side going back along. long way, but I really go to the Dobbs decision two years ago. So we live in a country where roughly two out of three people say, I like Roe versus Wade. That's the right place for us to be as a nation. And so they can't get repeal of Roe versus Wade through a democratically elected Congress. They can't get it signed into law through ordinary process. So what they've been doing is they've been building for years, the idea of these extremist judges.

And now, first one pays off. Trump has bragged about it. He gets an extremist court in place. And the first thing they do, having said when they were up for, when they were nominated and up for a vote, oh, we will follow the law. And everyone understood when they said they would follow precedent. That meant they weren't going to fool around with Roe v. Wade. First opportunity they get, first opportunity.

Did they take a little bite out of Roe versus Wade? No. They throw the whole thing completely out the window and suggest that Roe is just the beginning. Come back on things like equal marriage. Are we really sure that that is the sort of thing we should be doing? So they're saying, we want to toss all of this out, this extraordinarily extremist position. So Donald Trump now, he's trying to run for Rob to get back. into the White House. And he recognizes that the Republican view on abortion is very unpopular across

this country. So he tries to mush around and say, well, I, you know, he tries to say to his extremist base, I gave you dumping Roe versus Wade. And then he tries to say to the rest of America whose votes he needs, oh, I'm more moderate and I'll let the states pick. It fools around on right? Then he turns around and picks J.D. Vance for his running mate. Someone who has openly said, not only does he want a nationwide abortion ban, but he doesn't believe there ought to be any exceptions for rape or incest. And so I think what you're putting your finger on here, Brian, is just, it's like how far out that extreme edge has gone. You know, you just, you just, you're just, Just you need binoculars for this to be able to see how way out of the mainstream they have become.

And so our job in the next 98 days is to make sure that everybody understands that what is on the ballot is abortion. It's access to IVF. It may be contraception, same-sex marriage, this whole panoply of, of, of, you know, interrelated rights of privacy and independence that people believe they should have, that that is what Donald Trump and J.D. Vance and their extremists want to take away. And this is what Kamala Harris in a Democratic Congress will fight for and preserve. It's like sometimes elections are people are a lot like each other. This is one where they have gone so far to the extremes.

It's, I don't think we've ever seen an election like this. Yeah, I mean, perplexingly, Donald Trump enjoys some bizarre benefit of the doubt when it comes to abortion rights, probably because people recognize that he himself doesn't, may or may not have any actual principles when it comes to abortion, but that he is led by people and he does support people who are as extreme as possible. But still, he enjoys that benefit of the doubt. J.D. Vance takes that away from him because. Because as you said, he is as extreme as it possibly gets. His website, just before it turned into, you know, a donation landing page for him and Donald Trump, because of course it did.

His website outright said end abortion. So it doesn't get more, more direct and obvious than that. You know, if I can, I just want to add on that just a little bit more to think about our country right now where you started this. 30% of all women now live in states that effectively ban abortion. And just yesterday, over another million women joined that when Iowa became one more state that says no abortions after six weeks. If J.D. Vance and Donald Trump take the White House, it won't be 30% of women. It will be 100% of women.

So blue states, purple states, purple states. States, they're coming for everybody. They wanted America where what we've now seen happen in places like Texas and Alabama, where IVF gets pushed off the table. They want a place, I've stood with the women who said that they were in the middle of a miscarriage, and their doctor said to them, I know what the medical treatment is that you need. It's an abortion. You need this medical care, but I can't give it until you're closer to death. Could you go wait in the parking lot and hemorrhage a little longer and then come in when you're just right at the edge?

And I've talked to doctors who say they know what's medically necessary. They know what should be done. But they are worried that if they do it too soon, they could be criminally liable. So I raise this by way of saying for all of us, you know, I'm, I'm. I'm from Massachusetts, so proud to represent Massachusetts. We are strong on abortion rights and individual rights. First state and the nation to recognize equal marriage. That's who we are.

If they come for us nationally, we have no power. The power can be exercised at the national level. And the states, it doesn't matter. You can pass all the state laws you want. You can put it in your state constitution. You can post a guard at the border. But if J.D. Vance and Donald Trump get the White House, their plan is to obliterate access to abortion across this nation. It's to obliterate access to IVF across this nation.

And it's to start taking on other personal rights that each of us have counted on now for years. Completely agree. And also, I would add that for anybody who does want to give these two people the benefit of the doubt, I would ask if you think that the guy who himself has said that he wants to end abortion and the guy who brags about having appointed a third of the Supreme Court that was responsible for overturning row if those two people are who you're going to trust to not sign a national abortion ban into law if they have the opportunity. Yeah. Switching gears here, I want to ask, who would you like to see chosen as Kamala Harris's

vice president? You know, I got to say on this one, I don't, I'm not in the advice giving business on this one. What interests me on this particular one is she knows what it's like to be a vice president. And I think the partnership she's had, Joe Biden has relied on her and depended on her to get out and do really important work. And I think that's what's going to drive Vice President Harris here in her choice. I think she's going to want somebody who's a partner. And I'm all in for that. President Biden came out just a few days ago and announced three Supreme Court reforms, Obviously, they all require majorities in both houses of Congress if they're to be enacted.

If we do get those majorities, do you believe that these will pass? Yes. I think we can do these. Look, I see what President Biden's doing right now as a gift to our nation when he decided just a little over a week ago to step aside. As he explained on national TV, he did it because he believes his country is more important. than his own personal ambitions. That's how he sees it. And he thinks that beating back an effort by a man who says he wants to be dictator for a day,

and this will be the only election we have, he will end elections after this. He thinks that's an important part of it. And so he passed the torch to Kamala Harris, and I admire him for this. But he's doing a second thing right now. He's lifting up that there is another threat to our democracy. Donald Trump is definitely a threat, and J.D. Fance multiplies that threat. But the Supreme Court is now an independent threat. This is not only the extremist Supreme Court that overruled Roe v. Wade.

It is the court that said, yeah, we're good with the president being treated like a king. It is also the court that is saying, and we, the court, think we have the right to start doing things like shutting down the Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies that are out there doing work on behalf of the American people. What Joe Biden is lifting up is we've got to beat Donald Trump, but we also have to do Supreme Court. court reforms. This is a court that has jumped the curves. I get it. There are times the court might be a little more liberal, might be a little more conservative, but within the curves, right, following the law. That's not where we are anymore. Where we are now is that court has just taken off and said they're going to aggregate power to the courts. And it's not up to Congress to make laws. It's up to the court to sit there and make laws. And what Joe Biden is saying is that as a real

threat. And so I'm going to bring this back together by saying what that really means is that come November 5th, not only is it Trump Harris on the ballot, it is truly the Supreme Court, whether they're going to continue to have the chance to run everything or it's going to be, nope, we're going to get this court reined in and get balanced back into our government as the constitution originally required. I think it's important, too, that Biden kind of lends his air of perceived centrism to it. And so what Joe Biden can do by virtue of just him being him, a longtime centrist Democrat, is to make something seem less extreme than if a more overtly progressive Democratic

president were to push something forward that could then easily be written off. It's like, oh, that's just more extremist policies from the radical left. But you can't say that about something that Joe Biden pushes forward just because of because of who he is. And I think that's really been one of his superpowers. Moving forward here, you have been a champion for anti-corruption legislation, even before it was really cool to be anti-corruption. Obviously, Project 2025 flies in the face of that. It's basically codified corruption at the federal level. What's the most worrisome part of Project 2025 for you?

Oh, wow. That is an impossible question. Shooting fish in a barrel here. But it's terrifying. Because Project 2025, just page after page after page, was written by powerful interests that want to say, not just that they want to fight back attacks on their power, they want the opportunity to multiply. their power to get even stronger. Ethics constraints, no, no, no. They don't want any part of that. But you know what they do want? They want a revised tax code that really values what it means to be an American. And their description of that, they want a tax code. And Donald Trump is all in on this that will give every billionaire in this country three and a half million dollars a year in tax breaks.

That's the, just line them up, do the math. But every family of four in this country, right there in Project 2025 spells it out. Family of four in America would pay $2,600 more every year in taxes. And I think the reason that really just tears something for me is because it's so naked right in front of you. that what project 2025 and Donald Trump and J.D. Vance are saying, the role of government is a handful of very rich and powerful people who get together and write rules that help make themselves richer and more powerful and leave everybody else in the dirt. Well, that was perfectly put. Senator Warren, thank you so much for taking the time. I appreciate it.

Thanks very much for having me. I am always glad to come here and have a chance to visit. with you. Now I've got the chair of the FTC, Lena Kahn. Thank you so much for taking the time. Thanks so much for having me. So I want to start off with an interesting one. Can we start off with Mother Fracker? This is kind of crazy.

So can you explain who he is and what the FTC is doing? So the FTC enforces the antitrust laws, and as part of that, we review mergers and acquisitions. There have been a whole set of really big proposal. was deals involving oil and gas. And as we were investigating one of them, we uncover these text messages between the CEO of a company called Pioneer, his name is Scott Sheffield, where he was texting and having private dinners and communications with high-level OPEC officials, basically suggesting that instead of all of these producers competing, you know, producing more so that prices come

down, that instead, maybe they should all work together to cut back production in ways that would make prices high. So we uncovered this as part of our investigation. We prohibited this gentleman from joining the board because we thought, you know, this raised some serious concerns. I mean, what does it say that you have an American oil executive colluding with other oil producers in OPEC to, I mean, at the end of the day, just screw over American consumers with the price of gas? That's the worry. And, you know, there's a lot of production in the Permian Basin,

and it's positioned America to not be as captive to OPEC and purely at the whims of what those countries decide. And so it was especially concerning that an American producer could have been having these communications. But I think it really, stepping back, points to a bigger issue, which is that oftentimes we're taught that the prices we see at the grocery store, at the gas pump, are just a reflection of supply and demand, right? It's just these natural

outcomes that are reflecting, these natural dynamics. And unfortunately, I think what we see from the FTC's perspective is that sometimes businesses are able to charge more because they have market power, because they have monopoly power, because they know that even if they raise prices, customers are going to have nowhere else to go. And so our job is to crack down on that type of illegal pricing. Doesn't it also undermine the whole point of pursuing energy independence in the U.S. so that we're not at the whim of foreign entities like OPEC when you have the exact same thing happening right here? That's right. In an ideal situation, you would have American producers vigorously competing as they're supposed to be to make sure that Americans

are actually paying less rather than trying to coordinate, potentially collude with high-level officials and all of these other country to actually cut back production and hike prices. Well, this is not your beat, but it's mine to say that, you know, this is just one more reason why maybe the future shouldn't include a heavy reliance on fossil fuel companies. So switching gears a little bit here, I know the FTC might be, might feel to a lot of people like some nebulous agency, but I want to go over some of the things that you've investigated that directly impact, you know, Americans on a daily basis. So I just want to cover a few different things.

So the first is, can you speak on Click to Cancel? So as we've all probably encountered, sometimes companies make it really easy to sign up for a subscription, but then when you're looking to cancel, you have to jump through all sorts of hoops. And so they make you call customer service, but there's actually nobody there to pick up the phone. Sometimes they actually require you to send by certified mail a request. Sometimes they make you physically go to a store. And so we've seen, especially as companies have become more reliant on subscription-based revenues, companies will make it much more difficult for consumers to easily exit the subscription. We've brought some lawsuits in this vein, including one we filed recently,

where consumers were complaining that every time they called, they had to call to cancel, first of all, but every time they did, they got endlessly volleied about, between these different customer service reps and then the call would fall and they'd have to start it all over. So the FTC proposed a rule that would require companies to make it as easy to cancel a subscription as it is to sign up for one. So if you can, you know, sign up through one click, you also have to be able to cancel through one click. So that's a proposed rule, but it hasn't gone into effect. That's right. It's a proposed rule. We got thousands of comments. Under the law, We have to review every single comment and basically make sure we are fully buttoned up in how we're proposing to do what we're doing, make sure we have all of the evidence to back it so that if we get challenged in court, we can fully defend it.

So that process is underway, but I'm very hopeful that we will be able to move forward and finalize that rule in the coming months. Okay, because I know if you need it, we probably got a lot of people watching this right now that would be happy to lend their voice if it's needed. Yeah, the FTC is a multi-member commission, so, you know, proposals get sent up to the commissioners, and we ultimately have to vote. But I personally am very eager to finalize this rule and make sure it could come into effect. Okay, what about junk fees? So junk fees, another issue that I think all too often people encounter in their day-to-day lives, you will see a company advertise one price, be it for a hotel or a rental car or an online ticket. But then when you ultimately go to check out, you see a whole variety of fees that have been tacked on to the initial price.

Sometimes these things are called service fees. Sometimes they're called convenience fees. Sometimes they have mysterious names and you don't actually know what you're paying for and getting out of it, but there's no way to opt out. And so we've heard a lot of concern about how these fees are, you know, inflating prices for consumers, but also deceiving people, right? It can feel like a bait and switch if a company is showing you one price, you then invest all of this time to see through the transaction, and then at the 11th hour, you see all of these

random fees that, again, you don't really know what you're paying for, and there's no way to avoid them. The other thing is these fees, these junk fees, also punish honest businesses, right? Because if you have an honest company that's actually being upfront about what the total price is, it can lose out business to those. that are doing this bait and switch. And so it hurts consumers. It hurts honest competition.

We've, again, brought a bunch of lawsuits to go after illegal junk fees. We've also proposed a rule to eliminate these. So companies would have to upfront show you the price that includes any of these mandatory fees. We issued one of these rules in the context of buying a car. So auto dealers can't do these junk fees. We've also proposed a rule that would be broader. We got 60,000 comments from the public, so our staff has been digesting those. And as with the click-to-cancel rule, I'm personally hopeful that we'll be able to move forward and be able to finalize that.

What about inhaler prices? So we've all seen that all too often Americans end up paying way more for medicines and health care than feels fair. Americans, on average, pay more than people in other countries, even though outcomes are worse. making sure that health care is affordable and that the price of health care is not being inflated because of illegal business practices is a top priority for me. And so our team has been scrutinizing all of the different ways that we think potentially illegal behavior could be driving up prices, including for things like asthma inhalers. Asthma inhalers have been around for decades, but prices are still high.

And when our team took a closer look, we identified some of these patents, listings in this obscure book called the Orange Book that we think companies had improperly included. This sounds really arcane, but the bottom line is we think pharma companies were including patent listings that blocked generic competitors from coming to the market, and that as a whole led to higher prices. The FTC challenged over a hundred of these patents, including for things like asthma and where you're only supposed to be able to include a patent in the Orange Book for actual drugs,

for actual drug ingredients. But what we found was that companies were also including them for things like the cap of an inhaler. So we challenged these patent listings in response. Three of the four big asthma inhaler manufacturers have announced that they're actually dropping how much Americans will have to pay down from hundreds of dollars just to $35 out of pocket. That's already come into effect for some people, and it'll continue to come into effect in the coming months. And did they do this to kind of like shake you off them as like throwing the FTC a bone so that y'all will leave them alone, basically? You know, I can't speak for them. We're still scrutinizing other areas where we think

these patent listings are potentially improper, but we've also seen, you know, senators get involved. The president has spoken up about it. And so, you know, it clearly seems like there's more scrutiny on this, and that's probably why they responded. Okay, and one issue that's probably the most pervasive issue that we're facing right now is the cost of groceries. I know the FTC is doing something on grocery pricing right now. Can you speak on that? So we just announced that we're going to be asking the commission to start an inquiry into looking at why are grocery prices still at the levels that are at, right? We saw during the pandemic, costs went up sharply. And in good part, that was because,

of supply chain challenges, and, you know, just during the pandemic, there were all of these challenges and just moving stuff, and there was less stuff. So prices were going up. A lot of those disruptions have actually eased, but we see that prices are still elevated. We also see that profits are still pretty high at some of these grocers, and so we are trying to understand why is that. This work is just part of a broader set of efforts that the FTC has underway, to make sure that companies are not able to get away with exploitative practices. So we've also just started an inquiry

into this issue of surveillance pricing. So this is when companies have the ability to charge each person a different price based on just what they happen to know about you. And so you can imagine, given all of the data that companies now collect and harvest on us and the fact that more and more transactions are done, you know,

digitally, be it through an app, be it through a website, be it through a QR code that you have to scan, that companies now have the ability to actually show each of us a person-specific price. We don't know what factors are going into that. We might not even know what's happening, but we're worried that it could be exploitative, and Americans have a right to know if it's happening. So, you know, a hotel could charge you more for a room because they know that you've already bought airline tickets. Whereas if they know that I'm still deciding where to go on vacation, maybe they'll show me a lower price. And so we've launched an inquiry into these pricing middlemen

to figure out, is this happening? Who is it affecting? And that sort of thing. So if they're using data that they've obviously purchased from somewhere to be able to determine how much they should charge you for something, does that mean, for example, that they can use, like, demographic info on you? And they can say, okay, this is where this person went to college. This is the zip code they live in. And so they might make more money than somebody else. And so if we can squeeze more money out of them by charging them more for something, because we know they live in X zip code, we know that they graduated from X college. We know that they have X job, whatever it is. Is that what we're talking about here? That's exactly what we're looking at. We're concerned, you know,

is this happening? And it goes beyond your zip code, right? I mean, if you wear, you know, a heart monitor, could they be actually getting data on your heartbeat and know that when you hover over this product, you know, your heartbeats a bit higher. And so maybe that means you're really, you know, just you can, you can see where this could end up. It's like a full black, black meter episode. Exactly. And, you know, there's actually been research done that's looked into this preliminarily. And you would think, okay, maybe this means that people in more affluent neighborhoods would be paying more than people in low income neighborhoods. And maybe that's fair, right? some of the research and reporting that's been done actually has shown the opposite.

So a decade ago, there was this investigation into staples.com, and these reporters found that staples.com was showing different prices based on people's zip code and specifically based on whether there was brick and mortar competition for Staples in that zip code. And practically what that meant was actually low-income neighborhoods and people who lived in those neighborhoods were being shown a higher price on staples.com than people in more affluent neighborhoods that had more brick-and-mortar competition. So we could in fact be seeing a situation in which low-income people are being charged more than high-income people. So anyway, we don't know a lot of this is a black box. And so that's why we're doing this inquiry because I think the public deserves to

know. Okay. Another major focus of the FTC is pharmacy benefit managers, PBMs. And they basically act as middlemen overseeing the cost of prescriptions for hundreds of millions of Americans. And they tout themselves as being there to save consumers' money, but they're owned by the very pharmacies that they claim to save you money from. And the whole job of those pharmacies, of course, is just to make money. So clearly the PBMs are there as just yet another kind of layer of people just getting rich off the health care system, you know, on the backs of sick people, which seems to me like it would be a conflict.

a way to prevent this kind of exploitation? We've heard a lot of concern about just drug pricing in general and what might be contributing. We've started scrutinizing these pharmacy benefit managers and our staff just put out an interim report with some of our preliminary findings. What we found is that over the last couple of decades, there's been an enormous amount of consolidation among pharmacy benefit managers. And so, you know, three companies own a significant and share of the market. They've also, as you suggested, vertically integrated. So these PBMs are actually combined with health insurers. They also have their own mail order pharmacies. And so that can potentially give rise to certain conflicts of interest. As our staff looked into

this, they did two case studies and found that for two cancer drugs, the PBMs had actually overcharged by close to $2 billion just for two drugs, you know, within three years. So we worry that there could be some significant overcharging here. That means Americans and the government are paying more than they should be. And so we're going to keep looking at that. And is that, I mean, I guess on its face, is that legal as it stand? Is this the kind of thing where you see exploitative behavior and you're able to sue and kind of end it? Or is it the kind of thing where you see the exploitative behavior and until there's a rule preventing it from happening?

So it's always kind of that we're running after. these companies and patching up holes that they create? Yeah, it's a great question. So the FTC is given authority to go after unfair methods of competition and unfair or deceptive acts or practices. Those are, you know, pretty general concepts. And so it's up to us to determine how do those apply in all of these new contexts. So we are doing this inquiry.

If we find practices that we determine violate existing law, we will be able to act. We haven't reached that point. Our staff is still doing this team. this work. So, you know, it's, it's too easy to make a judgment there. Another big focus has been Amazon and their pricing practices. Can you, can you just briefly go over like what you're looking at with regard to Amazon right now? So the FTC last September filed a lawsuit alleging that Amazon has violated the antitrust laws. We go through a whole set of practices, But in short, we allege that Amazon has become a monopoly, and they've been able to maintain that monopoly through illegal practices.

One of those practices includes basically forbidding the businesses that sell on Amazon from listing a lower price elsewhere. Simultaneously, Amazon has been hiking the fees that all of these businesses have to pay to Amazon. For some businesses, you know, Amazon takes one out of every $2, which is a pretty... you know, high tax effectively. We also found that Amazon uses this algorithm that has basically been elevating prices to the tune of a billion dollars collectively. And so, you know, that's part of our lawsuit as well. We think that there should be more competition here. And if Amazon wasn't acting illegally, there would be and the public would benefit. Okay. And finally, let's finish off with this. There has been recent reporting that some billionaire donors in the Democratic

party are seeking to have you fired as chair of the FTC. And what's craziest is that these are the same people who are actually in the process right now of being sued by the FTC. So basically, you have wealthy interests seeking to remove the very person who is in charge of regulating them. And they're using their money, their influence as a way to do that. Is something like that concerning, not just for the FTC specifically, but just that kind of abuse in general? Yeah, you know, at the FTC, we just kind of have our heads down doing the work, trying to working families and make sure they're not getting ripped off and exploited by companies. But, you know, as you mentioned, I think a lot of Americans are generally concerned about the way that

outsized economic power can be used for political ends. And that was one of the original fears of the lawmakers that passed the antitrust laws. They really thought that we needed checks on concentrated economic power, both to make sure people weren't getting bullied and on our economy, but also, you know, because they were afraid that monopoly power could be used to exercise power in government, you know, in politics. And so that's a very core part of our tradition to be worried about that. Well, look, I think it's absolutely insane that these Democratic donors want to use their money to be able to pick their own regulators.

Like, that is egregiously anti-democratic, big D and small D. And that's, you know, that kind of rot is exactly why we need strong enforcement. because clearly people will be perfectly content to abuse the system for their own financial benefit at every turn. And it's the very reason why the FTC is important and why what you're doing as chair of the FTC right now, which is clearly the most aggressive antitrust enforcement that I've ever seen in my lifetime is also so important. And I know I speak for a lot of people watching right now and saying how grateful we are for the work that you're doing. So thank you so much for taking the time today. I appreciate it. Thank you for having me.

Thanks again to Senator Warren and Chair Kahn. That's it for this episode. Talk to you next week. 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.