The Adam Friedland Show (Cumtown) - LINA KHAN Talks FTC, Monopolies, Biden

Episode Date: November 12, 2025

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You function kind of like as someone that enforced the law. You were kind of like a cop or like a, you know. Did you ever ask for a gun? You should have a badge. I know. We probably should have. You know, we did have investigators who like went undercover sometimes and they did have badges. Did you send guys to Burning Man to like figure out tech corruption?

We didn't have that good idea. See, had I got to law school, I would have that great idea. Because they would have been on Molly, and they would have been like, we're gonna make one company. The whole economy is gonna be one company pretty soon. I guess. I have a favorite show, oh my had a feeling show, oh, white, had a family show, oh,

my life, had a family show on my TV. Let's do it Let me get over that real quick Just my feelings be hurt Hello, welcome back to the Adam Friedland show I'm Adam Friedland Thomas just bullied me All right

Hello and welcome back to the Adam Friedland show guys Adam Friedland here First off, as always I'd like to thank our members for supporting us here on YouTube.com You make the show possible Well, seriously, guys, members get access to all of our episodes early before they're released to the general public. And if you join at the second or third tiers, you also get your name and the credits of this fine program.

If you'd like to join the Freedline Family Foundation, you could do so by clicking the join button here on YouTube or by clicking the link in the description below. You could also support us on Patreon if you prefer. The link for that is also in the description. And also, guys, merch is now available. Go to the Adam Freeland. Show to check it out. We got hoodies, t-shirts, hats. The hoodies are fucking flying off the shelves, guys. Hop on those real quick before they sell out.

You could conceivably wear an entire outfit of the Adam Freedline show merch if you make your own pants and shoes. That is true. That's a funny line, Caleb. Leave that in. You deserve it up for Caleb Pins, everyone. My guest this week is former FTC Commissioner Lena Khan. Lena's been in the news recently, as she is the head of Zoron Mamdani's mayoral transition team.

During her tenure at the FTC, she became a powerful enemy of major corporations like Amazon and Meta, transforming a famously toothless armor of the executive branch into an effective valve on corporate power. Effective valve. Kind of cool. A valve is something that regulates like a stream. Regulates. Hmm. What does that remind you? Okay, you did a good copy, bad copy, that was good copy.

Think of Lena Khan like Batman, and think of Amazon like the penguin, meta, Bain, I guess. Oracle, Hugo Strange, Joe Biden, Razal Ghul, Apple, killer crock, and I will be Alfred Pennyworth, the butler. The point is, Lena is one of the good guys, and I'm Alfred. So please. Caleb, you crushed it this week. I was on the phone too much And Caleb wrote

Perhaps the best intro we've had That's far Give it up for Caleb Pitts one more time I love my team Please enjoy my conversation With Lena Con Great job Hey folks

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I think now it's a bit more, there are like a lot of Polish immigrants there as well. Thank God, thank God. No, it was a nice place to grow up. Dude, she's a gooner. Do you hear that? What? Arsenal fan. Oh, really?

Yeah. I don't know that I could faithfully still claim that. Stop being a lawyer, just lie. Can you learn to lie? You're allowed to lie, don't. It is like against my disposition at this point. I know, watching interviews with you, you're like, they give you opportunities to talk

shit and you're like I know the rules for this well I feel like once you've testified before Congress we're like the main goal is not to lie it's like that becomes like really ingrained I agree yeah people people don't lie in front of Congress it's bad if you do so you know what guys can we just do the interview now and then we'll just do the walk out later okay because we're ready to do the interview okay you've never told one lie in your entire life I probably have like as a kid or something but not since you were a kid I don't No. I mean my last job. My whole life is a lie. This is a lie. It looks pretty legit, but

I wanted to ask you something I thought was really kind of cute, but about your, but about the Starbucks thing when you were in high school. So you, you were in Westchester? Yeah, I lived in Mamerinac, went to Mimerick High School. And so the kids were causing a ruckus up in Starbucks by your high school? So Starbucks said, but that's why we needed to investigate. And what did you do about it? So there was basically a you know some stores outside of the high school including a Starbucks and people would you know go there and hang out there and buy coffee at Starbucks. And then they started a policy that students even if they purchased something couldn't stay in the store they couldn't sit down. So I wrote a school newspaper story

about it. You're Martin Luther King. But didn't you get into New York Times? Yeah, it's somehow became enough of a thing where the Times then reported on it and reported it cited my story so were you a little bit sucking up to the popular girls or at Starbucks I I don't remember it that way I was genuinely just curious you're being a suck up to the or you were the popular girls no I mean I was a newspaper editor you know I don't know that that counted but have you ever gotten a B yeah probably yeah that's a lie I got you to lie no no I mean I got you to lie I got you to lie in college and probably didn't

do so well. I need to get, I need to swear you in. You never got to be. You gotta be in my hard math? Some hard math, yeah. How did it feel we're gonna be? It was humbling, but in a good way. Humble.

Did you take the LSAT June 2009? Dino game? No, no, I took it later. Do you know the dino game? The logic game with the dinosaurs? I know the logic puzzles, but not with the dinosaurs. I took it right before you. Okay.

I didn't go to law school until 2014, so I took it later. What did you have now? I don't remember. Come on. I really don't. You're being humble right now. You got 180? I don't think so.

Straight up 180. I'd have to go back and check. Did you finish first? Were you like, done? I don't think so. You definitely did. So, I like, yeah, I took it three times. It was an inflection point in my life.

Yeah, no, it was an inflection point for me, too. I was trying to decide whether to go to law. school or whether to be a journalist so your thesis in college was on Hanna-R-in what was your what was your area of focus I think it's pretty interesting for the times we're kind of living it right now yeah it was this close study of a bunch of her work including a book she wrote called the Human Condition and in the book she basically writes about how you know technical technological progress can lead to a lot of advances but also require a certain degree of distance

and she has this analogy with the plane around how like, you know, airplanes, like, allow us to do pretty great stuff and, like, make physical distance shorter, but it requires an altitude that makes you see less. And I analogize how she talked about kind of expertise and what can get lost in it to how we got into the financial crisis. So that's like the most boring book she wrote? That's what your thesis was one? I don't know if that was more. I thought your thesis would be on her, her romance with Heidegger. Oh, yeah.

The Nazi and the Jew. Right. Right. I guess that was a component of her life. One thing I heard you say in an interview was that prior to the establishment of the Third Reich as a centralized power structure, that industrial conglomeration or was a big component of it? Is that correct?

Or am I trying to say words? I feel like I'm copying words as I heard on succession, maybe? Yeah. Yeah, you know, obviously there were a lot of factors that facilitated the rise of Nazism, but the U.S. after World War II actually commissioned various studies to be like, what just happened and what factors contributed to it, including trying to figure out what was happening in the economy. And they did actually find that growing consolidation across the German economy

had basically facilitated the rise of Nazism. You know, you had like more monopolization in certain types of rubber and steel. And generally speaking, there's long been a recognition that concentrated economic power can go hand in hand with concentrated political power. And I think that's an insight that has been lost more recently, but we're kind of being forced to reckon with again. So you think paramount, if they buy Warner Brothers,

maybe Barry Weiss will be maybe the kind of gobble. She doesn't talk shit at all, because she knows all the rules. You know all the rules. Okay, so let's explain to our audience. You became a star even before you graduated law school. So you published an article about Amazon when you're in law school, and you kind of made some enemies. Yes.

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

really interesting because at that time, this is like 2012, 2013, you know, the general consensus in D.C. was that Amazon is this company that is, you know, just delivering all these low prices and there's kind of no monopoly power or dominance concern here. But when you talk to those sets of market actors, they were like, yeah, of course, you know, this company is amassing structural power that one day it'll just be able to flip the switch. And that's the whole like investment proposition here. And it was just one of these instances. is where there was a real gap between how kind of the experts and the pundits were understanding what was going on in the economy and how when you talk to like real people that were doing

business with this company, how they understood it. And that gap was really interesting to me. And so I decided to try to make it into a lot of your article. So in essence, you're saying that they were dropping prices so low that like mom and pop were just couldn't compete. Is that what you're saying? Yeah. They were engaging in a bunch of business practices that like 50 years ago would have been illegal.

But because there was this kind of Reagan revolution. and antitrusts where we now basically assume that monopolies were good unless they were engaging in a very narrow set of practices that were bad, we'd kind of become blind to being able to see, you know, corporate dominance and monopoly power unless and until it hit this like very narrow set of conditions. What do you make of the argument, or like people would say like the Sears catalog is going to drive the general sore out of business? Is it just that like, yeah, like Bezos kind of reinvented a supply chain? And, but I can get any crap I want tomorrow. Like, do you get crap on there?

I'm not a prime member, so I don't really buy stuff off there. What do you mean you're not a prime? What are you doing? You go with your feet? You go on your feet to a thing? I mean, that's a good thing about living in New York City, you know? You can buy a lot of stuff in person. Yeah, but you could also get any crap tomorrow.

It's true. I mean, the thing is, it's really not about, it's, it's more about, you know, the antitrust and anti-monopoly laws were designed to basically create more checks and balances in our economic sphere. Sure. Because there was a recognition that, like, you don't want to concentrate economic power. And through competition laws,

there's an assumption that firms, if they're having to compete for your business, they're going to try to make things better, be it through lower prices or kind of better service. And so we want to maintain competition, and there are fair ways to compete and unfair ways to compete. And our definition of what is unfair ways of competing has, like, radically changed over the last.

few decades such that companies like Amazon have been able to get away with things and you know when I was at the FTC we ended up filing a lawsuit against it after investigating it we found that it was breaking the law and that now it is actually systematically raising prices for people both consumers fucked everyone off yeah because they can yeah and like the businesses that have to sell on Amazon now have to pay as much as one out of every two dollars to this company sorry for custody also it's it's not a good situation and you know, a lot of that is because they don't face real competition.

Do you think the game Monopoly is maybe problematic for people's understanding of monopoly power? Because no one wins at Monopoly and everyone's like, you're a bad guy. Right. Everyone's like, you know, I mean, it's a disaster. Your dad just relapsed on alcohol. He told your mom that she's just like her mother. Your sister's crying.

That's what happens when you win a monopoly and you're like, I'm the best guy in the family. You know, there's a really interesting history of that game where it was actually designed as an anti-monopoly game. And then it was like, you know, commercialized and made into a kind of a pro-monopoly game. Wait, so what was the objective that everyone has different stuff? In the original version? You know, I haven't played the original version, though I actually have a version of it. So I need to need to try it out. So you went back into the think tank world after law school? Just briefly, yeah. Were you offered like a federal clerkship or something?

I mean, it seems like from your resume, like you could have... Yeah, I was, I was supposed to clerk. a year out of law school and my judge ended up passing away a few months before so then I kind of had to rejigger things and ended up actually working first at the FTC for a commissioner Rohit Chopra who had just joined

who was doing incredible work and then actually ended up joining as a staffer to a congressional committee where we did a big investigation of Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google and so was there for a year and a half or so. And you started working with

Elizabeth Warren or like in an unofficial capacity at the time? Is that correct? Yeah, not officially, but you know, she in 2016 gave a big speech basically saying, you know, across the economy, we have now extreme consolidation and she named companies, which, you know, in D.C. is unusual for kind of somebody to really name the company you're talking about, and she did that across sectors. And it basically helped give much more prominence to this issue of antitrust and anti-monopoly. And she became kind of an allies as somebody who agreed that we really needed to reinvigorate this area of law. And so for my understanding, well, two things. First is like, how did President Biden, how did you get drafted in the league at 32?

It's a great question. I know it. You were the youngest by like 40 years probably in the government. Oh, in the, I mean, there had been some prior FTC commissioners that had been in their 30s. But I think chair, yeah, probably. probably was the youngest. So how did you get scouted? Like, how did they know that you were the goat?

It's really cool that President Biden was like, this is the one. And you, like, changed, we'll get into it, but you changed the way kind of a toothless part of the executive functioned, from what I understand. Yeah, I mean, how people get picked is like a total mystery. Oh, now you're lying.

Now she's lying, we got her, guys. Let's clap it up. What happened? You know, you basically get a call, asking you if you're interested in serving. From the Monopoly, man. From the federal government. You got a call from the federal government?

You get a call from somebody working in the White House who does personnel. Uncle Sam? Usually somebody who works in the office of personnel. HR? It's basically HR for the White House, who has to figure out for all of the political appointees, who are we going to pick? So they call you to ask if you're interested.

If you say yes, you have to have all of this kind of background checks and have a lot of conversation with security people. They looked into the Starbucks, right? Probably, yeah. They probably, like, called someone at the Starbucks. Yeah, they call people who know you to kind of try to figure out what's going on. And then sometimes you don't hear for a while and you have no idea, am I in or my out? In my case, I ended up being told that I had been picked as a commissioner and they were going to announce it like the next day.

Had you spoken to President Biden before? No. Really? Yeah. He wasn't like, kiddo. Kitto, the malarkey of you? You got no malarkey. No, we didn't get to have it.

that conversation. So you came into it, from what I understand, and as you alluded to, from Reagan till the time you came, which 2020? 2020, yeah. 2021. Like from, for, so for, what, 30 years, it was basically a completely just, what, they did herbal life, right? Was that their big hit for 30 years? They were very focused on, you know, frauds and scams. And, you know, it's staffed by very well-meaning people, but there definitely had been kind of a real narrowing in their ambition. Well, so you walked in the office, everyone's Hawaiian shirt, beer pong. Were people doing like Xeroxes of their butts?

You know, it was still COVID, so it took a while until everybody was like back in. But no, I mean, you know, the staff there was very hardworking. There had been people who'd been there since, you know, for decades. She won't talk shit. They were definitely like, look at this homework nerd coming in, trying to make us work for the first time ever. No, I mean, you know, it was, it was, I was an unusual pick for a bunch of reasons. So, you know, it was a bit of.

an adjustment for the agency yeah yeah how did you get paid it's a great it's a great question because you're not nepo right no i mean no you're like the smartest one they never picked the smartest one seriously it's like a rarity that's why i'm so fascinated by it yeah it's so young they hate youth in holly in hollywood in dc they have a contempt for youth it it wasn't an unusual pick. And I think it really did speak to how in a pretty small number of years, the kind of elite, even elite consensus about antitrusts started to change. And so there was a growing sense that the kind of Reagan approach, which had become a bipartisan approach, right? I mean, the incredible thing about Reagan was like when they came in, the stuff they were pushing was seen

as really fringe. And, you know, there were deep partisan fights. But then you fast forward 12 years after eight years of Reagan, four years of Bush. And the stuff that had been really fringe of theirs was now just the new common wisdom. And so they were pretty masterful in kind of getting their set of ideas and ideology to become the new mainstream. And it took until, you know, 2018, 2019, 2020,

for there to be a greater recognition that that had been the wrong path and we needed to kind of reinvigorate this area of the law. Even from what I understand, people that were supporting the Harris campaign were kind of going at your ass a bit. Is that correct? It wasn't clear if Kamala won

if she would continue kind of your project. Yeah, look, I mean, you know, a president has the prerogative to kind of pick their own team, so they were not choosing who they were going to who they were going to have in place before they won. But you were a first-round draft pick? You know, I think it would have been her,

it was an auditor-serve, and it would have been her prerogative to kind of choose the path forward. But it's true that there were people who were upset by what we were doing and that were kind of being very vocal about that. There were a lot of people who were upset. I don't know if I'd say a lot. I mean, the newspaper, I believe, wait, what did I find?

There's like 53 op-eds against you after you came into the FTC? At least, yes. They were saying, why you drove them nuts? You were living rent-free because it's tech. Was it big tech and hedge funds? There was some big tech trade groups. A lot of it was, you know, also the deal makers. So parts of Wall Street that make a lot of fees off of mergers and acquisitions.

But you're just some lady. I mean, you're what, 5'4-4-5-5. Yeah, 5-5. And look at Brain Death at Khan's FTC and LenaCon blocks cancer cures. At hedge fund that made a killing betting against LenaCon. Lina Khan needs to see Shark Tags Kevin O'Leary. Lina con whiffs again. Why were you such a lightning rod?

I mean, how are you like this, but then in the court you're like that? I mean, I think there were a few things. I think we had had several decades of elite impunity where if you were breaking the law but you were in a C-suite, the government would go light on you. And even in places like the FTC, sometimes there had been a double standard, where if you kind of found that there was some small-time scammer or fraudster, you would, like, bring the full force of the law against them. But then if you

kind of found that a fancy CEO was breaking the law and their company was publicly traded, you might go a little lighter. They're contributing to your campaign. And I, you know, I thought that was just really problematic. And so we were very clear that we were going to enforce the law in an even-handed way, no matter kind of what your political connections were. We just had to look at, are you breaking the law or not? And I think that approach to enforcing the law upset some people. Two things. Did President Biden, when you came in, give you that mandate? Was he like, go for it?

The White House was very supportive of kind of what we were doing. President Biden did sign this executive order in 2021 that was pretty significant. I mean, he basically said the last 40 years of kind of Robert Bork-style antitrust has been a total mistake. And I'm, you know, directing my government to basically turn the page on that failed approach, and that means the FTC, the DOJ, but also all of these other agencies need to really focus on taking on monopolies. So there was definitely a mandate. And they called you a hipster? That was one of the labels that was attached to you. So you were like listening, grizzly bear, animal collective. What was it? Why was that, why did they go there?

You'll have to ask the people who came up with the term, but I think their view was the approach to antitrust that we wanted to advance was like a throwback. What was the other thing? Like Neo-Post-Brandician or something? Right, Neo-Brandician. That's pretty cool. You function kind of like as someone that enforced the law. You were kind of like a cop or like a, you know. Did you ever ask for a gun? You should have a badge. I know, we probably should have. You know, we did have investigators who like went undercover sometimes and they did have badges. Deep undercover in Wall Street?

Usually, no, usually not on Wall Street, usually kind of if there were, like, various types of frauds or scams or that sort of thing. Did you send guys to Burning Man to, like, figure out tech corruption? We didn't have that good idea. See, had I got to law school, I would have that great idea. Because they would have been on Molly, and they would have been like, we're going to make one company. The whole economy is going to be one company pretty soon. Yeah. And they would have been on ketamine or whatever the hell.

That is a very creative, investigative technique. Can we go back to the FTC and try it? And can we cut that from the episode? Because I feel like we've cracked it just now. Go to Burning Man. They're all on drugs over there, talking about the singularity. I guess. Today's episode is sponsored by Incogny.

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on your oil. order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too. That's quince.com slash T-A-F-S. Free shipping and 365-day returns. Quins.com slash T-A-F-S. So you took this toothless organization. You made it, you made it a potent organization for the first time. Did you have any structural changes that you had to enact in order to get the ball rolling there? Yeah, a few. First, we brought on more technologists, because a lot of the economy is now becoming digitized.

But you kind of need people on your team who understand how the stuff works. So we brought in a bunch of them. We hired more lawyers. We started litigating more. And so we brought on more litigators. The FTC is pretty small relative to the size of its job and mandate. I would imagine you just get outgunned.

Like they'd have 9,000 lawyers. You have like 12 guys. Yeah. I mean, sometimes the, like, in-house lawyers of these companies are greater than, like, the entire, like, competition bureau of the FTC. How many guys did you have? In total, we had $1,300. Oh, I thought you were going to say $13. That would have been hilarious.

But, no, I mean, we are totally outmatched when it comes to resources and the amount of money they have. So you kind of have to figure out how to navigate that. What do you view as, like, your biggest dub? Gosh, I mean, there are a lot of cases that are still pending. You've sued call of duty? We did sue to block the Microsoft Activision merger. That merger did go through. We weren't successful.

And now you can't get it on PlayStation? Call of Duty? I think you can, but I think you get it early on Xbox. Look at what they did. You were trying to stand up for Caleb. Well, there have been a whole bunch of price hikes that I know gamers have been pretty upset about. Well, there's the Game Pass thing. That's right.

Caleb, you want to sit in for me and talk about this? I don't. care. I hope that... It's $30 now. It's very expensive. It's $30.30. Look at what they're doing to my beautiful boy over here. Yeah. You know, one of the, we were very focused on health care markets just because people depend on health care. And one of the initiatives we did was really try to figure out why our drug price is so high. And one reason they're so high is because pharma companies use all sorts of patent tricks. The orange book, right? Yes. Yes. Yes. I'm a lawyer. I'm a lawyer. Yeah. Yeah. So, So we called out those pharma tricks, and three of the four big manufacturers of asthma

inhalers dropped the price from hundreds of dollars to just 35. So there are thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people who rely on inhalers who are paying less today. And did you get them scared? Like were there mergers that weren't attempted because they're like cons going to cons coming? According to them, yes. They would go on TV sometimes and say, you know, back.

in the day we didn't have to think about antitrust risk we were thinking about our deals but under this administration we we have to think about it right away and I guess like like it on the politics side you had there were some Republicans that actually were like that rode with that fuck that fucked with you I mean like where you got it didn't go along partisan lines I mean like that's right there was Josh Hawley was one of them or no yeah he was he was pretty supportive of a lot of the FTC's work well also the Republican side were like kind of like uh supported like you you know there were a lot there were a lot of members who

were really concerned about big tech in particular uh some who were concerned about these pharmacy benefit managers these like drug supply middle men so it was kind of issue by issue but generally speaking like taking on corporate power when they're breaking the law is very popular and there were republican members that recognize that you went after meta uh while you were in the fTC we sued them yeah Yeah. And so, and how did, what was the result of that? We're actually waiting to find out there with the trial happened a few months ago. I would think that trouble would just stop that. So there was a big effort.

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

So if you went to the South Bay, would you, like, wear a bulletproof vest or something, like 50 Cent? Do you know the song, Many Men by 50 Cent? Have you heard it? No. But does that, as an individual, do you process that? like I mean it is kind of crazy that like you drive them nuts yeah it was it was pretty striking have you get fishing emails maybe yeah you always have to be on guard with with those phishing emails you know one thing I think most folks have heard about is that you know there was a

liquidation in the civil service I think something that's useful to like talk about is like having a robust civil service is how like planes don't crash into each other and like we don't get screws in our cans of tuna, you know? Yeah. Like, I guess, like, what changes were made at your shop after you left? And, like, what have they chosen to pursue since you've been gone, the new commissioner? Yeah. So I think a lot of people have left, especially in the consumer protection part of the work.

The butt Xerox guys are back? I think they're, you know, they apparently are now trying to hire. Maybe they, like, too many people go. But there's been a real backsliding. I mean, you know, we were firing on all cylinders and taking on all sorts of, you know, big companies that were breaking the law. And there's definitely been a slowdown in activity there. They've also kind of shifted gears. So, you know, they allowed this big merger to go through between these two ad agencies.

And one of the conditions of that was basically that they had to buy ads from Elon Musk more or less on this platforms. Yeah, under the purview that they couldn't kind of discriminate. on political grounds. So it does seem like they're more eager to use the law to kind of advance their political grievances. And they pursue sex changes? Yeah, they're doing some workshops to see if they should go after doctors.

Workshops? Yeah. But like you go for a weekend to a hotel? I think it's like a bunch of bureaucrats in like a conference room for half a day. But yeah. What was it like being 40 years younger than everyone else actually?

It was pretty strange at times. I mean, there were definitely people who'd been there since before I was born. Was it a bad hang? No, I mean, people, you know, I think it had been tough for some people because I had been known before I got to the FTC as a critic of the FTC. And so I think some people interpreted that as kind of, you know, personal criticism. And I had been critiquing, you know, the political leadership and the way it'd been doing this. Yeah, there was a sense that, like, wait, why is the hater now our boss?

Cool. So, you know, had to navigate some of that, but people really came around. And I think people were proud to work at an agency that was on the front lines of protecting people from corporate abuse. And so... Is it supposed to be an independent agency? Like, ostensibly the Justice Department is supposed to be, but we're seeing it's not at all right now.

But like, did you... Is it like the president can't really mess with it, or is it like... Yeah, the president's not supposed to... direct us, you know? I'm sure Trump is giving them their space right now. Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting dynamic because previously there used to be a lot of speculation about kind of who's heading what agency, but now it doesn't really matter as much because it's all being run out of the White House.

So a lot of those decisions just, you know, it just doesn't matter. And what cases have they carried on from your tenure? So they're still continuing the case against Amazon, against Facebook. There are a bunch of cases against, like, ag monopolies, against John Deere. It was making it really hard for farmers to fix their stuff. They're continuing some cases against... We have one against Adobe that was making it really hard to cancel subscriptions. For PDFs, yeah.

Yeah, exactly. Acrobat. Yeah. So the vast majority, they've actually continued. Oh, really? The cases. But the place they pulled back are the rules. So we issued a rule that would ban non-convats.

Compete clauses for Americans these are those like contractual provisions yeah they were like doing it to people at McDonald's yeah you can't work at Wendy's after you leave that's right fast food security guards janitors healthcare workers why the fuck are the what's the point of it I mean they would say it's because they're training in workers and they don't want to lose their investment but for to a lot of people it seems like it's just to get greater control and power over the workers I took introduction to micro and macroeconomics so um So I'm kind of, I think I'm qualified. I don't want to speak from a position of authority unless I'm qualified, but I think I'm qualified here. But what, like, my understanding is the argument for consolidation is, they say that it will create more efficiencies that could be passed on in savings to the consumer. Is that kind of what you've been pushed back on?

That's often the argument, yeah. But it's stupid, no? Because it's like if there's one company, they can charge a zillion dollars and make it for cheaper? Yep. And you say that to the judge? I can be a lawyer. I think so. Yeah?

Yeah. Do you ever give a closing argument? No, we had very talented litigators that were in the courtroom. I was not personally making those arguments. So you do the boring parts of a lawyer? That's right. You don't do the razzle-dazzle parts? No, unfortunately.

Lena, why are you doing the homework parts? You do the worksheets parts? Yeah, exactly. Oh, you love homework. Why don't you do the, like, give a speech? You know, we had very talented people who were experienced at litigating and did that very well. You can't handle the truth. You never want to do, I want the truth. You would be so good at that.

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Who's your favorite, who's your favorite, like, Supreme Court Justice? I mean, Brandeis was pretty great. Nice. Yeah. Okay. Who's number two? I don't know. I mean, third-good Marshall is pretty great.

Sick. Yeah. Pretty cool. Yeah. Let's go down the line. I don't know if I have them ranked beyond that. What did you do at law school? You didn't play with top five?

We didn't actually. No, but really missed out on that. I mean, on the jury trial thing, it's interesting because, you know, we did, there was an effort to kind of bring some of these cases before juries, and the companies were really terrified of it. So the Justice Department brought one of their Google cases before a jury. They wanted to have a jury trial, and Google basically just gave a bag of money to the Justice Department so that they could avoid the jury trial. It was in a bag? More or less, I think they sent them a check, or maybe it was in a bag. It would have been cool.

It would have. In a trash bag. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, there was a recent survey. There was law firms are advising their clients, you know, to avoid jury trials because they're realizing that people's sentiments towards corporate America have turned negative. People hate companies.

I think so. I think that's good, though, right? You're going to follow the rules and not say that's good? I mean, it's good. I think people are realizing that a lot of the things that's bad in their lives is sometimes being driven by corporations that are breaking and have bought influence perhaps in our politics perhaps perhaps you could say yes allegedly allegedly counselor counselor asked an answer that's it here say have you ever fallen a sleeping court and

objected when you wake up I haven't had that experience that's from a movie right if you ever fall asleep in court you have to object when you wake up uh-huh I think John Grisham? When you enforce a policy as when you were a commissioner, you oftentimes would file a lawsuit. A lot of discussion has been made about how the judiciary is kind of...

Is there ever a fear that something could potentially go to the Supreme Court, which is kind of... It's understood to be quite partisan at this point and six three in the other to the other side is there a fear that you could actually fuck those initial regulations that you're trying to enforce yeah I mean there's a lot of strategizing that has to go into like does it make sense to appeal this case is there a risk of making things worse yeah so we definitely

have to think that through but if you win and they appeal they're like we're gonna ride this to the top and then they're gonna let us make one company for the whole world so what is the current state of the judiciary like what in your estimation like you know i'd say a few things like there are a lot of you know district court judges appellate court judges that are just trying to do their jobs and like be faithful to the law i think there has been a general drift coinciding with more republican appointees on the bench of like just more hostility and skepticism of federal agencies when they're trying to use you know trying to make things better in the economy more or less um so that's been a challenge i mean

during the Biden administration, you know, there were dozens of rules that were basically blocked sometimes by just a single judge in Texas, even rules that were trying to, you know, limit overdraft fees or say that airlines can't lie about the price of a ticket, the FTC non-compete rule. You know, we even passed a rule that said companies have to make it as easy to cancel a subscription as it is to sign up. And a lot of those rules ended up being blocked. So they're just greater skepticism of agency power. I think this is going to be a revealing moment as to whether that's selective skepticism. Like, are you only skeptical when it's Democrats in those agencies, or is it actually a bit more consistent and principled? That's very fair and noble to say.

Honestly. I mean, seriously. I mean, the courts shouldn't be partisan, right? They should be enforcing the law. Yeah, interpreting law. That's right. What is, if you had to look at the American economy, Like, what industry do you think just fucks, like, are my audience, or the people the most? I mean, health care probably? Yeah. Yeah. They have the most blood on their hands, yeah. Yeah.

When you were, we were talking about the Orange Book, that was me, something I heard five minutes ago, and I said to impress you. But, like, one of the ways that they raised the price of inhalers of $500 was that they would file a patent on, like, a strap. That's right. unlike just pieces of plastic that have nothing to do with like the actual drugs. But there are all sorts of tricks. I mean, you know, there are people who have died because they can't afford their medicines in this country. And when we were at the FTC, we would kind of do these regular open meetings where anybody could sign up and come talk to us. And we would hear from people who would say, I have a family member who's having to literally ration their insulin or their life-saving medicine because it's too expensive.

And some of that was done through illegal tactics by the, you know, drug manufacturers, by these pharmacy benefit managers. And so, you know, let alone the fraud that we see in all sorts of parts of the health care system where they're literally defrauding the government and just like bilking money. Is it like as a member of the civil service, right? How much do the politicians fuck up? Are they the biggest obstacle to like you guys like doing your jobs? You mean like... Like politicians. Like members of Congress?

Members of Congress, yeah. Or even the president at this point. Yeah, I mean, it very... It's hard to paint in a broad brush. There are a lot of members of Congress that were very supportive of the FTC's work in both parties. Even on the Democratic side, kind of a broad, you know, a big tent.

And there were big efforts to make sure that these agencies were actually funded and had the resources they needed. But I would say that, like, there have been trends that have just make it made it so expensive to bring these cases, like a single antitrust case. If you're trying to block a merger, you can have to pay an outside economist anywhere from $1 to $5 million. If you're trying to bring a case against a monopoly, you can have to pay an outside expert anywhere from

$20 to $30 million, just for a single case. And, you know, the budgets of these agencies is, you know, less than half a billion dollars. And so it's just become this, it's actually become somewhat of a grift where it's like these outside experts that are just like raking in this money as all of this litigation has become so expensive. So if you need money for a lawsuit so that people don't die from a company, you have to go to Congress and be like, please, I'm a poor, I'm a lawyer. Yeah. You have to ask them and then they're like, they're like, they think they better than you? Well, you have to, you know, as chair of the FTC, I'd have to go into Congress every year and testify before the House Appropriations Committee,

and they're the ones that decide how much money we get. Who was on that when you're there? There were a bunch of people. Freak show. House is freak show. It's different. I thought the House was the government. When I met Chris Murphy, he was like, yeah, it's the House.

It's not a big deal. I mean, the House is the most democratic branch of government, you know? Do you think that they should start wearing nicer clothes again? I honestly don't have a very strong view on the House. You're so nice Yeah I guess so Healthcare industry And then who would you put second

I guess that's Who are the top five most Evil you're not going to answer But I'm going to say Industries that have the most Adverse effect on Americans' lives I mean within health care there are a lot of different actors There are the pharmaceutical companies

You know Health Insurance After health care I would say in food and agriculture too Like the agriculture industry in this country is so consolidated. That was one of your first things, right? The chickens. That's right. Yeah, the chickens. You want to tell them about the chickens? Yeah, yeah. I mean, so when I was doing some of this, you know, market research, one of the industries I had to study very closely was chicken farming.

And that's an industry that is consolidated a lot. And so you have, you know, millions of consumers, thousands of farmers, but they're just connected by basically four chicken processors. And so if you're a farmer, sometimes your entire livelihood depends on doing business would just want company and that company has a ton of power over you, over your livelihood, and there are all sorts of abuse of tactics. So you mean like small farmers sell their chickens to like a big factory guy? To a chicken processor, yeah, like Tyson, you know, Tyson chickens, Purdue. And and it led to all sorts of abusive tactics. There's also been a phenomena where...

Like quotas? Is that, like they say you have to make your, like, and they raise the quotas each year? Yeah, they can raise the quotas. They also can basically like penalize farmers. farmers by giving the bad chickens it's it's it's people have made that analogy before it sounds like 1880 or something yeah yeah it's it's it's really horrific and people are actually paying have been paying more for meat and chicken even as the farmers are making less and it's basically just the middleman taking a bigger and bigger mr. Tyson goes good that's good well mr. Tyson is the

one taking more and more of it course yeah does it does it make you Did it make you cynical, like someone that was trying to enforce something that's like obviously just being nice, like to a guy that has a chicken farm that Mr. Tyson's like, I need more chickens from you. Otherwise, I'm going to, what are they serfs? Are they, the Mr. Tyson is a feudal lord? There are certain parallels. It's feudalism. It's really wild, yeah. I mean, you know, I think, I think the fact that more and more.

people are recognizing that it's really screwed up that so many of the parts of the economy are like this and are kind of demanding that type of change. It's going to take a while, but I think it is a positive sign. But they have way more money, and they can just keep doing it because they have more money? That has been the story so far, but I think if we have, you know, political leadership that is able to stand up to money, then maybe it could change. What was your, like, most cynical moment as some of those trying to just simply enforce the law? I mean...

You've got to be bummed some days. You're like, fuck this shit. I mean, I think I had a real sense of urgency because you never know how much time you're going to have and time in government goes really quickly. And these types of windows of opportunity to like really do serious pivots and how we've been doing stuff

don't come around very often. So I didn't feel like I had time to be cynical or bummed for too long. You just had too much work. Yeah. It's kind of chill. It's nice to be busy, right? Yeah, yeah.

You can't invest your brain in drama. Yeah, and like, you know, I was like, well, I'll think about that on the other side, whenever that is. What did you get on the LSA? Come on. Stop lying. I read that you're just lying to my face. Lena Kahn had been around when the typewriter was invented. Lena Kahn gets punched back.

Lena Kahn finished yet, question mark. An unfond farewell to lead a... When you see the press, what did you think? Were you laughing? Sometimes. Sometimes you're like, what does this guy's talking shit in the newspaper? Who was the most... It was Wall Street Journal primarily?

Their editorial board, yes. They're really fixated. On you? Mm-hmm. Do you think they had a crush, maybe? It's a good question. Did you ever clap back? Not directly.

I mean, I think I did some event with them. once maybe the Wall Street Journal yeah did you did a you had a burn I mean we kind of let our work speak for itself you're so much it was just like unobjectionable you know do you have political ambition like to run for like Congress or something be the president no I mean I wasn't born here so makes it easy on that one you're born in England do you want to be maybe the queen then not not especially I can see you as queen you'd be great you had little corgis you shake hands in a line, would you be a senator? Would you be on a, would you want to be on the

Supreme Court? Like what, what do you, I guess just from what I'm seeing is like, you seem very honest and altruistic. And what is your project? Like, what message you want to get across? I mean, I think the current economy is really screwed up. And I think we need an economy that's much more fair and more people can get a fair shot. And the current economy is not just like the product of some natural forces, it's like entirely rooted in laws and policies and political choices that we have made. And so I am, you know, my project is to make a case for changes in how we do law and policy so that we have a more fair economy.

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

Yeah. Four more questions. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, in some ways what we are seeing now is just like a caricature of being able to violate the law with no consequences. It's like TV or something. Yeah, but I think for a lot of Americans, they feel like there's been a version of this that's been happening for a while, right? Where they think... But they were quiet about it. It was maybe a little bit more subtle, but I do think that there was a sense that

if you were an elite, you could get away with certain things that non-elites couldn't. And I think this is kind of going to bring to the surface a question about what do we want the rule of law to look like in the future? And are we going to be enforcing it equally in a way that even if you're fancy and rich or connected, you actually have to follow the same set of rules and are not able to, you know, engineer a massive financial crisis that is kicking millions of people out of their homes and still kind of, you know, not really face consequences for that, yeah. You're saying that Trump is doing 12-dimensional chess. He's saying the crimes to make it finally illegal to break the law.

So you're saying he's kind of actually the hero, Gotham, needs. You know, I don't know how much foresight is going on there, but, yeah. He's doing a great job, I agree. There is an opportunity, I think, here for Democrats as they think about, you know, what the future looks like. But as I said before, like, if there were people that were kind of backing the Harris campaign that were kind of opposed to the work you were doing, at the FTC, you know, to what extent can the Democratic Party coalesce around that as a project?

Yeah, it's a great question. I think it's going to be a real choice, right? Because what some of those people were really saying was that we actually don't like it when the government enforces the law against us. Yeah. We liked it with Clinton and Obama when they were, with the guys Xeroxing the butts and so. And honestly, I mean, that's not too different from what we're seeing with Trump, right? We don't want the law to be enforced selectively. And so when we were at the FTC, we would say, you know, is this corporation breaking the law? If so, let's do something about it. We weren't then thinking, oh, but are there executives big donors to the Democratic Party? And, you know, I'm personally pretty disturbed by people who think that we should instead have

a system where Democrats do stand for that type of selective enforcement. So I think it's going to be a big choice for the party. You got 180, didn't you? Just look at it. You got 178 because you were humble. You're like, I'm going to drop two points to be a good guy. Just tell me the number. We'll bleep it.

We'll bleep it. I truly don't remember, but I'm happy to... She's lying to my face right now. I thought you were a noble jurist. You're lying to me, to be nice to me because I'm a stupid guy. I'll tell you mine. No, you...

Okay, will you tell me, will you? I mean, I'm happy to guess, but I... Guess mine, then. I don't know. One. Okay. I don't know. You bet it, no, you promised me that you were going to get more,

that you were going to tell me. If I had to guess, it would be something in the 170s, but I don't remember, for sure. She is full of shit right now. Just tell me. 179 you missed one to be nice yeah I'm jealous of you because you are the you're the son that my parents wanted no I really appreciate your time I think like I think you contextualizing it as like the fraud

happening right now is kind of par for the course for what was happening previously is like an important point to make because it's like I think a lot of the time people view things as exceptional and like if we get rid of Trump then then everything will be fine again. But, like, if, you know, if there was a kind of pathway here, I think it's a better way of understanding it, perhaps. Yeah, I mean, look, no doubt.

What Trump and the Trump administration is doing is a level of corruption and griff that is pretty unprecedented. No, you said it was a good guy earlier. No, I mean, look, it's, what we are seeing with this administration is, like, truly, totally anathema to the rule of law and all the values of this country.

And it's a level of corruption in griff that is unprecedented. I think for a lot of Americans, they've been feeling that the rules have been rigged for some time. Yeah. And so it's a question about kind of where do we go from here? I feel like we've had periods of extreme corruption. Like the FTC was started because of the robber barons and stuff like that, right? Yeah. But there was an effort every time to like kind of kind of make something that fixes it. And I feel like now it's just like we're just putting like tape over like a leak that's coming into the ship. It feels a little bit that way to me at least.

I mean, I do think we need, you know, like a New Deal style level of ambition. You think I should, you think I should run for president? Okay. Do I have to do the thing? We're going to close on it. The FTC thing. All right, because it's, because this, I,

so our audience is a comedy show so I have to just I'm sorry about this okay I just wanted to do should I do it or no she's so nice okay FTC does that stand for fart tits cock does that send for fuck this crap I'm sorry shit fat titty community funny city committee friend friends that crap Fart T.C. You just need, for the audience, they're not, they're going to like, I'm, I just needed to put in something immature for them because I've been so mature in this interview. Totally, no, you got to play to your audience.

178. I really appreciate your time. Yeah, I know, it was good fun. Should I go to law school? I mean, you know, it seems like you're really, you write me a letter? Happy to. For an elder, for an elder student, I would be in your class, I'd be older than you. I'd be 308.

I'd be like, you're like, who the hell do you think you are talking to an elder like this? She's going to get me in a law school, dude. My dad's going to finally tell me he's proud of me. No, he loves the show, actually. What? Today was very educational. Because of the stuff I said mostly. Yeah.

Yeah. Did you have fun? Yeah. You've never been around. such an unsurious person. It was a very different interview the most of mine. What are you talking about? I'm the Charlie Rose of Millennials.

I thought that was really fun. Lena hated it, but I thought it was fun. Lena, you want to watch Arcel this weekend? Are we rolling? Ladies and gentlemen, at 32 years old, she became head of the head. FTC under Joe Biden. Give it up for former FTC chair, Lena Kahn. Or is it commissioner? Is it commissioner or a chair?

You can call me Lena. No, were you the commissioner or a chair? I was the chair. I was the chair. Yes. Do you want to change the name at any point? You could have been grand pooh-bah. It's actually in the text of the law. Really? Yeah. I really appreciate it. Thank you.