The Ben Mulroney Show - Does America Have Its Own Oligarchs? Comparing U.S. Power Networks to Russia’s Elite System

Episode Date: May 7, 2026

GUEST:  DAVID SIROTA / founder and editor-in-chief of The Lever If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://link.chtbl.com/bms⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Also, on youtube -- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@BenMulroneyShow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Insta: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Executive Producer:  Mike Drolet Reach out to Mike with story ideas or tips at [e-mail] Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast is brought to you by the National Payroll Institute, the leader for the payroll profession in Canada, setting the standard of professional excellence, delivering critical expertise, and providing resources that over 45,000 payroll professionals rely on. I got to tell you, one of the great joys of doing this job is I get to be introduced to really interesting people who do really interesting things and I get to have these conversations with you here on the show. And so let's introduce you to one of those interesting people right now, the founder and editor-in-chief of the lever, which is a reader-supported investigative news outlet. And they are focused on exposing the negative influence of corporate corruption on American society. Please welcome to the show, David Sorota. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you. Thanks so much for having me.

So, okay, so how do you go from being a speechwriter and a senior advisor to Bernie Sanders just a few short years ago to building out this investigative journalism site? Thanks for asking. So I've dabbled in politics and I've been in journalism and some people have asked, isn't there a conflict there? And actually in my own life, I found it to be sort of an alignment of interests. Like if the goal is to reduce the power of oligarchy, the power of corporate power in our politics, then sometimes you can work in politics and sometimes you can work in journalism if that's the if that's the central goal. And I think working for Bernie Sanders, I mean, by the way, I worked for him at this point, 28 years ago when he was in the U.S. House. And I then came to work back to work for his presidential campaign. So I got my start, my real political education with Bernie Sanders working in the late 1990s in the U.S. House. I sort of saw the political world through his eyes at that time to really understand, oh, we should be watching where the money is going. Like it's less important to watch what politicians are saying, and it's more important to watch where the money is going. Because usually what they're saying and ultimately what they're doing is a reflection of who is paying. You know, it's interesting that you bring up.

It feels like American Canada have completely different problems as it relates to media, but they lead to the same place. And on one hand, in the United States, you've got the concentration of the power of the media in these very big corporate hands. And in Canada, it's almost like the opposite. We've got direct subsidies by the government to newsrooms. But the end result seems to be the same, which is either a real or perceived bias in the media and a distrust of that media. How do you push back on that?

And how do you do things differently so that you can avoid any accusation of bias? Or, I mean, is it because we know where you're coming from, that therefore the bias is clear? It's such a great question. And I put it this way. I don't think there is objectivity. I think there's fairness and I think there's accuracy. But I don't think that objectivity exists in our world in this way. The minute you say, this is a story and this isn't the story. Yeah. Yeah. In other words, what you decide is news and what you decide is not news. You have made a subjective

decision. And you've made a subjective decision, frankly, based on a subjective decision. set of values and viewpoints and ideologies. And so I think when publications go out, news outlets go out and say, we're objective. We have, we're voice of God here because what we're telling you is the news and that's just an empirical, unimpeachable analysis. That's false. That's actually dishonest. And so what I say is like, look, you basically know where I'm coming down. I'm an open book when it comes to what my overall viewpoint and ideology is. what my view of what the big set of problems is in American politics and politics generally. And what my commitment to you as a journalist is, is that what I report is going to be fair and accurate and verifiable when it comes to documents and true.

Now, it doesn't mean it's the only viewpoint. It just means I'm being honest with you. And so what I've said to people is like, look, if you have a problem with like what stories we're selecting, what we think is news and what you think is news, that is ultimately at any publication, a product of viewpoints ideology or so-called bias. That is a biased decision. What I worry more about is if you tell me, hey, you got this thing wrong. Or, hey, you missed this fact. So I think it's a much healthier media environment when people are, when outlets are more open

about their overall viewpoints. And we can, as news consumers, understand where they're coming from, but at least expect that what they're providing to us is factually accurate and fair. David Sorota, you know, they're there exposing the negative influence of corporate corruption on American society. So the question is, I mean, are there corporations out there? Are there positive influences of, of, well, there's, I can't be positive influence of corporate corruption, but are there positive examples of corporate influence that are benefiting American society? Look, I certainly think that industries, various industries, we as the public, can have an alignment of interest with.

I mean, I would say if we scientifically understand that the climate crisis is happening, and we understand that there should be laws put in place to acknowledge that and deal with that and try to reduce the emissions from that, when we put those laws in place, there are going to be industries that pop up to offer the products and services that help us reduce carbon emissions. I'm just using this as one example. Yeah. Right. I think like those industries using their influence, using their community ties, their ability to get a message out, helping create those policies is not a bad thing. I think it would be a bad thing if like those industries are like having, you know, cash stuffed envelopes to buy lawmakers to get their way. Like that's not so good. But I guess my point is it's not like all business is bad. Yeah. What we're talking about here is, is in the United States, I've always seen it as there are countervailing powers. The best economic times, I think you can say in our country, the sort of New Deal prosperity of the mid-20th century.

I mean, it's not a perfect time. But what I would say is there was countervailing power. Business had power. Unions had countervailing power. And there was kind of an equal. where the political system was represented in sort of in the middle of that and sort of arbitrating some of that and dealing with that. And that created a kind of equilibrium that I think benefited the country when it came to policy. The problem now is that the power balance is completely out of whack. There's a handful of oligarchs and corporations that have most of the power. And there's very little organized countervailing power. And so the government are we talking about the Amazon's of the, are we talking about the tech bros of the world? Yeah, exactly. I mean, whether it's the tech guys, whether it's Wall Street, on the fossil fuel situation, right? Money is organized and people, comparatively speaking, when it comes to politics, are not. And so the government is often reflecting that in its policies, which are out of step from where the public opinion is, but in step with where the organized and resourced political forces are.

Now, you use the expression oligarch, and a lot of people, when they hear that, they immediately think of sort of the Russian, the buildup of Russian wealth in the hands of very powerful people. In your mind, are the two systems more similar than we might think? I do think that we are moving into, in the United States, certainly in the last 10, 15 years, into more of a kleptocracy, a sort of authoritarian kleptocracy where I still think that the United States,

its small D democratic institutions are stronger than a place like Russia as an example. But in terms of where wealth and power is concentrated, like just the sort of architecture of the economy and political power, I certainly think we're moving, we've moved into an era. and not to use a historical metaphor

instead of a foreign metaphor that is much more reminiscent of the Gilded Age in the United States where so much power is in the hands of so few people. And I think it's time for rebalancing. I mean, I've thought that for a long time. And I think it's now obvious to everybody.

Like I think Donald Trump, in a sense, like I'm obviously against almost everything that Donald Trump is doing. I do think he's doing us a favor in one way, which is he's so excited. explicit and blatant and brazen about how he's behaving, that I think you can't ignore it. Yeah. Well, I'm going to continue my conversation with David Soroda, the founder and editor in chief of the lever when we come back. Got a lot of questions for you, David, particularly,

what are you working on? What deserves more attention? What do you think of independent journalists? And I want to talk about this movie that you made a few years ago that I mean, you're, We're a renaissance, man. So don't go anywhere. Sometimes I feel like we're living inside of it. The Ben Miller show continues. Some crimes are so shocking. They don't just make headlines.

They forever change our society. I'm Katie Ring, host of America's most infamous crimes. Each week, I take on one of the most notorious criminal cases. Each case unfolds across multiple episodes. Release every Tuesday through Thursday. From the first sign that something was wrong to the moment the truth came out or didn't. Listen to and follow America's most infamous crimes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Okay. So what I was saying was you asked, where are a democratic institutions in peril? I would say the courts have lost a lot of their legitimacy because they have seen, I think the public sees them as a rubber stamp. I think also Congress, a lot of people are asking, why isn't Congress doing anything to stop Donald Trump? And I think.

The other piece of this is that Congress has stopped asserting itself as a co-equal branch of government. Yeah. You have seen votes in Congress to, you know, to not stop Donald Trump's war. David, we, our country was was tariffed by a power that wasn't his that was sort of just given to him by by Congress. That shocked a lot of us here. Yeah.

Exactly. if you talk about the crisis of democracy in the united states when your most democratic institution of government of the three branches the congress the house that's getting reelected every two years that's literally in the constitution this is supposed to be the small d democracy uh institution here when it is allowing that to happen um that is also the democracy crisis and i think ben i think it frankly it goes to something that as far as i know you don't have nearly as badly it in Canada, which is a completely corrupt campaign finances. Yeah, our campaign.

Yeah, ours is far far. Yeah, I like ours. I like ours. I, I think there's this far left graph far less that's done in secret here. Yes. I mean, our campaign finance system is a system of legalized bribery almost explicitly at this point where tons of money comes in directly to politicians or to massive super PACs that spend on their behalf and favors go out.

and the Supreme Court has effectively legalized this. So I've often said to friends recently, you know, oh, you're waking up to the democracy crisis right now. It's a democracy crisis. Let me introduce you to 40 years of almost every election up and down the ballot being bought and sold on a, you know, turning elections into auctions. Yeah. And this has become so explicit at this point that the democracy crisis, I think,

then becomes a legitimacy crisis where you have a large segment of the population that feels disillusioned. Like, I cannot believe in my government's ability or willingness to ever do anything on my and the public's behalf. That is the real crisis of democracy. David, we have a lot of people who've been writing and wondering what your take is on the rise of the quote unquote independent journalist. And the biggest one that comes to people's mind is Nick Shirley, who, like I was saying before, depending on whether you fall on his side of the fence or not, he either is a rabble rouser. He's peddling in misinformation, possibly race baiting, or he exposed some real, some real graft that needed to see the light of day.

My take on independent journalism is that we need more journalism. And I want to underscore the word journalism because there's a difference between journalism and media. Journalism is a subset of media. Journalism is reporting facts that people don't want to be reported. Everything else, as this old saying goes, is public relations. Journalism is a skill. It is a profession. It is not something just sort of hot taking on with an opinion of the day.

It is surfacing information. And I think the problem with a sort of corporate media dominating journalism is, as we discussed before, you're always getting a perspective, even if the publication isn't saying it's giving you a perspective, even if the publication says it's objective. And I think if you have a corporate-dominated journalism, you're only going to get a sort of corporate perspective in terms of what is delineated as news and what is it. So I guess that's a long way of saying, I'm glad there seems to be more opening for independent journalism right now. But I would also say this, it's going to be messy, right? It's going to be like democracy is messy. A vibrant free press is going to be messy.

And what we rely on is that when misinformation or disinformation or factually inaccurate information is put out there, the media ecosystem, the journalism ecosystem, strikes it down. Not censors it, but counters it. That's a healthy media ecosystem. And so I think, but it's not going to be, you know, quote unquote clean. It's going to be messy. It's going to be loud. And last, only about a minute left. I wish we hadn't had those technical issues because I wanted to ask you about, about your film.

And if you're ever going to work on something else like that, but I'll end on this. What is the biggest story that you think we should be paying attention to today? What are you paying attention to? What's the next investigation that you're going to be going into? Well, I'm obviously still looking at any climate story. That was what our movie was sort of a metaphor for. our movie don't look up about it, you know, asteroid headed towards Earth and nobody seems to care. But I think it also could be an AI movie. I mean, honestly, I think people can watch that movie now and

say, you know, is the asteroid AI? No, you're right. I'm deeply focused on AI and the power of the tech industry. And I'm wondering what is going to happen from AI when it comes to job displays. But also where does the wealth of the AI, the AI creation go? And very quickly, one last thing I'll also say. On the other side of AI is if AI doesn't pan out. So much investment has been made in AI is that investment, let's say AI doesn't deliver what it's promising? Is that going to crater our economy in a different way? Not displacing jobs because AI replaces them, but displacing jobs because so much investment over investment has been made in AI that it collapses the economy, big short style. That's what I'm looking at. David Sarota, I really hope we get to do this again sometime soon,

a really fascinating conversation. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks so much. Thank you.