The Bulwark Podcast - Olivia Nuzzi and Dana Mattioli: A Deflated Trump

Episode Date: April 24, 2024

The one-time most powerful man in the world is now being told when to sit, when to stand, and what he's permitted to say. Scenes from the New York courthouse, with Olivia Nuzzi. Plus, Dana Mattioli discusses her book on Amazon, a modern-day Standard Oil, with huge power across numerous industries—but which is also on the outs in DC. show notes: Dana's book, "The Everything War: Amazon’s Ruthless Quest to Own the World and Remake Corporate Power."

Hey, everybody, a massive Wednesday on the Bullard Podcast Network. On this feed, I've got Olivia Nuzzi with a report from inside the courtroom where she's been with Donald Trump the last four days. It's pretty funny. And then I'm interviewing Dana Mattioli about her book on Amazon, something we don't spend a lot of time talking about here, the Amazon behemoth. So stick around for both those. If you want more political hot takes, I'm doing the TikTok ban and what's going on with Mike Johnson and Mitt Romney's takedowns and RFK, everything, polling. That's over on the next level with JVL and Sarah Longwell. So make sure you're subscribed to that. If you want more on the upcoming immunity hearing and also everything Trump trials, George Conway explains it all to Sarah Longwell. They've got

a new episode coming up too. So make sure you're subscribed to the next level and George Conway explains it all. Before we get to Olivia, I issued you guys a challenge yesterday when it comes to finding me a time where Donald Trump mentions being humble and I was humbled by your responses, which I'm going to, you're about to find out in a second. But before we get to the one that was maybe not humbling, maybe humiliating for me personally, I would like to listen to the funniest example of Donald Trump talking about being humble with John Dickerson of CBS. Let's take a listen. When you were in Iowa, you went to a church service. The sermon was in part on humility. What did you take away from that? Well, you know, they didn't really know I was coming because of security reasons, okay? And so we just sort of showed up. Maybe they changed

quickly, or maybe it was coincidence, but it was actually humility. I don't know. It was very good. It was a very nice service, beautiful church. I liked it. But humility. I mean, a lot of people don't think your name is on everything you have often talked about. Sometimes braggadocio is part of your pitch. No, I know. But there's more humility than you would think, believe me. Hidden humility. We're all the same. I mean, we're all going to the same place, probably one of two places, you know. But we're all the same.

And I do have actually much more humility than a lot of people would think. But you don't want to show it. I'd rather not play my cards. I want to be unpredictable. He's the humblest. He's the most humble. Has anybody ever bragged harder about being humble than Donald Trump? I don't think so.

One other observation about this one and the next clip I'm about to play. I've always been on the side of the argument that Donald Trump is the same as he was in 1980, that there's no Donald Trump getting worse, no Donald Trump deteriorating. He's always been a dark soul. He's always been a POS. And, you know, anybody that's trying to argue that he's gotten been a dark soul he's always been a pos and you know anybody that's trying to argue that he's gotten worse that things have gotten uh is just trying to do a post-hoc rationalization on why they went along with him in the first place but man watching these videos

that video and the next one i'm about to play both from 2016 there is at least a little bit more joie de vivre about trump back then. We get into this with Olivia, the sad, lonely, skulking, mumbling kind of old man. I'm starting to come around. If you really just watch 2016 versus now,

there is a difference. He's still the same bad person at his core, but there definitely has been a deterioration of Donald Trump over the past eight years in a way that's really stark when you compare, especially early 2015, or at least it's nine years ago, early 2015 video compared to this recent video from outside the courtroom. Anyway, here's the humiliating one, what you've all been waiting for. Here's Donald Trump talking about being humble. Ever ready. It's very high energy, Donald. Mr. Trump?

Humble. That's a good one. Oh my God, guys. If you couldn't see it, so you're just listening. This was the debate where Jeb Bush, my boss, slaps five with Donald Trump after Trump had been just mercilessly attacking his family and his wife and just been a just

general asshole. It's just one of those moments on stage where Jeb made a joke and made Trump laugh and he put out his hand and he slapped five with him. I swear I must have blacked out. So I was like, how did I not remember Donald Trump saying that his code name would be humble? That's the context of this. When Jeb says that he's ever ready, I think the question was, what will your secret service code name be? You know, I didn't recall that Donald Trump had made that joke about himself in that very moment, right after Jeb had slapped five with him. I love you, Jeb. It happens. It happens to the best of us. I'm telling you, I blacked out. I blacked out when it happened live. That's why I don't remember. And I'm getting the chills just rewatching it now. So a big, I guess, thanks and kind of a middle finger to Andrew, who grabbed that video and emailed it in. You win the challenge that I laid out yesterday.

Donald Trump has mentioned being humble, ironically, and at the expense of my former boss. All right. Up next, live from Manhattan, Olivia Nitzke. Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. I'm delighted to have Olivia Nitzke back. She has been in court with Donald Trump. And so she is our, I don't know, kind of informal, maybe en route to being formal correspondent from Manhattan, depending on how long things go.

Alongside Ben Wittes, we have multiple correspondents because that's how on the ball we are here at The Bulwark. Olivia, thank you for doing this. Yeah, thanks for having me. I forget if it was on social media or if actually on TV you said the words that you're feeling like David Attenborough. Was it on social media? I am feeling like David Attenborough. It's like, I feel like I am watching a nature documentary when I'm watching Trump interact with his attorneys or react to the prosecutors or react to the judge.

And all that you can really do when you're sitting there is sort of assess his body language and try and read his facial expressions and understand the dynamics of the case through what you can read from his behavior you know yeah i thought maybe you meant it in the sense that we all can't watch this you know it's like you're reporting back from deep in the jungle to those of us who are starved for information because we are we need you we need your eyes and ears that you you've seen these you know kind of animals that we've not these creatures that we don't have access to. Yeah, it's really crazy. I mean, it's a crazy state of affairs that there are, you know,

there's still photography allowed in the courtroom immediately when Trump comes in and sits down. So, you have some photos each day just of what he looks like sitting at that table before the jury is brought in, before the reporters are brought in and before proceedings begin. And then you have some footage of him, you know, entering the court when he will often speak to the press and, you know, bitch about Tish James or about Judge Breshawn or whatever else. And Doris Dave McCormick, like he did. That's exactly what you're looking for if you're running for Senate,

just a press conference from a defendant outside the courtroom giving you his affirmation. And you get him, you know, on break, or you get him when he's leaving the court. But other than that, you know, when it comes to what it actually looks like in there for him sitting there as a criminal defendant, as a case is being made against him. There's no documentation. There's only, you know, a couple of reporters in the room and a couple of sketch artists. Yeah. Well, so I want to go through the developments from the case yesterday, from Tuesday, but just you've been in what, four days now? I mean, I'd love to hear just some broad observations. And I hear it's cold in there. It is really cold. What it's like,

what his vibe is like, what the jurors, anything that piques your observational interest. It is really cold in there in his defense. He keeps complaining about it. He complained about it on Tuesday again when he was speaking to the press outside the courtroom. It is very cold, but it's a very old building. And last week, I believe, when his lawyers complained and they asked if they could just raise the temperature by one degree, it was explained to them that, no, this is an old building. If you raise it by one degree, it'll like raise by 20 degrees, and then we'll all be sweating. And you don't want that. And the first day that it was reported that he had fallen asleep, it happened to be, I believe, pretty hot in that courtroom. I wasn't there that day. So, you know, if I were him, I asleep it happened to be i believe pretty hot in that courtroom i wasn't there that day so you know if i were him i'd want it to be cold so that i could stay kind of alert

you know i guess have you seen him doze off or have you smelled him have you i have not seen him doze off the other day i thought for a moment i thought it looked like perhaps he was dozing off but then i realized that actually what it seemed to be was that he was looking down at a piece of paper on the table in front of him. And you couldn't quite see that there was a piece of paper there at first, because it was obscured by this screen in front of him. that have said that. If they're sure enough that they saw that and they feel comfortable reporting that, I certainly defer to Maggie Haberman and her judgment about that or about anything, really. So I just didn't happen to see it on Tuesday. Talk to me about your olfactory. How's it smelling in the courtroom? I mean, when you're in there, so many people have asked me about this. When you're in there with the press, you're not close enough. I don't think that you would be able to confirm or deny that that had occurred.

But certainly a rumor going around. So how many people are in the courtroom? I don't know. I don't know how many are in there. It's him and his lawyers. It's not like his family isn't there with him. He seems pretty alone. Well, no, his family is not in there.

So on Monday, when they were doing opening statements and his lawyer, Todd Blanche, he kind of gave this spiel to the jury explaining, I'm going to call him President Trump. You're going to hear him referred to as President Trump because he's earned that title was the way that he phrased it. And he deserves to be called President Trump. And then he said but president trump is also a man and he's also a husband you know trying to humanize him and bring him down to earth to the jury while also making it clear that like this is someone who

commands respect and should be respected but when he said that it was the first time that it actually occurred to me wait a second no one is here there's no family there melania is not there that's strange it's really i guess it's not strange with donald trump because it's donald trump but it's really strange in the nature of that you you know one would expect someone with a large family like him would have somebody would want to attend with them you know you're not necessarily a legal analyst but in this situation i think this makes your your observations actually more relevant, maybe, as more in the peer set with the jury. How do you assess the lawyering that's happening in the room? Like, is Todd Blanche good? Does he seem like do, even just in terms of the stagecraft of it. He kept backing away from the microphone and sort of pacing around. And when you do it's sort of a strange thing where they're saying, okay, it's not illegal to have an NDA with someone. And it's not illegal to try to influence an election. But also, no one has acknowledged whether, are they changing their mind?

Did Trump actually have an affair with Stormy Daniels now? I mean, they did have an NDA. Did they have a relationship? It's just a strange thing where it's like, nothing that he did was illegal. But also, we're still not acknowledging that he did anything that he's accused of. Yeah, I mean, where he's hiding it from his wife. But we're not telling you what he would have been hiding. Consistency Mitt Romney had a good quote yesterday on the trial. He said, I think everybody has made their own assessment of President Trump's character. And as far as I know, you don't pay

someone $130,000 to not have sex with you. I can't picture him saying the word sex. Well, he did. So let's listen to Mitt Romney saying the word sex. I think everybody has made their own assessment of President Trump's character. And so far as I know, you don't pay someone $130,000 not to have sex with you. spoke to Donald Trump, I was in a yellow cab in Manhattan. The first time I ever met him, I was at Trump Tower in his office. And, you know, I've covered him a lot in New York, but we haven't covered him in New York very much recently. You know, he's mostly, he was in Washington, or he's at Mar-a-Lago or at Bedminster. He's seldom at Trump Tower. And he's kind of hasn't been a real New York character in much of the last eight years. And there's something sort of disorienting about being back here. And very sad, not that I feel sad for him, but more like just sad that this sort of just incredible series of events that like

turn this reality tv star into the most powerful man arguably in the world and i keep thinking looking back yeah i guess it was inevitable that we would end up here in a criminal court yes it was what do you think about just like image of him as this like diminishes him or weakens him. You know, what do you think about that? I don't know. I've seen him in a lot of different contexts over the years, obviously. I'm very rarely surprised by anything or anything I see as it relates to him.

I've seen him very angry. I've seen him dancing to the YMCA. Like, you know, there are many Donald Trumps. And then there was something about seeing him for the first time in that courtroom, hunched over in his chair, and then he sprang up at the end of the proceedings the other day because he clearly just wanted to get the hell out of there. I don't blame him. I wanted to get the hell out of there too. It's really hard for me to sit still too. And I'm not being insulted for an hour. And the judge looked at him and he was like, sir, could you please sit

down? And then he immediately like sank back into his seat really quickly. Like almost like he was a child being, you know, chastened in a classroom or something. And there was just something about watching that, that just, it's really strange. it's strange to see someone who is so used to having complete autonomy and being powerful and dictating the terms of like any situation that they are in not have the power anymore to even dictate when they stand up it's very strange it's humiliating it's almost you might, like a dog being told to sit. That's interesting. Not like Commander, though.

I don't think, not like Joe Biden's dog. Yeah, no, Commander doesn't take commands like that. Okay, we have two, like, just the facts things we got to get through. So talk us through what happened, both with regards to the gag order and then the pecker testimony. So Trump has repeatedly, flagrantly violated his gag order and then the pecker testimony so trump has repeatedly flagrantly violated his gag order he is often violated that gag order while walking into the court um he has sometimes violated it on truth social at least while he's in court um and basically what it seems like when you're you're watching the judge and the lawyers interact, is just that Judge Mershon is completely

fed up with Trump and his lawyers and the sort of fuckery that they are dealing in. And you can just tell that part of him is almost like amused by how ridiculous it is. And part of him is just sort of like, this is very disrespectful. And you guys are going to have to kind of find God on taking seriously my authority here as a judge in this court. And so Judge Marchand did not rule yet about the gag order. The prosecutors are asking for Trump to be fined and to be warned that if it continues, he could face jail time. But Judge Marchand did sort of say in an exasperated way to Todd Blanch, Trump's attorney, I'm going to need you, I'm paraphrasing, but I'm going to need you to make an actual legal argument. He was sort of just making the general argument that Mr. Trump is, or sorry, Mr. President is a candidate

and he has a right to defend himself and you cannot prevent him from commenting on things that are relevant basically to him as a presidential candidate. And Rashan seemed to think that that was not actually a substantive legal argument. So then we're at this point now where it's might he get threatened with jail time? At this point, the prosecutors are just attempting to fine him. I believe it's $1,000 for each individual violation of this gag order. And it's funny, I keep seeing people say, oh, well, you know, it's $1,000. It doesn't matter to Trump. Years and years ago, Spy Magazine sent Trump a check for 13 cents as a bid, and he cashed the check. So I just the idea that he doesn't care about this, you know, minor sum of money, I think is not true. I think he cares about any sum of money.

And that's sort of like an integral part of his personality. But will it actually deter him from violating the gag order? No. But if they are actually going to threaten jail time, which the prosecutors say they want, they want him to at least be threatened with that or to have it made clear to him that he could face jail time, then maybe he'll he'll reign himself in. But I don't know, has he ever reigned himself in? No. Right? That's why I kind of want them to threaten him with jail time. This is like the classic Trump. It's just like, you know, he's going to keep pushing and pushing. But okay, well, we'll keep monitoring that. What about, so then the first witness is David Pecker. Talk to us about what we heard from him. The first witness is David Pecker. He began his testimony on Monday. At the end of the day, he spoke for a few minutes. It was funny watching, you know, when they begin with a witness, they're adding a lot of context and, you know, helping the jury understand who the witness is, what the witness's role in the universe is and how the witness fits into the case. So you get a lot of like, details about the person and their job and how they live their life that don't directly relate to the case. And watching Trump sit there, having to like listen to details about someone else's life that did not immediately directly

relate to him was very amusing. Because he really has no tolerance for that type of thing. Like he can't talk about another person without it being about him, in my experience. So he was sort of like sitting there, like he was twirling a pen around in his fingers and like looking off and just, you know, watching him process his own boredom has been very funny. But David Pecker basically described his place as a media executive and running the National Enquirer and a deal that he cut with Trump and with Michael Cohen for what we now all know as a catch and kill, which is when you purchase a story from someone, not with the intention to publish it, but with the intention to suppress it and keep it a secret. And Pecker described basically hatching this plot

to use the National Enquirer to fabricate or exaggerate in false detail stories about Trump's rivals during the campaign in 2016. So Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and above all, Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton. Yeah, the Ted Cruzz ones you and i were both in different kind of ways very intimately involved in that and it is interesting to kind of revisit all that like we all knew it was bullshit like we all knew that trump and those

guys were involved at some level but just like having the plain testimony of oh yeah no we just made up the cruz's dad kill everything and oh yeah the thing about how ted cruz like slept with five women and like that kind of nasty like you know gross accusations that got put out there like michael cohen was getting to edit those articles even apparently like that pecker was sending them to him before they were publishing. I mean, just how debased it was and absurd and all of that just being put out there so plainly. Did you also have that reaction? Yeah, I mean, I guess, obviously, as you said,

we all knew that they were involved in some way. But just how obvious and simple it is, actually, that they were basically involved in the editing room and at the level of like story conception i don't know there's something about it that makes me feel like oh god like what an idiot i am that i thought it had to be a lot more complicated than that like you know oh it's just that there was a wink and nudge thing happening no there's no wink and nudge it was just it was a straight donald trump deal yeah it was not subtle it was not complicated it was a wink and nudge thing happening. There's no wink and nudge. It was just a straight Donald Trump deal. Yeah, it was not subtle.

It was not complicated. It was just exactly what it seemed like. Yeah. Okay. Any other final observations from our first few days or things you're looking forward to? Are you going to be there? Do you expect to ride this thing out?

Or what are your plans? I mean, I plan to be there, you know, either in or around the court as much as possible. And, you know, I plan to be talking to as many of the people involved in the case as possible. We have a bunch of witnesses coming up. We don't know when because the prosecution has told the court that they will not be announcing witnesses ahead of time because Trump has attacked and intimidated witnesses before. So that's sort of unusual and just goes to show, you know, how peculiar these circumstances are in this case, because of Trump's inability to get a hold of himself and not attack people involved in it. But you know, we're expecting Michael Cohen, obviously, Hope Hicks, Stormy Daniels. Like there are tons of... Like the Seinfeld finale. Yeah, I was just going to say there are tons of familiar characters. There is a sense of like, oh, okay, like this is the final season of a show.

And like all of the story arcs are sort of crisscrossing and everyone's meeting up here in this courthouse. God willing. Well, thank you for coming back on the pod, Olivia. And hopefully you can keep doing this and tell us what you're seeing and hearing and smelling and feeling and all that. Thank you for having me. Thanks so much to Olivia Nuzzi. Up next, Dana Mattioli. We're going to be talking about Amazon and tech and stick around. It's going to be good. All right, welcome back. I'm with Danaana mattioli a reporter covering amazon for the wall street journal she's the author of the new book the everything war amazon's ruthless quest to own

the world and remake corporate power thanks for coming on the board podcast happy to be here so i just got to tell you up front like all these other big tech companies i intersect with my world way more because of the media news consumption. I mean, Jeff's bought the Washington Post, of course, but just like the disinformation side of things, the Facebook. We don't give as much scrutiny or thought to Amazon around here. So just at the broadest level, get us up to speed at what the essential story was that you were trying to tell and what the big potential threats or concerns might be? Yeah, I think for a lot of Americans, Amazon's gotten this free pass because it wasn't involved in election disinformation per se.

And good on them for not getting involved in election disinformation. Low bar these days, but we'll take it. Right. But it's become this just behemoth of a company with really no modern analog. It's almost like this modern day standard oil to the point where it's literally hard to avoid. Even if you're not shopping on them, there's a very good chance you're using something backed by AWS, their cloud server.

If you're taking an Uber or Lyft or you're watching Netflix, that's an AWS, Amazon Web Services. They're in healthcare now. In the middle of reporting out this book, they acquired my doctor's office, One Medical. So they have all my labs and my charts and stuff, right? Yeah, really? I loved one. I had a great experience with One Medical out in the Bay Area. I did too. I was one of their early users. They are a grocery company, a logistics behemoth. They unseated UPS in the matter of a few years. That's a hundred-year-old giant, right? So they've ascended to be one of the largest companies beyond retail and like

all these different tentacles that they've sprouted. It's like the standard oil cartoon of the octopus, right? Where it has all of this power across industries and they're able to synthesize and leverage that in really interesting ways. Yeah. So my natural reaction to this as kind of a free market as a not kind of as a free market sympathizer as I look at Amazon and I get the potential concerns. But as a practical matter, hasn't Amazon like improved people's lives like wildly on balance? You know, I mean,

it's just unbelievable. Like I needed I needed some party supplies for a party I was throwing on Saturday. I ordered them Friday night. It was at my door Saturday morning. That's pretty good, right? I mean, that's at least providing some value to my life, unlike Facebook. Well, it depends on what you're getting. I think the people I've spoken to for this book whose houses have blown up because they bought an electric scooter off of Amazon where the battery exploded would say it hasn't improved their life or people who bought toys on the platform that have lead in them for their children because it's an unregulated platform of third-party sellers who sometimes dumpster dive for things to resell would say that it hasn't been a great experience for them.

So I think, yes, it's become ubiquitous and it's easy. It's fast. It's free shipping. So it's convenient, but it's not apples to apples as to, you know, going to your local Target store and getting off the shelf, something off the shelf that's been vetted. And it's definitely from the manufacturer, right? Like there's a risk that comes with it too. And this is a company that says that they're customer obsessed, but then there's a lot

of discrepancies between that statement and some of their actions. You know, there's a scene in the book where some of Amazon's own employees bring this up. They're worried about the quality of goods coming in on the children's apparel side of the business. They lifted this friction because they wanted all the selection from all over the world for their customers. But then things were coming in that were smelling like gasoline that weren't flame retardant. I feel like I've gotten some gasoline smelling deliveries. Hoodies for children with, you know, strings around the neck, which is just a huge strangulation hazard and it's banned in the U S and they raised this to their boss.

And they said, Hey, we're going to add some barriers to entry for the children's space to protect the customer. And he said, don't you do that? That's someone else's job. And this person is now elevated to the head of like customer trust. I don't know. I'm a mother. I don't want my child wearing clothing like that. Yeah, I think that's fair. And it has avoided the kind of regulatory oversight in a way that some of these other guys have.

I want to get into Lean to Con first, but let's hear a couple of the other stories from the book, you know, about the ways that their aggressive culture evolved. You know, kind of initially, it was really kind of a Seattle company, right? It had this crunchy reputation. It was about books. Bezos was nerdy. As I started to read it, I actually didn't realize that Bezos was always a cutthroat finance guy, because those early pictures of him in the garage being a nerd, I kind of thought he was a bookworm that hit it big. That's how zero I knew about the Bezos origin story. But some of the employees were that, right? So talk about early Amazon and how it evolved.

Yeah, some of the employees were. Jeff was not. Jeff was this hedge fund guy. He understood arbitrage. But when he moves to Seattle, largely because of the tax advantage, not really because he loves Seattle. He moves there. Not because of the coffee culture or Nirvana or whatever. I don't think he was big into grunge. So he moves there and he hires these early employees to come on and help him build Amazon. And what's interesting about them is they are the granola types. They are mission-based, nerdy, and they join because they want to democratize reading. They think that this is so cool that you could get books to people in far-flung places that

can't readily get to their bookstore. And so they're joining for that, not to get rich, but there's like, you know, a culture difference between him and them. There's a scene in the book where he kind of yells at them, like, you don't have the killer instinct that he clearly has. And Jeff later on would go on to hire people in his image, people that definitely had the killer instincts and all the old guard leaves. And it's funny, I circle back to a lot of the early 90s employees for this book to just to see like their thoughts on Amazon. Do they use the site? Like, do they have any misgivings about it?

And majority of the ones I spoke to, even though they became enormously rich working for this company because of the stock options, have canceled their prime accounts, try to avoid Amazon. And some of them even said, you know, did we help create a monster? Yeah. Are they doing some guilt charity work? Some of them are, yes. I hope so. I got that Catholic guilt inside me. I'm hoping they got some, they're doing some guilt charity with that cash. One of the early stories that is a good example of this that I hadn't heard about before was the diaper.com story. There's some parent company, but it was essentially the diapers.com and the way that Amazon just squeezed them out.

Tell that anecdote. Amazon says that they're customer obsessed, but they also pay a lot of attention to their competitors. And this is a good example. There was this company diapers.com out of New Jersey that had figured out how to ship diapers to moms and dads across the country in one or two days. And this is, you know, in the 2010 timeframe when that was not ubiquitous at all. This definitely catches Amazon's radar. They start getting worried about this company and its logistics prowess and how they're doing it. And they start tracking it. They put together internal documents on this, this whole plan to win against diapers.com,

a 12-step plan. So they start discounting their diapers and offering promotions. They're trying to steal share from this new upstart. And diapers.com tries to compete with them. And Amazon becomes interested in just like buying them out, like buy out the competitor. And what's interesting here is, you know, diapers.com resists. They don't, they don't really want to be owned by Amazon. And Amazon then slashes the prices of its diapers by like 30%. They start losing $200 million a month on diaper sales just to stick it to diapers.com and say, all right. Moms start to get primed for free. Moms get primed for free. They give away their free. So here's me as a consumer. I'm like, pretty good. Moms are getting primed for free.

Amazon consumers are loving this. It's pretty much getting, I mean, not pretty much, they're getting diapers below cost. And it's at this point that diapers.com starts missing all of its projections. They can't compete. They realize there's predatory pricing going on, but they don't really have recourse. And then they do have to sell the company. They really don't want to sell to Amazon. They start engaging with Walmart. They get an offer.

They engage with Amazon. They get an offer. And Walmart actually makes a really great superior offer to Amazon while they're at dinner with Amazon's leadership. And they look at their BlackBerry, they get an email from Walmart with this great offer, $100 million more than Amazon's offering them. They tell the executive team at the dinner, hey, we're going to take this Walmart offer. And they're threatened. They say, okay, you want to sell to Walmart? We'll slash the diapers prices on Amazon to $0. So basically, we'll put you out

of business. And in dealmaking, there's something called a Mac clause. So if you sign a deal to be acquired, but something materially horrible happens to your business in the interim, the buyer could walk away. So that's kind of the threat they're making, like good luck trying to sell to our rival. And Quidzy or diapers.com was forced to sell to Amazon, which they really hated. And $100 million less than what Walmart was offering them. And it was actually a really sad moment for the founders. They'd even go out for a drink to celebrate.

They felt like they sold out to this company that was making their life hell. And what about the Trader Joe's in Singapore? That was also one that struck me. I love this story too. You know, Amazon has a really cutthroat culture that starts with Jeff and filtered down into the company where it's like almost like the Hunger Games when it comes to the employees there. Like,

they're really brilliant, but a lot of them get 6% of them get cut at the end of the year. And a lot of the really shocking behaviors in the book are driven by this crazy culture. So Trader Joe's, Amazon was launching this private label food brand called Wickedly Prime in 2015. And they even wrote a six pager, which is how they, they pitch things to management, which is like a dream for a reporter. Cause you get these six pagers saying that their goal for this brand is to copy the top 200 best selling items at Trader Joe's, but they couldn't figure out what those items were because Trader Joe's is secretive. They don't have online shopping or reviews. So it's kind of hard to

figure it out. To help them, they go and poach this woman from Trader Joe's snacks business. She interviews for the job at Amazon. She's not really told what exactly she'd be working on. It's a little bit hush hush. And then her first week in Seattle, she's walking around headquarters and she stumbles upon this conference room. And it's got brown paper covering the windows and the glass in the door, so no one could see inside it. She's intrigued. She walks in and it's just filled with boxes of Trader Joe's snacks. And she starts piecing things together. Teeny tiny avocados. Exactly. Chili and lime flavored tortilla chips.

I see that you're a fan of Trader Joe's. I was at one time. So she gets a little panicked, like, what the hell am I being hired for? And then it becomes abundantly clear because her manager starts saying, hey, what documents do you have from Trader Joe's? I want them. Obviously, a huge breach of friend DA, possibly corporate espionage. So she resists. She doesn't want to share this because you know,

it could be deemed illegal too. She resists. She doesn't hand them over, but the pressure becomes so much that she winds up emailing him and the team, a spreadsheet of their top selling items over the course of the week feels really bad about it. And then he doesn't stop there. He says, give us the margins too. So that she fights back. He screams at her, just give us the data. She cries in the middle of the office and it gets reported to legal because this is not normal business practices. The team gets fired, but it's just emblematic of this broader culture there. And stuff like that happens all the time, like literally all the time. Okay.

You're starting to make me feel a little bit worse about my prime story by story here. I want to talk about the DC side of things. The book, I guess, probably you're starting working on the book before this, but in a lot of ways, it's pegged to the Lena Kahn FTC lawsuit against Amazon for being a legal monopoly. It was the fall of 2023 that they began engaging in this. the Lena Kahn FTC lawsuit against Amazon for being a legal monopoly. It was the fall of 2023 that they began engaging in this. My instincts, I gotta tell you, Lena Kahn's getting complimented by J.D. Vance and Matt Gates.

It's making me question things. I'm like, uh-oh, when the far left and Matt Gates and J.D. Vance are agreeing on something instinctively, you know, my guard goes up. So talk to us about the case and basically the arguments that she's making. Yeah, I will. But to your point on that, it's so strange. It's the weirdest bedfellows on this fight. Yeah, it's something that these, you know, these sides can't agree on this, but this is what they agree on. All right. So Lina Khan obviously made her name in 2017. She writes this law review article about Amazon saying it's a

monopoly. She's a law student at the time. No one really knows who she is, but it goes viral and it really elevates her career. People start questioning if Amazon's a monopoly. It was this darling. People love their prime, to your point. And people weren't thinking about the other effects of this company at that time period. But it's the first time when people started to use the word Amazon and monopoly in the same sentence. She has this meteoric rise. She becomes a legal counsel to Congress on their investigation into big tech. She has all these other positions. And then in 2021, President Biden picks her to be the head of the FTC, the youngest in the agency's 100-year history,

which is something that shocked a lot of people, including people at the agency. And definitely Amazon, because this was kind of their Ida Tarbell. She had started all these problems for them, and now she's at the head of the agency regulating them. So in September, the FTC filed a lawsuit against Amazon. It sort of comes full circle. It says that Amazon is this monopoly, that it is hurting sellers on the site and customers, and it's raising prices for consumers on Amazon.com, but also in the entire internet online economy. And that's where we're at now. That was in September.

What is the kind of timeline status latest on that? So they will be starting discovery soon. You know, these things move really, really slow. It won't go to court until October 2026. Oh, wow. Bezos has been, you're right about this a little bit, like not exactly deft at navigating Washington, I guess, as evidenced by the fact that, you know, his nemesis got put at the head of the FTC. You know, you might think that they could have lobbied the administration on that one. Talk about just their engagement with Washington altogether. In a lot of ways, they have, as I mentioned at the top, kind of avoided the type of scrutiny that you might

expect to date. But talk about their engagement with Washington and the regulatory regime and Congress for that matter. Some of the hilarious stuff in the book was like related to this. Jeff has always been really disinterested in the DC side of being a corporate titan. He told his head of government relations years ago, hey, if I wanted to go to the Hill and do this stuff, I wouldn't have hired you. Just leave me out of it. To the point earlier, he could be really pugnacious. He could be reactionary.

He's not really someone who's diplomatic on that sort of stage. So there was this weird dichotomy where the company still thinks it's a startup, but it's hundreds of billions of dollars. It's starting to crush Main Street. It's being called into question by other competitors about its tactics. And Jeff saying, we're small, we're misunderstood, not really wanting to spend the time in DC. So in 2013, the board starts telling him, hey, we have to take this seriously. We spend the time in DC. So in 2013, the board starts telling him, hey, we have to take this seriously. We need to bring in a heavy hitter

here. We can't avoid DC anymore. They wind up bringing on Jay Carney, the Obama spokesperson in 2015 to head up government relations and PR, like a really big hire for the company, reports right to Jeff. And the scenario plays out. The people in D.C., he builds up this team. They start spending a lot of money on lobbying. They get really good people in D.C., people from the FTC, the DOJ, who worked on the Hill, that understand government relations. They understand that you have to be diplomatic and extend the olive branch and all this stuff. But in Seattle, Jeff and his team, who do not understand D.C., would be reactionary and oftentimes rude. He would tell his team whenever there was criticism, punch back.

So there's scenes in the book where he and his deputies are on conference calls for hours, ginning up nasty tweets to senators that are determining the company's legislation, like whether the company is going to be broken up. And the DC team is like super frustrated. I didn't actually go back and look, but I have this memory of being in DC in that area and being on Twitter, obviously, and seeing Jay Carney would occasionally send stuff. And I was like, that's kind of aggro for Jay Carney as a company spokesperson. But the context here is that he's getting pressured by Jeff and the team. He took on a lot of Jeff's demeanor here. And they would just attack like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.

They came out swinging. You know, Jeff gets into a whole pissing match with Joe Biden that backfires where Amazon's leadership learns that the Biden administration starts viewing Amazon and Bezos as too toxic to touch. So he never gets an audience with Joe Biden while Jeff is CEO. He doesn't get invited to these roundtables. And there's these funny scenes where Jay Carney, who seems so well positioned with the Biden White House, he worked for the vice president at the time. All his friends are in senior positions. He's literally texting them, pleading, saying, please invite us to the next roundtable.

Can you include Jeff here? And they're just like, he's persona non grata. You've burned your bridges. So the DC team had this saying called watering the flowers. They would try to appeal to different people on the Hill, make Amazon's case, build a good rapport. And then in Seattle, Jeff and his leadership team were just stomping all over the flowers, undermining their efforts, sabotaging everything. And they had this

scorched earth approach to DC that really did not help the cause. Yeah, it's kind of really amazing that in spite of that, you know, they still sort of avoided, you know, some of these actions. So I guess maybe it's coming now just just slowly but surely i do wonder on the other side of the fence obviously he doesn't have a good relationship with trump either though you do mention a funny story about how his new are they married and his new wife is it is it a new wife or girlfriend they're not married yet the new girlfriend did kelly and conway have hit it up but donald trump obviously does not like the jeff bezos washington post which he bleats about all the time. Are they concerned about a Trump administration and them being on the retribution list? How do

they kind of see, obviously they don't have a good relationship with Biden either, but how do they see this matchup? Are they concerned now or were they concerned the first time? Now. They have really awful choices. Both administrations have been really bad to them. And in some ways, they were more concerned about Trump to begin with, because there was all this vitriol. Trump was tweeting about Bezos. He was tweeting about the Washington Post. He was calling Amazon a lobbying arm. And before he became president, he said, this is a monopoly. I'm going to break them up, right? So they were worried about that, and they were unprepared for it. Interesting thing is the Trump administration was all bark, no bite. And I asked Peter Navarro, I said, you know, if you guys were so concerned

that Trump thought this was a monopoly, why didn't you do anything? And he said, well, we would have gotten them in second term. Who knows? Biden administration, you know, they don't send nasty tweets and stuff like that, but it's been so much more damaging for Amazon. They've been totally shut out. At the Trump White House, they actually had some backdoor meetings and had some cooperation with his administrators and aides. Biden team is not really friendly to Amazon. They picked Lena Kahn to head the agency regulating Amazon, which was like a huge blow.

There's a scene in the book where Klobuchar leaks that at a hearing and the Amazon people are watching it. And they just say like, what the fuck? blow. There's a scene in the book where Klobuchar leaks that at a hearing and the Amazon people are watching it. And they just say like, what the fuck? Did she just say that Lena Khan's going to be at the FTC? And she didn't even say that it was going to be the head of the FTC at the time. I don't think she just said she's going to be on the FTC. So that was a huge blow. And he's also kind of trolled them a little bit. I don't know if it's intentional, but he's welcomed all of Amazon's biggest rivals to the White House with open arms. Doug McMillan, the CEO of Walmart, Chris Smalls, the agitator from the Staten Island Amazon warehouse that was the union activist, whereas

he won't meet with Bezos. So it's been a really interesting dynamic to see play out that both presidential candidates are not at all Amazon friendly. It'll be interesting to keep watching. And we need to do more Lena Kahn on here. What an interesting character. So we'll keep monitoring that as well. Dana, thanks so much for doing this well-reported book. I like learning stuff, you know, about things that are on my radar, but ish, you know, I've just, I've just been a normal average consumer out here enjoying my prime and not thinking critically about it. So I appreciate you challenging me on that. The book is The Everything War, Amazon's Ruthless Quest to Own the World and Remake Corporate Power. Thanks for coming on the VORG podcast.

Thanks for having me. All right. We'll see you guys all tomorrow with another edition of the VORG podcast. SCOTUS is in session looking at the Donald Trump immunity claims. We'll talk about that and much more. See y'all then. Peace. Ooh that good once you said it on my taste buds I get way too petty once you let me do the extras Pull up on your block then break it down we playing Tetris A.M. to the B.M. B.M. to the A.M. funk Piss out your per diem you just gotta hate them funk If I quit your B.M. I still rock Mercedes funk

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