← No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen
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- [00:00]
A
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B
Today we're going to talk about the first indications of a real revolt forming against the Trump administration. And I've got three interviews with five senators this week. After my trip to D.C. i sat down with Bernie Sanders to discuss Elon Musk's overreach and a new path forward for Democrats. I interview Elizabeth Warren about the attacks on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and I'm joined by Cory Booker, Chris Murphy and Brian Schatz together to discuss the prospect of a constitutional crisis. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen and you're listening to no Lie. It didn't even take a full month into Trump's second term. In a moment that would normally be his honeymoon period right before we're seeing some organized resistance to Trump. And I'm not talking about the usual resistance from liberals. I'm talking about the victims of his and Elon's efforts to clean house and purge the government of anyone who isn't deemed sufficiently loyal to maga. Trump's been firing inspectors, general, prosecutors, civil servants, all in an act first, apologize later approach. Effectively, all of these employees can't legally be fired. But as far as Trump is concerned, you know, fine. He'll bring wrongful termination suits and go through a lengthy one to two year court process that virtually none of these people have an appetite or the resources to even do. And in the meantime, he still accomplishes his goal of remaking the federal government in his mold, that is to say, filled with loyalists and sycophants whose loyalty will be not to the Constitution, but to Donald Trump. And the reality is that much of his ability to convey this sense of absolute power relies on our collective acceptance of it. Which is why it was particularly bad news for Trump when that bubble was pierced by high ranking U.S. attorneys. First there was Republican Danielle Sassoon and then Republican Scott Hagan, both of these prosecutors who took public stands against the administration when they were ordered by Trump's mega corrupt acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove to dismiss the charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. So Trump wanted the charges dismissed because he knew that if he could grant Adams his freedom, then Adams would be a willing partner in Trump's efforts to allow ice carte blanche into New York City City for its mass deportation efforts. So this is a true quid pro quo where Adams exchanges his freedom for Trump's political agenda. But the bribery charges that Adams incurred, which formed the basis for his indictment, those were legit and well founded. And the prosecutors who worked on his case weren't willing to just let these charges go because Trump finds him useful. And so they very publicly resigned rather than drop these charges. And that planted the seeds for a broader movement against Trump. And it came from the inside of Trump's administration, from members of Trump's own party. And I'm sure you've heard the famous line by now from Scott's resignation letter, quote, I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool or enough of a coward to file your motion, but it was never going to be me. I want to reiterate here like these US Attorneys are no liberals. They're not out there organizing BLM protests. Sassoon clerked for Antonin Scalia, is a member of the Federalist Society and was handpicked by Trump to lead the office. And Scotten is a veteran, a two time Bronze Star recipient, the former law clerk to Brett Kavanaugh and Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. For these people to take such a public stand against the Trump administration matters. Non compliance matters, refusal to obey in advance matters. It's precisely the people who don't speak out or who do obey in advance who give Trump this sense of impunity that he thrives off of. And I'm talking about the AB of the world, the George Stephanopouloses of the world, the Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg's and Shue and the LA Times. All of these people are what gives Trump this sense that he can do anything. His power is derived from the perception that he can quash all dissent. But as we're seeing here, he's not quashing dissent, he's inciting it, he's engendering it. And that dissent is growing and it's public. And it's not just coming from Democrats, but from lifelong Republicans and members of the Federalist Society. There will come a point where he'll make too many enemies across the political spectrum, and we're not there yet. But the seeds are planted. Trump thought he would show up with total power in D.C. it hasn't even been a month and already the cracks are showing. Next up are my interviews with Senators Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Chris Murphy and Brian Schatz. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. So we hear a lot about red flags, but let's talk about green flags. If you're not sure what they look like, therapy can help you identify green flags, Actively practice them in your relationships and embody the green flag. Energy yourself. Honestly, there's not a lot we can control about the world these days, but this is something we can control. So we should take advantage. And look, as far as therapy goes, I say all the time how much of an advocate I am. A lot of my friends do it, my family, even me. The stigma surrounding it is gone. And so why not invest in yourself and your mental health? You can be a little selfless this year and finally take care of you. BetterHelp is fully online, making therapy affordable and convenient. Serving over 5 million people worldwide, you'll get access to a diverse network of more than 30,000 credentialed therapists with a wide range of specialties. And you can easily switch therapists anytime at no extra cost. Discover your relationship green flags with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.comnolie to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelpH. E l-p.comnolie I'm joined now by Senator Bernie Sanders. Thanks for taking the time.
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C
My pleasure.
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B
So we're in the aftermath of an election that was largely predicated on this idea that Trump would be lowering costs for Americans. This was the highest grocery cost election. Now, Trump and Elon have come in, taken an axe to the federal government through the Doge Commission. Is what they're doing lowering costs?
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C
Of course it's not. But let's back up just for a little bit and see where we are. Because, Brian, we are in literally an unprecedented moment in modern American history. When we look at Mr. Musk. Everybody has got to understand this is the wealthiest guy in the world right now worth over $400 billion. You talk about Trump getting elected and inaugurated. Musk put over $270 million into Trump's campaign, and guess what? He's now the most important person in government. What does that sound like here? Does that sound like a democracy? A government of the people, by the people, or for the people? Or is it really an oligarchy doing the bidding of the very richest people? That's number one. Number two, what concerns me very much is the move toward authoritarianism in this country. You have Trump circumventing and bypassing Congress, deciding, hey, doesn't matter what Congress did. Congress put money into this project, they're going to do away with it. I don't want to spend that money. It's gone. And that means programs for low income working class people going to be gone. Fortunately, the courts are beginning to put a stop to what he's doing. But that is what he wants to do. Well, you don't have a democracy if you circumvent the legislative body. And then he's going after the courts. You heard J.D. vance saying, well, the courts don't have a right to stop what the President is doing. No, really. I mean, that's what 100 plus years of American jurisprudence has been about. So you got oligarchy and then you have this movement toward authoritarianism. Now, to answer your question, what is the goal? What is the end goal here? The end goal of oligarchy is to make the richest people, who are already phenomenally rich, even richer. So how do you do that? Well, you do that through massive tax breaks. Well, where do you get the money to provide trillions of dollars of tax breaks? You cut programs that working people need. Just today the House brought forth their budget reconciliation bill, an outline of it, talking about huge tax breaks, the very richest people, while they're cutting Medicaid very significantly and I suspect other programs as well. So you're asking me, are they going to cut costs for working people? No, they're not. They're going to give tax breaks to the rich and they're going to make massive cuts in programs that working families desperately need.
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B
Well, to that point, Senator, the Republicans just released their budget plan and they're seeking a $4 trillion increase in the debt limit and that would offset four and a half trillion in tax cuts.
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C
Ryan, could that possibly be true? The Republicans who've been telling us for years what a big concern it is that we have a large national debt. They want to increase the national debt by $4 trillion. Right. And obviously they want to do that to feed the hungry and to house the homeless and to make sure that everybody has health care, right? Well, maybe not. I mean, it is so ugly and so ridiculous. What they want to do is to increase the national debt. They want to cut Medicaid and other desperately needed programs for working people. To do what? To get massive tax breaks primarily to the wealthy and large corporations. That's what this whole thing is about. Keep your eyes on the prize. That's what it's about.
- [09:30]
B
Well, you know, a lot of the branding, a lot of the messaging that Republicans have been putting forward is that they're cutting waste, fraud, and abuse. And so they immediately go after usaid. They immediately go after the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And so what does it say that while they're nickel and diming these programs, which, by the way, as far as the CFPB is concerned, that's a program that costs $800 million a year, returned $21 billion to consumers who've been ripped off by predatory banks. You look at USAID, a half of 1% of the budget delivers essential programs like clean water, food for refugees, HIV prevention, and helps us with soft power around the world. And so you have these massive for a fraction of the cost, and that's to nickel and dime us out of those programs. But when you're looking to pass tax cuts that would cost us four and a half trillion dollars, apparently that's totally fine.
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C
I think as a nation, we've gotta take a deep breath. I think you framed the question exactly right. Look, is there waste in every government program? Yeah, there is. Is there waste in every corporation? Yeah, there is. But what they will do is use the issue of waste to kind of destroy entire programs. In terms of usaid, you make very important points. This is a program which is keeping hungry children alive, treating people who have HIV and other preventable diseases. And in terms of, quote, unquote, soft power, what it means is that all over the world, people are saying, thank you, Americans. Thank you for keeping us alive, for feeding our children, for giving us some housing. And that is a positive for us in terms of dealing with global issues all over the world. Winning support from people going after the consumer Financial cfp. I always get the initials wrong.
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B
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Cfpb.
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C
All right. This is something that protects consumers from predatory banks, and going after that will just make it easier for banks and large corporations to rip us off. So to answer your question, this is exactly what is going on. When there are programs that help desperate people, we kill them. When there are programs that help large corporations and big banks, those are the programs Republicans will support.
- [11:50]
B
So then what's your message to Trump supporters who voted in this election because they believed, after listening to Trump, that it was a referendum on high prices, on the cost of goods, and yet instead of doing lifting a finger to do anything to mitigate the cost of high prices, they're instead focused on stripping programs to give them the pretense of cutting waste, while at the same time delivering yet another handout to millionaires and billionaires?
- [12:14]
C
What I would say to Trump supporters are two things. Focus not on what Trump says, but what he does. And what he's gonna do is cut programs that you and your families need. Do you really think it's appropriate to cut Medicaid substantially? Those are families. Your families may not be able to get the health care that they need. Your mother may not be able to get into the nursing home that she has to get into, because Medicaid pays a substantial part of that. We're going to do away with aid to students who want to go to college. Your kids are going to have to go more deeply into debt when we cut back on higher educational programs. So the other thing that I would say is that if you are an honest conservative, you believe in the Constitution of the United States, you do not believe that the richest guy in the history, in modern history, can go around unilaterally cutting programs that were authorized by Congress. So if you're a Trump supporter and you're a working class person, understand that they're going after you. And if you believe in the Constitution and democracy, they're also trying to undermine that.
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B
But, Senator, we've seen Trump deploy this strategy before. He did it in 2016, where he came into office on the back of promises that he would make a health care plan that was more comprehensive and more affordable, of a jobs boom that never materialized, a manufacturing renaissance that never materialized, of an infrastructure plan that never materialized. And now he's doing the same thing here. And so how do you square that gap, square that circle? Basically where you have him saying one thing, consistently failing to deliver, and yet the message doesn't seem to get through.
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C
It's just not just failure to deliver. He lies all the time. And this is a whole other problem. And Trump has, you know, not going to say the politicians throughout the ages haven't lied. People lie. But he has taken it to an entirely new level. And part of their strategy is just to lie and lie and lie. You go after usaid, you come up with some crazy, outrageous lies to justify what you're doing, right?
- [14:33]
B
Like they're sending $50 million worth of condoms.
- [14:36]
C
I mean, these guys. And Musk amplifies that on Twitter, et cetera. I think what we have got to do, which the Democratic Party is at the moment incapable of doing, is organizing at the grassroots level. And I'm going to be going around the country trying to do that, trying to get working people and young people, people of color, just the majority of the people, to stand up and say, you know what? When 60% of our people are living paycheck to paycheck, where 85 million people have no health insurance. You do not need to give tax breaks to billionaires and cut programs that working families desperately need. Let's focus on the needs of workers. What do we need to do? We need to raise the minimum wage to a living wage. You think Trump and the Republicans are going to do that? Ain't going to do that. We need to make it easier for workers to join unions. You think Trump and the Republicans are going to do that? No, they've actually neutered the National Labor Relations Board, which will make it harder for workers to get their union victory certified. Do you think Trump is going to do anything real about lowering the cost of prescription drugs? I doubt it very much. So what we have got to do is focus on the needs of working people. What are they? Healthcare system is broken. Childcare system is broken. Housing crisis of enormous consequence. Climate change is threatening the entire planet and we can create a whole lot of jobs moving to sustainable energy. Stay focused on what is important to working people. Expose the hypocrisy of Trump. I think that's kind of what we've got to do.
- [16:06]
B
There are those who would say that Democrats did focus on those issues in the lead up to this past election cycle, that you had people talking about health care, reproductive rights, workers rights, and that it wasn't enough to overcome the messag that was coming out of the Right. And so. And so how do you contend? How do you contend with that?
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C
I'd agree. I don't think people were talking about health care very much at all. I mean, what they were saying is we will defend the Affordable Care act, right? Against cuts. Republicans will want to cut it. We will defend it. Fine. That's good. Do you think that's enough? The current health care system is broken. It is a disaster. We're spending twice as much per person on health care any other nation. 85 million uninsured, 60,000 people a year dying because they don't get to a doctor. Yeah, we pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. It's not enough to defend the Affordable Care Act. We need to do what every other nation on earth does. Guarantee health care to all people is a human right. That's why I strongly support Medicare for all. But what the Democrats have got to do is come up with a strong progressive agenda. Not only do we have 800,000 people who are homeless. You know what else we got? Millions of people spending 40, 50, 60% of their limited incomes on Housegate. What about a massive housing program putting people to work, good union jobs, lowering the Cost of housing. You gotta think big, not small. To Trump's credit, I mean, he lies all the time, et cetera. He thinks big. Yeah. Democrats think incrementally. Maybe in 18 years we will have accomplished this.
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B
Not good enough to that exact point. You know, in 2016, you mobilized a massive movement around the country among grassroots Democrats. We've since lost that same vigor in the party. And in fact, we've seen an. An exodus of folks out of the Democratic Party. And so looking. Looking forward in terms of how to rebuild the brand, given the success that you've had at mobilizing folks on the grassroots level, what. What advice would you give moving forward to get people excited about the party and not running complicated, not running away from the brand anymore.
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C
You got to stand for something. Bottom line. You got to be honest and stand for something. Are you prepared to take on the billionaire class who have unprecedented levels of wealth and power right now, and fight for the working class of this country? Democrats, by and large, with some exceptions, are not prepared to do that. And we need people, working class people, young people, to come in and say, you know what? This is the richest country in the history of the world. You got to back up for a minute, take a deep breath. We talk about throwing more people off of health insurance when we're the only major country not to guarantee health care to all people. Really? Are we a poor country? Are we Haiti? I don't think so. We're the richest country in the history of the world. You tell me, why can't we guarantee health care to all people as a human right? Why can't we have the best educational system in the world from childcare all the way through graduate school? You think we can't afford to do that? We can. Why aren't we leading the world in combating climate change and creating jobs doing that? Think we can't do that? We can. Bottom line of all of this is you're looking at enormous power and wealth in the hands of a small number of people who could care less about working class people not on their agenda. For some reason, which frankly, I cannot understand, they suffer from the addiction, very serious problem of greed. You got. $50 billion ain't enough. We're going to cut Social Security so I can get a tax break and maybe get $55 billion. That's the world we are living in. Have Democrats made that clear? No. Do we have to make it clear? Yes. Can we rally the American people, conservatives, progressives around that approach? I think we can.
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B
Why do you think it's so difficult to convince working class Americans that the billionaire class is not interested in them and that their economic policies aren't actually redounding to their benefit. If you look back to the Reagan days of trickle down, 1980 is really when this plan was implemented, and that is when income inequality exploded in this country. I'll put a graph right here on the screen to overlay over on top of this video to give an indication of what that graph looks like. But since those days, we have seen income inequality explode, and yet they continuously, you have a Republican base that continuously falls for this trap of thinking that so long as we continue to rig the rules in the favor of the millionaire and billionaire class, that it will somehow redound to the benefit of the working class. And all the while, income inequality continues to explode in this country, but we continue to perpetuate this cycle.
- [20:43]
C
But you're being. I don't quite agree with you. I agree with what you're saying, but I think you're letting the Democrats get off a little bit easy here. I think what is going on is not that people really believe Trump has a lot of fervent supporters. I know that. But I don't think there's overwhelming support for the Republican ideology giving tax breaks to billionaires and cutting Medicaid. But I think what has happened is people looked at the Democratic Parties and they say, you've been talking for years. What did you do? You had Bill Clinton. Oh, and Bill Clinton developed these terrible trade agreements that led to the shutting down of tens of thousands of factories in America. You had Obama. Well, Obama bailed out the banks, didn't he? Did he really protect working class people to the degree that he should have? No, he did not. And I think in Biden, you had actually the most progressive president, but not doing all that had to be done by any means. So I think people, it's not so much an attraction to Republican ideology as saying, you know, Democrats, really, you say these things, but you don't do it. So to get back to the bottom line here, you need a Democratic Party that actually stands for the working class. Not just rhetorically, but in reality, that means taking on the big money interests and fighting for working families and fighting for an agenda which will improve life for working families.
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B
Practically speaking, though, do you have any concern that by going after these interests, we've seen how when Republicans and Trump embrace them, all these people heap money onto him, heap attention onto him. And so you have, for example, all of these tech billionaires, once they recognize that he would Be better for them. Well, they, through their support.
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C
These are the great liberals of a few years ago.
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B
Right. But it stacks the deck against Democrats in such a way that they're able to then rig the rules in Trump's favor because he would be more favorable to him.
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C
Let me look at it a little bit differently here. And that is at the heart of everything is a very, very corrupt campaign finance system. Yeah. Okay. And to be honest with you, I don't know how you change things fundamentally when you have people like Musk. Not just Musk. Musk himself contributed. What was it, $270 million. One person, I ran for President of the United States. We raised hundreds of millions of dollars. You know what the average contribution was? In one case, it was $27. You know, millions of people tripping in a little bit. When you are representing big money interests, you don't have to worry about small donors. You gotta bring 10 people into the room. You can raise billion, $2 billion. That's it. And for these guys, it's a good investment. So bottom line is on that. You gotta get rid of the Citizens United. It has gotta be one of the major priorities of any serious political person. Get rid of that. Billionaires should not be allowed to buy elections.
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B
And finally, Senator, if you had one message to Democrats right now, I mean, look, the 2026 election cycle started January 21, 2025. If you have a message to your colleagues in the Senate, the Democratic House caucus, what would you say moving forward to put us in the best position?
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C
You got to understand, the strategy of the last many years has failed. All right? Years ago, the white working class deserted the Democrats. More recently, the Latino working class deserved Democrats. Some black. The strongest supporters are also deserting the Democratic Party. And you got to understand why that is the case. And so what I would say to my Democratic colleagues is, you got to break with the past. You got to stop worrying about the campaign contributions. They will come in small donations. If you stand tall. You need to have the courage to address the crisis of oligarchy in America. Take these people on. And if you're clear in your message and you're willing to fight for working people, working people will support you.
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B
Senator Sanders, thank you so much for the time.
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C
Thank you, Brian.
- [24:58]
B
No lies. Brought to you by the Merchants Payments Coalition. Credit card companies are ripping you off and you don't even know it. Every time you use a credit card, they charge a hidden swipe fee, which costs an average family more than $1,100 per year. Credit card companies and their Wall street banking partners raked in a record $172 billion on those fees. In 172 billion with a B. Americans are paying the highest swipe fees in the world. And with no competition, swipe fees have nowhere to go but up. But the good news is the House and Senate have a bipartisan bill to fix this problem. It's called the Credit Card Competition Act. The Credit Card Competition act would make credit card companies and their Wall street partners compete like every business is supposed to. It would save you, your family, everyone who swipes a credit card, hundreds or even thousands each year. Call your senators and representatives, tell them to pass the Credit Card Competition Act. I'm here with Senator Elizabeth Warren. Thank you so much for joining me.
- [25:52]
D
Oh, thank you for having me.
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B
So we are right now witnessing the all out assault against the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. This is an agency that has returned $21 billion to 205 million consumers since it was brought onto the scene. Where does it say that Republicans are attacking this agency?
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D
Talk about first how this agency got built, because I think it's actually relevant to all this. So for a long time we've had a bunch of consumer protection laws and they were out there. Shoot. So you don't get cheated on a mortgage, so you don't get cheated on a credit card. So you don't get cheated on your checking account, your student loans. Right. But it was spread among a whole bunch of different agencies and for none of them was it their first job. So what happened is some really smart, sleazy MBAs back in the late 90s, early 2000s figured out we could make a lot of money on mortgages and really cheating people on them. So they did. I mean, they made a gazillion dollars. They also built this thing that crashed the entire economy and cost 10 million people their homes, millions of people their jobs, millions of people their savings. So coming out of that, we said we're going to build this new agency and it's going to have one job. It's going to gather up all those laws that are supposed to protect you on your credit cards and your student loans. We're going to put it with one agency. We're going to make them the cop on the beat. They are the cop on the beat. Now if you are making your money by cheating people, you really don't like the cop on the beat, right? If you have in mind some new way to defraud people, you really hate that cop on the beat. And if you're one of those People who just thinks government never works. Government's terrible. Government sucks. You actually don't like an agency that returns $21 billion directly to families who got cheated because that's showing you government works. So the CFPB has kind of been right in the crosshairs for the cheaters and the people who want government to fail. And now this is their chance to go after it.
- [28:03]
B
And so why are these Republicans, why are the Russ votes of the world, why are the Elon Musk's of the world so hostile to this agency? Yeah, so because these are people, by the way, who are barreling ahead under this pretense that they're going to root out waste, fraud and abuse.
- [28:17]
D
Yeah, waste, fraud and abuse right now, again, go back to what you said because you had it exactly right, Brian. Let's do this against the background of in a dozen years, that little agency, since it was built, has returned more than $21 billion. That means they found $21 billion of cheating and fraud. And they didn't just keep the money. They actually had made these institutions return it directly to the people they cheated. So let's talk about Elon Musk for just a minute. Elon Musk, as you know, he bought Twitter and he's just lost money hand over fist on that investment. So he's had a better idea, better from his perspective, and that is he's going to do X money. And the idea here is he's going to be everything on the financial side and social side for everybody in the country, maybe around the world if he gets the chance. They're just one bump in the way, and that's the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. It's not that they say, no, you can go ahead and build a new tech platform, a financial system, good for you. But you've got to follow the basic rules of not cheating people, not lying to people and not sucking up their personal data and selling it to somebody else. He doesn't like that. So he's announced he's going to do X. What a great idea. Move the bump out of the way before you start. You know, it's a little like a bank robber saying, oop, before I go into the lobby with my sacks that I'm ready to fill up, I'm just going to fire the cops and now I'll go in and take the money.
- [29:57]
B
And so how successful is he going to be in this venture? Because we've seen a lot of this conflict thus far where we see the Trump administration say that, okay, we're going to disband this agency. We're going to disband usaid. We're going to disband the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. A lot of that is butting up against court orders preventing them from doing that. And so where do we stand right now in terms of the actual viability of the cfpb?
- [30:22]
D
Okay, so remember, we built this thing when it was already under stress. Big banks didn't want it. They wanted to be able to continue to cheat people. Republicans didn't want it. They didn't want to show that government could work. So we built it. Tough. That's. That's how I like to think of it. We got the right thing passed into law right now. Shutting down the cfpb, firing all the cops, or at least putting them all on leave so there are no cops out there on the financial beat is illegal. I don't mean it's like kind of or maybe or arguably. No, it's just illegal. So we got the system built the right way. Now what we need are the courts to enforce the law, even against Elon Musk.
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B
Elon has come out and said that he wants the funding for the rest of the year, roughly $710 million for the rest of 2025's funding, for that to be rescinded as a way to kind of starve the agency of the funding it needs to keep operating. Obviously, the purse strings are controlled by Congress, even though we've seen Republicans contract all of their autonomy over to the executive branch. But where do we stand right now in terms of his ability or the Trump administration's ability to be able to legally starve funding of the agency and kind of kill it that way?
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D
So let's do a little good news, right? I know right now we're having to do a lot of bad news. One of the pieces of good news is actually the agency has a surplus right now, so it's got some gas in the tank to keep running. But the second part of this is that we built this agency, like all of the banking regulators, outside the reach of congressional funding. Again, it's all in the law. If we can get the courts to enforce the law, the agency will have the money it needs.
- [32:17]
B
Do you have any worry that even if the courts do opt to enforce the law, that. That it'll be discarded, ignored by the Trumps and Elons of the world?
- [32:26]
D
Okay, now you really are in constitutional crisis, right? Because as you know, we have three equal branches in government, and Congress gets to initiate these laws and write them up. President signs them into law, and then it's supposed to carry them out, and the courts make sure that the administration behaves legally. I mean, that's just kind of the basic deal. If Donald Trump decides or if Elon Musk decides, I'm not doing it. I'm not obeying a court order. Now, you haven't just violated the trust of the American people. You literally have broken the Constitution. So that's what's at stake here right now. Even Republicans. Republicans for whom with an X ray, you could not find a spine in these folks. Even those people, when get stopped in the halls by even media and stick a microphone in their face, they say, whoa, whoa, whoa on that one. Obey court orders. And if you don't like the court orders, one of my Republican colleagues said, that's why God invented appellate courts. You go ahead and appeal, but you got to follow the law.
- [33:39]
B
Do you have any worry that as we see the goalpost shift and the Overton window go further and further and further to the right, do you have any worry that the same people who are right now saying, whoa, that's our red line, that in kind of the same way they've contracted all of their autonomy to the White House thus far, that they will kind of accede to his demands and say, well, you know what? This, we don't agree with this court ruling, and so we should just go ahead and ignore it anyway. Even though prior to that we had said that that's the. That's the.
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D
That's our red light.
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B
Yeah.
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D
Look, Brian, of course I'm scared. Yeah, of course I am. These guys have proven over and over, if you had asked me, we've been sitting here six months ago, six weeks ago, even, sometimes six days.
- [34:24]
B
And that's why I asked, because we're. I feel like I want to get ahead of the. Well, they couldn't possibly do this talking point and get to the point where we know that a lot of them do ultimately get to, which is that Trump says, jump. They say, how high?
- [34:36]
D
Right. So I want to go back to something you said that was really, really smart as you were laying it out. You said, the Overton window keeps shifting. Our job is to keep it shifting the other way, too. You know, one of the things that's happening right now, that little agency that has returned $21 billion that these giant banks have taken, cheated people out of you. And I know about it. Handful of people know about it. We bless them, we cheer them on, but they're not very well known. Now a whole lot more People know about them. A whole lot more people are speaking up, saying, wait, what the hell? I want a car loan without thinking, at the end of the day, I'm going to pay and pay and pay, and then they're going to come get my car. That as we get out and make the case for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, as we get out and make the case for why, for our financial dealings. It's hard enough out there for our financial dealings, we want to cop on the beat. What we're doing is we're opening that window. I get it. The right is pushing it their way, we're pushing it our way. And it matters. At the end of the day, Trump, how much is he listening to courts, but he listens to the rest of the country. Our job is to get the rest of the country stirred up over this.
- [35:53]
B
So to that point, I think it's important that we understand the argument that Republicans are using to try and detract support from the cfpb. So this has been tough for me because usually you can glean a little bit of what their excuse, their justification is even for trying to starve funding from USAID and some of these other agencies. But the CFPB is just an agency that protects people from predatory banks and financial institutions.
- [36:20]
C
Right.
- [36:20]
D
It's just a copy.
- [36:21]
B
And so I am curious to know what is the excuse that they're trying to use to discredit this agency?
- [36:28]
D
So this is actually the fun part. You put your finger on something really important, it's blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And that's what it's been from the beginning. They've been to the Supreme Court twice. It is unconstitutional. And even their Supreme Court, the one that the Republicans all put in place, said, back up, boys, it's just fine. Constitutionally, they stand up in Congress and say, I am introducing a bill today to get rid of this agency, and it goes nowhere. And you know why it goes nowhere? Because a lot of people are being helped by the agency. Because literally tens of millions of people have gotten money back that they've been cheated out of. And they think pretty damn good, and lots of others don't get cheated because that financial cop walks the beat. So I would tell you a coherent argument, if I had a coherent argument. The most coherent one I ever hear is, in effect, it's government, so it must be bad.
- [37:30]
C
Yeah.
- [37:32]
D
And I think that that is really their wish, is that we have one example after another of government not working. And the good Lord knows there are a lot of cases where Government doesn't work. There are cases where there's waste in government and we need to clean that up. But the reality is that little agency, and they gave it the most awkward name they could. So it's hard to. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Right. Cfpb. That little agency is a sliver of light that just says we're here to just kind of level the playing field. So you want to make a decision about what car you want to buy or what financial app you want to use on your phone. We're just here to make sure in the background they're not robbing you blind.
- [38:24]
B
The mission of an agency like this and agencies like that more broadly is so clearly beneficial to Americans. Are there some Republican colleagues who. Look, I get how this benefits somebody like Elon. I mean, and you laid it out perfectly clearly how he would derive some benefit from the elimination of this agency. But other Republicans who, for example, don't own a social media platform and aren't looking to be able to subvert financial regulations, to be able to introduce some new form of currency, of digital currency, who could say, look, no, this is a good agency. We've returned billions of dollars to the American people. This is something I'm gonna put my foot down and protect. Or is the political pressure from Trump World too great that even your Republican colleagues are saying, I gotta toe the party line here?
- [39:13]
E
Yeah.
- [39:14]
D
And it's the latter. It's that people understand this. You know, I talk to Republicans and they get it. They understand we need, for example, ultimately it's good for everybody if there's stability in the mortgage market and not if one out of every three mortgages. And by the way, it'll look just like the other two on its face in fact is cheating people and will cause them to lose their homes. That's not good for anybody. And they, most of them ultimately understand that. But we live in a world right now where they don't want to hear it, they don't want to see it, and they don't want to speak about it.
- [39:50]
C
Yeah.
- [39:51]
B
Senator Warren, thank you so much for taking time today.
- [39:53]
D
You bet. It's good to see you.
- [39:54]
B
You too.
- [39:57]
A
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- [40:29]
B
I'm joined now by Senator Schott, Senator Murphy, and Senator Booker. Thank you guys all for joining me.
- [40:34]
F
Thanks for having us. Thanks for letting us be here.
- [40:36]
B
So I want to start off with kind of the most pressing issue that we're contending with right now, and that is the impending prospect of a constitutional crisis. And we've seen more and more how right wing media very quickly has warmed up to the idea of seeing rulings that they don't like. And as we see, obviously, the executive branch is wholly owned by Trump. The legislative branch has contracted its own powers out to Trump. And so the judicial branch is really the last bulwark right now that we have to stop against his worst excesses. Now you have folks in right wing media and in the legislative branch on the right as well saying, well, you know what, if a ruling here doesn't kind of comport with our political ideology, then really we have the prerogative to just ignore it. So as this crisis continues to bear down, I guess what's your message to folks out there who are seeing just three weeks in that we may be on the brink of a major problem.
- [41:32]
E
In our democracy, just not to give up, not to concede that that's where we're inevitably going to end up? I do think we are. There's a real chance that in six months that Trump consolidates power in a way that is more similar to autocrats in Belarus or Turkey or elsewhere. But it is not a foregone conclusion. And so it is not brave, it is not strategically sound. It is not tactically wise for us to concede as though that has already happened. What has happened over the last couple of weeks, actually, is that federal courts have ruled that what Trump is doing is illegal. And for the most part, the Department of Justice has instructed their departments to comply with the orders. Will that stand? Will they never defy an order? Will they never precipitate a constitutional crisis? I don't know the answer to that, but I do not think we want to speak that into existence yet because the judicial branch has stood up as a bulwark against this unlawful activity. And I just, look, there's lots to be worried about, but I don't like to be on an anticipatory basis worried about what happens if this, what happens if that, like we're, we are in the middle of a fight right now. We've had actually some success in federal courts, and we need to build on that success.
- [42:47]
F
I think that's right. But it is probably worth pointing out that what he has already done that the courts have not stopped is pretty dire.
- [42:56]
C
Right?
- [42:56]
F
I mean, we sort of breezed right past the January 6th pardons in this country because I guess the idea that he was going to do that had already been normalized. But that's absolutely extraordinary. That's never happened in the history of. History of this country to have people who have engaged in brutal acts of violence in service of the president's political agenda be given immunization for that.
- [43:18]
E
Against cops.
- [43:19]
F
Against cops, right. I mean, brutally beating cops, Tasering them, beating over the head with metal poles. You know, that happened. The courts cannot overturn that, and it has real consequences for our democracy. And that stands in a list of things that he has done and already gotten away with that pose an existing danger to our set of democratic norms. So I agree with Brian. You know, so far, the courts have done their job that that might not hold. But there is also a series of things that Trump has done that signals we're in for a really rocky road and that people have to be ready to raise their voice at, you know, real states United, really, really loud, perhaps unprecedented levels.
- [44:03]
B
Let me reframe the question a little bit then, because there are. I get that we don't want to give in and do anticipatory fear for what hasn't even happened yet, given the fact that there's already so much shit that's happened that is worthy of focusing on. But I guess to give a little bit of relief to folks who are watching this all play out. Is there a plan then, in the event that some of the worst, the worst of what he could do does play itself out?
- [44:29]
E
I worry a little bit about this. What, you know, is there a plan politics in a campaign or in a legislative context, or if you play chess or you play poker, you cannot come in and say, if he does this, I'm going to do this. If he does this, I'm going to. We have to actually be responsive. And because they're in charge of the government, we cannot map out our strategy for the next three months. We are working strategically, but that's different from being able to articulate, here's what we're going to do on March 14, here's what we're going to do on March 22. That's not actually how this works. We have a strategy, and Corey has talked about it a lot, but it's basically where we can use legislative leverage. We will do so, where we can slow down significantly, slow down the process. We will do so. But really, to me, in addition to the court battles, what we need to help to do is build a citizen movement. Any movement that has successfully fought autocracy has had the moral high ground and the political high ground of not 500 people at an office or 300 people at a town hall, but hundreds of thousands of people peacefully in the streets standing up for American democracy. So, to me, our collective goal is to build that citizen movement. We have a role to play in exercising power where we have it. But the only way you beat autocracy is with people power.
- [45:47]
B
Yeah.
- [45:47]
G
Look, I'm gonna say a couple things. One is, first of all, the three of us have been at this a long time. Trump won. We would meet, we would discuss what are the options and levers that we have to pull. And inevitably, you've said them. There's the sort of the legislative levers that we have, the procedural levers that we have. We have been meeting with and working with Democratic attorney generals and the lawsuits that they're filing. But the biggest power that we have that worked in Trump won to stop the healthcare efforts to pull away healthcare for millions of Americans. Even now, we've seen that the throwback pitch of this last, most important power worked when they tried to cut all federal funding. And really, that is the collective voices that we all have to rise out up and shout it out. And for me, here we are. It's February's black history in some of the worst, most atrocious moments of governmental power of the past, where authoritarianism in its worst formats. I've been talking a lot about the Hayes Tilden compromise, the election of 1876, the outcome, which was basically, Tilden won the popular vote, Hayes won the Electoral College, and the bargain was, okay, the Republicans can have the presidency, but reconstruction is over in the south, pull out federal troops, which led to one of the worst periods of terrorism literally in our country's history, where black elected officials were being dragged out in the streets, beaten, lynching, spiked up, Klan ruling. It was a horrific time, but yet these citizen activists like Ida B. Wells started coming up and saying, we will not let this go. She used to talk about shining the light of truth into the darkness. And what she was able to do was to galvanize a nation against lynching and against a lot of the other atrocities that were going on by exposing them and. And ultimately planting the seeds that allowed sort of future movements to happen. So I know we're not there, and we're not seeing that level of violence, but yet at the same time, that kind of resistance, that kind of truth telling, that kind of never say die, I'm going to stand up for the most vaunted principles of our country relentlessly actually is power. And to me that's what we need right now. I know I sit in meetings with these guys and others about trying to tactically all the things we can do here. I'm happy about what's going on in the courts. But your voice, our collective voices matter and can make a difference.
- [48:21]
F
Can I just put a fine point on this? The reason that we're talking about public action is because they're actually isn't a built in solution in the system if the president decides to violate an order of the court. Right, because the Supreme Court doesn't have an army at its disposal, the Congress doesn't have police to go out and execute a court order. So the Constitution doesn't really have an answer for what happens if a president says, you know what, I don't agree with that quarter, I'm doing whatever the hell I want. And but Brian is right, it's happened before. It's happened in many countries, in many democracies around the world. And it's the people that ultimately put enough pressure on the system non violently to be able to restore, restore that order. That doesn't mean that we don't have an obligation to protest, to lead, to make their life as hard as possible. But ultimately it's a, a cooperative relationship between people like us that are in positions of power and the people who ultimately are the ones that can provide that check that is not really built into the Constitution in the case that the executive just says forget it, I'm not paying attention to the courts.
- [49:40]
B
Well look, you guys are some of the most effective messengers that we have in the Senate and I do like to focus on the issue of media. That's the space that I work in. Is there any worry that as we see the way that Republicans have consolidated support among the folks who own media platforms, how they've really been able to entrench themselves as influencers, content creators on the right, that the deck is so stacked against Democrats by virtue of the Elon's of the world, the Zuckerbergs of the world, the shoes of the world, who are content to heap money into Trump's pockets, content to align themselves with the right, that it is an insurmountable battle to be able to message people when really the folks who are in charge of the algorithm are stacked against.
- [50:29]
G
Us Right now they have a better right wing ecosystem than we have. They're getting tens of millions of more views of right wing content and that's a disadvantage. I know this because I watch utter lies become almost accepted truths by the mainstream. Like this idea that millions of condoms were sent to Gaza, to Gaza. I mean, that is an utter factual lie. But I bump into people who have seen it 60 times on their feed, on their scroll. That's what we're fighting against. And so that's my worry, is that people don't understand that this ecosystem of truth or the ecosystem of facts or the ecosystem that is progressive, it right now has to rise up, it has to form. People have to be understanding that they play a role as a citizen truth teller to be engaged in this space because if not, we're going to continue to lose out to these folks. And the last thing I'll say is, yeah, Elon Musk controls X. Yes, there are bot farms in Russia focused on, yeah, we're up against all of that, but that still doesn't mean that we're powerless. And that's why you're sitting here and that's why you create the content you create. It's why I spend so much time digitally, not just for myself on my own platforms, but trying to work with the rest of my caucus to lean into what is 21st century communications.
- [51:56]
B
Let's talk about that asymmetry, because I think that when we see these lies being perpetuated by Carolyn Levitt at the White House and then amplified by Elon Musk, he was questioned about that and he just said, well, yeah, you know, some of the things that I say are gonna be inaccurate. But that's not until he's already shown 46 million people, which was how many impressions he got for that condom lie, that Gaza condom lie on Twitter before. They've already seen that. And so there is that asymmetry at play where you don't see Democrats just perpetuating the lie, only to then say, ah, well, you know, I was wrong, my bad. They're content to clean up after the fact only because they know that they've already gotten what they need out of it. And again, we don't see that on our side.
- [52:40]
E
Well, we don't want to turn into a bunch of liars either. But I do think that the, and Chris and I have talked a little bit about this, that, you know, a lot of lawyers on the Senate Democrats, I'm not one, but there are a lot of people who are very precise, very responsible Want to get all their facts straight before they start to allege something or assert something. And, you know, Chris's point to me is like, do they deserve the benefit of the doubt if they're not sharing any information with us? It'd be one thing if, like, you know, the normal course of business, you call the Office of Legislative affairs of the other party, they give you the information, maybe you send a letter, right? Letters sound so feckless now. Maybe you send a letter, they send you a letter back, you get the information. But lacking the information, we should probably not give them the benefit of the doubt anymore.
- [53:23]
B
And first of all, you saying the word letter, I'm sure sent chills down the spines of every single news watch, because it is. It's the perfect microcosm for.
- [53:32]
E
You should see my text strings with my staff. I'm like, another fucking letter.
- [53:36]
B
Another strongly worse worded letter. Like, that's gonna. That's gonna solve it this time.
- [53:39]
E
I love my staff.
- [53:40]
G
First of all, the way our government was designed is everything is gonna move slower than my generation. Lower wants things to move. We're a system of checks and balances. Things have to work their way through the court, the whole legislative process. The one way that we could try to stand up to Trump's blitzkrieg of illegal actions is by calling it out and rising up with our truth, with our light, with our really, our willingness in an unfettered manner, to call the crap out. And so that's why I'm just so urgently want folks to not wait but to start calling bullshit right now. Like, you drew a line from starting with the January 6th pardons right away of people who beat viciously injured, spinal injury, skull injuries, police officers. I draw that as a consistent line that's continually coming through all the way to the point where deciding whether you prosecute the mayor of New York. That decision didn't come from the U.S. attorneys or other. It came from the top of the Justice Department. And we know how, in my opinion, corrupt that is. It is an upending of what we know to be the rule of law in this country. It's an upending of constitutional norms. And the only way we're going to stop that, and I have a lot of faith, actually, in the courts ultimately. But these are things that are going on, these decisions made appeals and the like. The most powerful way to stop injustice, as I see it, again, especially here we are again in Black History Month, the most powerful way to stop injustice is for popular movements to rise up and do it.
- [55:14]
B
How do you guys think about dealing with this idea of conferring goodwill onto the Republican Party in an era where we see, for example, that when Democrats have control, when Democrats had control during the CARES act, right? This was before Joe Biden took office and the CARES act, all Democrats voted for the CARES act, even though doing so would give a win, a political win, to Donald Trump. Joe Biden takes office, tries to pass the American Rescue plan, does so only with Democratic votes. I'm not sure if he had a couple of Republican votes, but in any case, there was no reciprocation there. And we see that over and over where when Democrats have control, they'll make concessions to pass the bipartisan infrastructure law, the bipartisan gun safety law. They will name the bills in such a way that people know it was a bipartisan venture to give some credit to Republicans. Turn around and we see a situation where, you know, Merrick Garland on the Supreme Court, for example, we have a new rule, no appointments to the Supreme Court in an election year, except for Amy Coney Barrett, when votes are quite literally being cast. And so there is a recurring theme where goodwill is conferred onto the right that isn't reciprocated onto the left. And so has that impacted how you're thinking of working with the Republicans? And I know that that means that we enter into an era of even more acrimony and less compromise and more dysfunction within the government. But does the fact that there is that asymmetry and that that goodwill isn't reciprocated, does that make you think differently if we're in a position where we regain the majority, that that's going to be offered up?
- [56:47]
F
Well, I'm not going to permanently give up on the idea that we can find bipartisan compromise. I mean, you pointed out the bipartisan Safer Communities act as maybe a moment of Democratic weakness, that we cooperated with Republicans. Well, yeah, we passed a bill that wasn't ideal. It wasn't everything that we wanted. But since we passed that bill with some Republicans supporting it, murders have gone down in this country by 20%. That was a good thing. The question is, can you work with Republicans in the middle of a constitutional crisis when democracy is on the line? And right now, I think that this crisis is serious and deepening in its seriousness, that our job, number one, number two, and number three, is to save our democracy? And so that means, you know, for me, when it comes to nominees, there might be one or two of these nominees that on their face, are kind of mainstream conservative thinkers. But I'm not Going to support somebody that's going to implement a blatantly illegal policy like withholding federal funds from not for profits in my state that are legally due to the money that Congress authorized. So, no, I don't think that we should give up on the idea that once this constitutional crisis is solved, either inside Congress or from pressure outside of Congress, that we can get some things done together. But right now, the focus has to be on protecting our democracy and protecting the wholesale theft of our government by this billionaire class.
- [58:18]
G
I just want to double down on that point. We lose in America if we give in to this idea that we can't find common ground in this country. And the way we've done big things from simple.
- [58:30]
F
I'm just gonna put out some. Some props, some drinks for us.
- [58:33]
G
Okay.
- [58:34]
F
Just in case you want one. Just in case you want one.
- [58:36]
G
I really appreciate you doing.
- [58:38]
B
Yeah. All right.
- [58:39]
F
Just in case. Just in case.
- [58:40]
B
I feel like we have to talk about the elephant in the room. I was told.
- [58:43]
F
I just want to make sure.
- [58:45]
B
I was told that you were a fan of Diet Mountain Dew because was regular Mountain Dew unhealthy. And so Diet Mountain Dew offers you. Offers you something that regular Mountain Dew.
- [58:55]
F
Mountain Dew is disgusting. Diet Mountain Dew is delicious.
- [58:59]
B
Would you be able to tell the difference between the two?
- [59:01]
G
Yes, you can tell the difference between Diet Mountain Dew.
- [59:03]
B
I haven't drank Mountain Dew since I was maybe nine years old.
- [59:06]
E
You know why? Because I'm a grown.
- [59:09]
B
A grown ass adult.
- [59:10]
E
And that traffic.
- [59:12]
G
If you need to get caffeine inside of you. My point again is we need to be a nation that we can come together around big ideas and big things. And I can go through the major legislation historically that we've done together as a nation. And of course you have people that don't vote on both sides. But to Chris's point, the bipartisan CHIPS act, this is a big game changing bill that we were able to do together. Biggest infrastructure investment, bigger than Eisenhower highway act was the infrastructure bill that we did in a bipartisan way. That's a big thing for our country. These are huge victories and they actually show presidential strength and congressional strength. Donald Trump is not showing strength right now. Does our government need to stop waste, fraud and abuse? Absolutely. Are there big things we can do?
- [60:02]
C
Yeah.
- [60:02]
G
I sat with John McCain before and talked about the corruption in the military and the incredible waste that was there and how we need to change it so we can have better fighting force and more efficiently spent money. But the reality is the way Donald Trump is doing it right now is evidencing his weakness that he can't come before the nation and put together a plan. It's not like how Clinton, who was the last person that balanced the budget, got rid of the deficit, started taking down the debt. And so I never want people to come away from this to say that the way we are more successful is we become more like the worst of the Republican efforts that are going on right now. That is letting somebody drag you so low that you lose who you are. The last thing I want to say, though, that doesn't mean in a moment of existential crisis that we don't fight with everything we have using the tools and tactics that we can to stop them. There is a long history in our nation of stopping authoritarian efforts to stopping people who want to scrap our constitutional ideals. And again, it's always come by noble people in this place that fight well, but always by everyone realizing I have agency, I have power, I have voice, and I'm going to use it in this moment that my country is calling me where my country's very values are at stake. I'm going to not be on the sideline. I'm going to be a foot soldier for this democracy and engage and that's what we need right now.
- [61:34]
B
Sounds like the perfect place to leave off. Thank you guys for joining. Thanks again to Senators Sanders, Warren, Booker, Murphy and Schatz. That's it for this episode. Talk to you next week. You've been listening to no Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen, produced by Sam Graeber, music by Wellesley and interviews edited for YouTube by Nicholas Nicotera. If you want to support the show, please subscribe on your preferred podcast app and leave a five star rating and a review. And as always, you can find me Rienteller Cohen on all of my other channels. Or you can go to briantylercohen.com to learn more.
- [62:10]
G
Price tracking by Expedia. You were made to use your do not disturb mode. We were made to track flight prices to out of office Expedia made to travel available as a member benefit.