LINA KHAN Talks FTC, Monopolies, Biden

Summary

The Adam Friedland Show — Lina Khan Talks FTC, Monopolies, Biden (Nov 12, 2025)

Episode Overview

In this episode of The Adam Friedland Show, host Adam Friedland sits down with Lina Khan, former Chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), for an in-depth conversation spanning her background, tenure at the FTC, antitrust enforcement, the state of the U.S. economy, and the influence of corporate power. Khan, known for her transformative approach to antitrust and consumer protection, offers candid reflections on her rise to prominence, policy battles, and the tension between political ideals and real-world enforcement. The tone is conversational and irreverent, with Friedland mixing humor and probing questions.

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Guest Background and Early Life

Personal and Academic Background [05:40–09:12]

• Lina Khan shares she grew up in Baldurge Green, England, before moving to Westchester, NY, attending Mamaroneck High School.
• Discusses her high school journalism, notably an article challenging a Starbucks policy that led to her being cited in The New York Times.
• She admits to being a newspaper editor and a diligent student but jokes about being humbled by getting a B in hard math classes.
• As an undergrad, Khan wrote her thesis on philosopher Hannah Arendt. She explains Arendt’s analogy of technological progress requiring intellectual “altitude,” which can create expertise but also blindness to ground realities—a theme Khan relates to the financial crisis.
  • Quote: “She has this analogy with the plane... airplanes allow us to do pretty great stuff and make physical distance shorter, but it requires an altitude that makes you see less.” [09:36]

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Early Antitrust Work and Amazon Article

Amazon, Monopoly Power, and Antitrust Blind Spots [12:06–13:36]

• As a law student, Khan’s influential article critiqued the then-prevailing antitrust standard focused solely on consumer prices, using Amazon as the case study.
• She gathered insights from both businesses selling on Amazon and long-term investors/analysts, arguing that structural market power, not just price, needed scrutiny.
  • Quote: “At that time... the general consensus in D.C. was that Amazon is... delivering all these low prices… but when you talk to those sets of market actors, they were like, yeah, of course this company is amassing structural power.” [12:12–13:36]

Explaining Antitrust Drift [13:43–15:45]

• Khan notes that practices once illegal (e.g., predatory pricing) were overlooked post-Reagan as “monopolies are good unless narrowly proven otherwise.”
• She emphasizes that antitrust law historically aimed to prevent concentration of economic power as a check on political power, a concept lost in recent decades.

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Transforming the FTC

How Khan Was Chosen [18:01–21:03]

• Adam presses Khan on how she became FTC Chair at 32; she describes the mysterious selection process—White House staff call, background checks, and HR vetting.
• Notes unusual youth for the FTC and contends her selection signals shifting attitudes toward antitrust enforcement at the elite policy level.

Khan’s FTC Mandate and White House Backing [24:43–25:19]

• Adam asks if the Biden administration gave her an explicit mandate.
  • Khan: “The White House was very supportive... President Biden did sign this executive order in 2021 that was pretty significant... I'm directing my government to basically turn the page on that failed approach.” [24:48]

Bringing the FTC into the Digital Era [30:22–31:15]

• Khan details structural changes she initiated:
  • Hiring more technologists and litigators to confront digital monopolies.
  • Emphasizing litigation and aggressive enforcement despite being resource-limited (FTC had 1,300 staff against corporations with vastly more lawyers).
  • Quote: “Sometimes the... in-house lawyers of these companies are greater than... the entire... competition bureau of the FTC.” [30:52]

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Major Cases and Agency Impact

Healthcare and Pharma Wins [32:03–32:40]

• Targeting pharmaceutical “patent tricks” (notably the “orange book”), the FTC under Khan prompted major drug companies to lower inhaler prices after regulatory scrutiny.
  • Quote: “Three of the four big manufacturers of asthma inhalers dropped the price from hundreds of dollars to just 35. So... thousands... people who rely on inhalers... are paying less today.” [32:21]

Challenging Tech Giants and Market Power [33:46–34:08]

• FTC sued Meta/Facebook; trial outcomes still pending at the time of interview.
• Khan hints at unprecedented lobbying pressure and access big tech leaders have to the White House.

Chilling Effect on Big Mergers [32:48–33:00]

• Khan cites companies now factor in antitrust risk early, a departure from previous eras: “Back in the day, we didn't have to think about antitrust risk… but under this administration, we have to think about it right away.”

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Pushback, Media Attention, and Agency “Lightning Rod” Status

Elite Backlash and Media Campaigns [22:08–23:53; 23:12–23:53]

• Khan faced strong backlash from Republicans, finance/M&A sectors, and big tech, with at least 53 negative op-eds on her approach.
• She notes a double standard historically in enforcement—“elite impunity” for C-suite execs, while small-fry fraudsters got the “full force of the law.”
  • Quote: “We were very clear that we were going to enforce the law in an evenhanded way... that approach... upset some people.” [23:53]

Media & Public Persona [55:52–56:22]

• Khan reflects on negative press coverage, especially from The Wall Street Journal, but generally preferred to “let our work speak for itself.”

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Regulatory Philosophy and Political Obstacles

Agency Independence and Judicial Challenges [37:28–48:16]

• FTC supposed to be independent, but realpolitik: “It doesn't really matter as much because it’s all being run out of the White House.”
• Agency efforts (e.g., on noncompete bans, subscription cancellation rules) were sometimes blocked by hostile federal judges, a trend worsened by the current judiciary.
  • Quote: “There has been a general drift, coinciding with more Republican appointees... of just more hostility and skepticism of federal agencies...” [47:07]

Systemic Underfunding and Litigation Challenges [50:00–51:23]

• Major antitrust cases are expensive (tens of millions in expert costs), with agencies’ budgets far outstripped by corporate legal spending.

On Corporate Power and Monopolies [12:07, 53:08–54:36]

• Khan describes chicken farming as an illustrative case: millions of small farmers depend on a handful of major processors, leading to “sharecropper” and “feudal lord” dynamics.

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Khan’s Reflections and Vision

Cynicism vs. Urgency [54:45–55:28]

• Adam asks if the experience made her cynical. Khan replies that the urgency of reform left “no time to be cynical or bummed for too long.”

The Law, Rule of Law, and Political Will [57:03–62:16]

• Friedland presses: is the law broken? Is the Trump era an exception or an extension of elite impunity?
  • Khan argues that lax enforcement for the powerful is not new, and the issue is whether the U.S. will recommit to a fair, rules-based order:
    • Quote: “My project is to make a case for changes in how we do law and policy so that we have a more fair economy.” [57:03]
    • Quote: “For a lot of Americans, they feel like there has been a version of this that's been happening for a while... where if you were an elite, you could get away with certain things...” [58:22]

On Political Ambition and Legacy [56:28–57:03; 61:11–62:23]

• Khan firmly says she has no political ambitions (“I wasn’t born here”—born in England), but her project is to ensure law and policy enable a fair economy.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Monopoly Game’s Origins:
  “There's a really interesting history... it was actually designed as an anti monopoly game. And then it was... commercialized and made into a kind of a pro monopoly game.” [16:15]

• On “Hipster Antitrust”:
  “I think their view was the approach to antitrust that we wanted to advance was like a throwback.” [25:32]

• On Chicken Farming (Feudalism):
  “There are certain parallels... people are actually paying... more for meat and chicken, even as the farmers are making less. And it's basically just the middleman taking a bigger and bigger.” [53:27–53:40]

• On Why People Hate Companies:

  • Friedland: “People hate companies.”
  • Khan: “I think people are realizing that a lot of the things that's bad in their lives is sometimes being driven by corporations that are breaking the law...” [45:20–45:29]

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Lighter, Memorable Moments

• Adam proposes new FTC meanings (“Fart Tits Cock,” “Fat Titty Committee”) [63:42–64:22]
• Jokes about Lena as Batman, Amazon as Penguin, and Adam as Alfred [00:54–01:36]
• Good-natured debate about who’s lying about LSAT scores, and whether Adam should go to law school [61:12–64:36]
• Adam’s recurring riff: “You never got a B. You’re lying. I caught you.” [08:19]

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Timeline of Key Topics

• [05:40] — Lena’s upbringing, high school journalism
• [09:36] — Her thesis on Hannah Arendt’s view of technological distance and its modern application
• [12:06–15:45] — Amazon, antitrust theory, regulatory capture, and the Reagan Revolution’s impact
• [18:01–21:15] — Her path to FTC Chair, being a young reformer
• [24:43-25:19] — Biden’s executive order and support
• [30:22–31:15] — Modernizing and staffing the FTC
• [32:03–34:08] — Pharma, price-lowering wins, and litigation against tech giants
• [47:07–48:16] — Aggressive courts and the trend of blocking regulatory rules
• [53:08–54:36] — Chicken industry and the dangers of consolidation
• [57:03] — Khan’s “project” and vision for policy and legal change

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Final Thoughts

Lina Khan’s interview offers a rare, direct glimpse into the battles over economic power, consumer protection, and the struggle for fair enforcement in an era of massive corporate consolidation. With a mix of earnest legal analysis and irreverent humor, the episode is as educational as it is entertaining, making the stakes of antitrust enforcement matter for a broad audience.

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Recommended Segments:

• Antitrust paradigm shift and the Amazon thesis [12:06–15:45]
• FTC modernization and resource challenges [30:22–31:15]
• Reflections on pushback and media vilification [22:08–23:53 / 55:52–56:22]
• The discussion of monopoly power, the “Monopoly” game, and corporate feudalism [16:15, 53:08–54:36]
• The prospects for a “New Deal” response to today’s challenges [63:11–63:20]

Transcript

[Adam Friedland]

You function kind of like as someone that enforced the law. You were kind of like a. Like a cop or like a. You know, did you ever ask for a gun? You should have got a badge.

[Lina Khan]

I know. We probably should have. You know, we did have investigators who, like, went undercover sometimes, and they did have badges.

[Adam Friedland]

Did you send guys to Burning man to, like, figure out tech companies?

[Lina Khan]

We didn't have that good idea.

[Adam Friedland]

See, I had. I gone to law school, I would have had that great idea, because they would have been on Molly and they would have been like, we're gonna make one company. The whole economy is going to be one company pretty soon, I guess. Go. Let's do it. Just let me get over that real quick. Just my feelings being hurt. Hello. Welcome back to the Adam Freeland Show. I'm Adam Freedland. You need to be. Thomas just bullied me. All right. Hello, and welcome back to the Adam Friedland Show. Guys, Adam Friedland here. First off, as always, I'd like to thank our members for supporting us here on YouTube.com you make the show possible. Seriously, guys. Members get access to all of our episodes early, before they're released to the general public. And if you join at the second or third tiers, you also get your name in the credits of this fine program. If you'd like to join the Friedland Family foundation, you can do so by clicking the join button here on YouTube or by clicking the link in the description below. You can also support us on Patreon if you prefer. The link for that is also in the description. And also, guys, merch is now available. Go to the AdamFreedland show to check it out. We got hoodies, T shirts, hats. The hoodies are fucking flying off the shelves, guys. Hop on those real quick before they sell out. You could conceivably wear an entire outfit of the Adam Friedland Show. Merch. If you make your own pants and shoes. That is true. That's a funny line. Kill. Leave that in you deserve. Give it up for Caleb Pitts, everyone. My guest this week is former FTC Commissioner Lina Khan. Lina's been in the news recently as she is the head of Zoran Mamdani's mayoral transition team. During her tenure at the ftc, she became a powerful enemy of major corporations like Amazon and Meta, transforming a famously toothless arm of the executive branch into an effective valve on corporate power. Effective valve? A valve is something that regulates like a stream regulates. Hmm. What does that remind you of? Okay, you did good copy, bad copy. That was good copy. Think of Lina Khan like Batman. And think of Amazon like the Penguin. Meta Bane, I guess Oracle, Hugo Strange, Joe Biden, Ra's al Ghul, Apple Killer Croc. And I will be Alfred Pennyworth, the butler. The point is, Lena is one of the good guys and I'm Alfred. So please. Caleb, you crushed it this week. I was on the phone too much. And Caleb wrote perhaps the best intro we've had thus far. Give it up for Caleb Pitts one more time. I love my team. Please enjoy my conversation with Lina Khan. Great job, everyone. Hey, folks. I just want to thank RO for sponsoring this episode. I'm not a Rose Sparks user, but God damn, do I wish I was. And I'm excited to tell you what it's all about, guys. If you haven't had sex before, it can be incredibly exciting and hot and spontaneous. And I can't tell you how confident you feel when you get hard fast. In most situations, Rose barks are a 2 in 1 prescription treatment for guys who want harder and more controlled erections. They hit the bloodstream fast because they dissolve under the tongue. And getting hard fast means there's less waiting time to perform. So rose barks dissolve and they work in 15 minutes on average. Plus, Rose bark's dual action formula stays active in the system for up to 36 hours. No, you don't have to stay hard the whole time, but when you get aroused, you're able to maintain an erection. With Rose Sparks, guys can get harder. They can have more control in the bedroom and a boost to last longer so that everyone gets more pleasure. Ro connects guys with a medical provider 100% online, and if approved, treatment ships directly to your door. If prescribed, new sexual health patients get $15 off their first order of Sparks. On a recurring plan, connect with a provider at RO Co to find out if prescription roast Sparks are right for you. That's ro col co tafs for $50 off your first order. Sparks is a compounded drug product. Compounded drugs are permitted to be prescribed under federal law, but are not FDA approved and do not undergo FDA safety, effectiveness or manufacturing review. For full safety information, go to roll.

[Lina Khan]

When I. When I lived. When I've lived in England, I think I was Arsenal and maybe Manuit points, but I don't really remember very well.

[Adam Friedland]

You're from the. You're from the shtetl.

[Lina Khan]

I lived in Baldurge Green. Yeah.

[Adam Friedland]

That's where the Frummers lived, is it? That's where the Orthodox.

[Lina Khan]

Oh, the Orthodox. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. Yes. Yes. It's a It is a pretty orthodox neighborhood. I think now it's a bit more. There are like a lot of Polish immigrants there.

[Adam Friedland]

Thank God.

[Lina Khan]

No, it was, it was a nice place to grow up.

[Adam Friedland]

Dude, she's a gooner. Do you hear that? Arsenal fan. Oh, really? Yeah.

[Lina Khan]

I, I don't know that I could faithfully still claim that.

[Adam Friedland]

Stop being a lawyer. Just lie. You learn to lie. You're allowed to lie.

[Lina Khan]

It is like against my disposition at this point.

[Adam Friedland]

I know. I watching interviews with you, you're like, they give you opportunities to talk some shit and you're like, I know the rules for this well.

[Lina Khan]

I feel like once you've testified before Congress where like, the main goal is not to lie, it's like that becomes like really ingrained in you.

[Adam Friedland]

I agree. Yeah, people don't lie in front of Congress.

[Lina Khan]

It's bad if you do.

[Adam Friedland]

So you know what, guys? Can we just do the interview now and then we'll just do the walkout later, okay? Because we're already doing the interview.

[Lina Khan]

Okay.

[Adam Friedland]

You've never told one lie in your entire life.

[Lina Khan]

I probably have, like as a kid or something.

[Adam Friedland]

But not since you were a kid?

[Lina Khan]

I don't know. I lie every.

[Adam Friedland]

My whole life is a lie. This is a lie. It looks pretty legit, but I wanted to ask you something I thought was really kind of cute, but about your. About the Starbucks thing when you were in high school. So you were in Westchester.

[Lina Khan]

Yeah, I lived in Mamaroneck. Went to Mamaroneck High School.

[Adam Friedland]

And so the kids were causing a ruckus up in Starbucks by your high school.

[Lina Khan]

So Starbucks said, but that's what we needed to investigate.

[Adam Friedland]

And what did you do about it?

[Lina Khan]

So there was basically some stores outside of the high school, including a Starbucks, and people would go there and hang out there and buy coffee at Starbucks. And they started a policy that students, even if they purchased something, couldn't stay in the store. They couldn't sit down. So I wrote a school newspaper story about it.

[Adam Friedland]

You're Martin Luther King, but didn't you get in the New York Times?

[Lina Khan]

Yeah, it somehow became enough of a thing where the Times then reported on it and reported cited my story.

[Adam Friedland]

So were you a little bit sucking up to the popular girls that were at Starbucks?

[Lina Khan]

I don't remember it that way. I was genuinely just curious about it.

[Adam Friedland]

You're being a suck up to the or you were the popular girls?

[Lina Khan]

No, I mean, I was a newspaper editor. You know, I don't know that that counted, but.

[Adam Friedland]

Have you ever gotten a B?

[Lina Khan]

A b? Yeah, probably. Yeah.

[Adam Friedland]

That's a lie. I got you to lie.

[Lina Khan]

No, no, I mean I got you to lie. You had hard math classes in college and probably didn't do so well.

[Adam Friedland]

I need to get. I need to swear you in. You never got a B. You got a B in hard math.

[Lina Khan]

Some hard math, yeah.

[Adam Friedland]

How did it feel to get a B?

[Lina Khan]

It was humbling. But in a good way.

[Adam Friedland]

Humbling. Did you take the LSAT June 2009? Dino game?

[Lina Khan]

No, no, I took it later.

[Adam Friedland]

Do you know the dino game? The logic game?

[Lina Khan]

I know the logic puzzles, but not with the dinosaurs.

[Adam Friedland]

I took it right before you.

[Lina Khan]

Okay. I didn't go to law school till 2014, so I took it later.

[Adam Friedland]

What'd you get now, sir?

[Lina Khan]

I don't remember.

[Adam Friedland]

Come on, stop it.

[Lina Khan]

I really don't.

[Adam Friedland]

You're being humble right now. You got 180?

[Lina Khan]

I don't think so.

[Adam Friedland]

Straight up, 180.

[Lina Khan]

I'd have to go back and try.

[Adam Friedland]

Did you finish first? Were you, like, done?

[Lina Khan]

I don't think so.

[Adam Friedland]

You definitely did, so I'd like. Yeah, I took it three times. It was an inflection point in my life.

[Lina Khan]

Yeah, no, it was an inflection point for me, too. I was trying to decide whether to go to law school or whether to be a journalist.

[Adam Friedland]

Your thesis in college was on Hannah Arendt.

[Lina Khan]

Mm.

[Adam Friedland]

What was your. What was your area of focus? I think it's pretty interesting for the times we're kind of living in right now.

[Lina Khan]

Yeah, it was this close study of a bunch of her work, including a book she wrote called the Human Condition. And in the book, she basically writes about how technological progress can lead to a lot of advances, but also require a certain degree of distance. And she has this analogy with the plane around how airplanes allow us to do pretty great stuff and make physical distance shorter, but it requires an altitude that makes you see less. And I analogize how she talked about kind of expertise and what can get lost in it to how we got into the financial crisis.

[Adam Friedland]

So that's, like, the most boring book she wrote. That's what your thesis was?

[Lina Khan]

I don't know if that was.

[Adam Friedland]

I thought your thesis would be on her romance with Heidegger.

[Lina Khan]

Oh, yeah.

[Adam Friedland]

The Nazi and the Jew, Right?

[Lina Khan]

Right. I guess that was a component of her life.

[Adam Friedland]

One thing I heard you say in an interview was that prior to the establishment of the Third Reich as a centralized power structure, that industrial conglomeration was a big component of it. Is that correct, or am I trying to say words I feel Like I'm copying words that I heard on tv, on succession, maybe.

[Lina Khan]

Yeah, obviously there are a lot of factors that facilitated the rise of Nazism, but the US after World War II actually commissioned various studies to be like, what just happened and what factors contributed to it, including trying to figure out what was happening in the economy. And they did actually find that growing consolidation across the German economy had basically facilitated the rise of Nazism. You know, you had like, more monopolization in certain types of rubber and steel. And generally speaking, there's long been a recognition that concentrated economic power can go hand in hand with concentrated political power. And, you know, I think that's an insight that has been lost more recently. But we're kind of being forced to reckon with again.

[Adam Friedland]

So you think Paramount, if they buy Warner Brothers, maybe Bari Weiss will be maybe the kind of goble. She doesn't talk shit at all because she knows all the rules. You know all the rules. Okay, so let's explain to our audience. You became a star even before you graduated law school. So you published an article about Amazon when you were in law school and you kind of made some enemies.

[Lina Khan]

Yes.

[Adam Friedland]

What was your thesis? What was your position that you were taking?

[Lina Khan]

So basically I was writing about how the contemporary way that antitrust law gets interpreted, which is a very short term focus on whether monopolies are raising prices, was creating all sorts of blind spots and used Amazon as kind of a vehicle to tell this broader story about changes in our antitrust laws. The law review article actually came out of a whole bunch of interviews I had done with two sets of market participants. One was the set of businesses that were selling on Amazon and, and the other was financial analysts and investors that were looking at Amazon more through a long term prism. And it was really interesting because at that time, this is like 2012, 2013, you know, the general consensus in D.C. was that Amazon is this company that is, you know, just delivering all these low prices and there's kind of no monopoly power dominance concern here. But when you talk to those sets of market actors, they were like, yeah, of course this company is amassing structural power that one day it'll just be able to flip the switch. And that's the whole investment proposition here. And it was just one of these instances where there was a real gap between how kind of the experts and the pundits were understanding what was going on in the economy and how when you talk to real people that were doing business with this company, how they understood it. And that gap was really interesting to me. And So I decided to try to make it into a review article.

[Adam Friedland]

So in essence you're saying that they were dropping prices so low that like mom and pop just couldn't compete, Is that what you're saying?

[Lina Khan]

Yeah, they were engaging in a bunch of business practices that like 50 years ago would have been illegal. But because there was this kind of Reagan revolution and antitrust where we now basically assume that monopolies were good unless they were engaging in a very narrow set of practices that were bad, we'd kind of become blind to being able to see, you know, corporate dominance and monopoly power unless and until it hit this like very narrow set of conditions.

[Adam Friedland]

What do you make of the argument? Or like people would say like the Sears catalog is going to drive the general soar out of business. Is it just that like. Yeah, like Bezos kind of reinvented a supply chain. But I can get any crap I want tomorrow. Like do you get crap on there?

[Lina Khan]

I'm not a prime member, so I don't really buy stuff.

[Adam Friedland]

You're not a prime. What are you doing? You go with your feet. You go on your feet.

[Lina Khan]

I mean that's the good thing about living in New York City. You know, you can buy a lot of stuff in person.

[Adam Friedland]

Yeah, but you could also get anti crap tomorrow.

[Lina Khan]

It's true. I mean the thing is it's really not about, it's more about, you know, the antitrust and anti monopoly laws were designed to basically create more checks and balances in our economic sphere because there was a recognition that like you don't want to concentrate economic power. And through competition laws there's an assumption that firms, if they're having to compete for your business, they're going to try to make things better, be it through lower prices or kind of better service. And so we want to maintain competition and there are fair ways to compete and unfair ways to compete. And our definition of what is unfair, ways of competing has like radically changed over the last few decades such that companies like Amazon have been able to get away with things. And you know, when I was at the ftc we ended up filing a lawsuit against it. After investigating it, we found that it was breaking the law and that now it is actually systematically raising prices for people, both consumers.

[Adam Friedland]

Because they fucked everyone off.

[Lina Khan]

Yeah. Cause they can. And like the businesses that have to sell on Amazon now have to pay as much as one out of every $2 to this company.

[Adam Friedland]

Sorry for cussing over.

[Lina Khan]

It's not a good situation. And a lot of that is because they don't Face real competition.

[Adam Friedland]

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

[Lina Khan]

You know, there's a really interesting history of that game where it was actually designed as an anti monopoly game. And then it was like, you know, commercialized and made into a kind of a pro Monopoly game.

[Adam Friedland]

Wait, so what was the objective? That everyone has different stuff in the original version?

[Lina Khan]

You know, I haven't played the original version, though. I actually have a version of it, so I need to. Need to try it out.

[Adam Friedland]

So you went back into the think tank world after law school?

[Lina Khan]

Just briefly, yeah.

[Adam Friedland]

Were you offered like a federal clerkship or something? I mean, it seems like from your resume, like you could have.

[Lina Khan]

Yeah, I was supposed to clerk a year out of law school, and my judge ended up passing away a few months before. So then I kind of had to rejigger things and ended up actually working first at the FTC for a commissioner, Rohit Chopra, who had just joined, who was doing incredible work, and then actually ended up joining as a staffer to a congressional committee where we did a big investigation of Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google. And so was there for a year and a half or so.

[Adam Friedland]

And you started working with Elizabeth Warren or like in an unofficial capacity at the time. Is that correct?

[Lina Khan]

Yeah, not officially, but, you know, she in 2016, gave a big speech basically saying, you know, across the economy we have now extreme consolidation. And she named companies which, you know, in D.C. is unusual for kind of somebody to really name the company you're talking about. And she did that across sectors. And it basically helped give much more prominence to this issue of antitrust and anti monopoly. And she became kind of an ally as somebody who agreed that we really needed to reinvigorate this area of law.

[Adam Friedland]

And so from my understanding. Well, two things. First is like, how did President Biden, how did you get drafted in the league at 32?

[Lina Khan]

It's a great question. I have no idea.

[Adam Friedland]

You were the youngest by like 40 years, probably in the government.

[Lina Khan]

Oh, in the. I mean, there had been some prior FTC commissioners that had been in their 30s, but I think chair. Yeah, probably was the Youngest.

[Adam Friedland]

So how did you get scouted? Like, how did they know that you were the goat? It's really cool that president Biden was like, this is the one. And you, like, changed. We'll get into it. But you changed the way. Kind of a toothless part of the executive function, from what I understand.

[Lina Khan]

Yeah. I mean, how people get picked is like a total mystery.

[Adam Friedland]

Oh, now you're lying. Now she's lying. We got her. Guys, let's clap it up. What happened?

[Lina Khan]

You know, you basically get a call asking you if you're interested in serving from the monopoly man, from the federal government.

[Adam Friedland]

And you get a call from the federal government.

[Lina Khan]

You get a call from somebody, you know, working in the white House who does personnel.

[Adam Friedland]

Sam.

[Lina Khan]

Usually somebody who works in the office of personnel. Hr, it's basically HR for the white House. Who has to, like, figure out for all of the political appointees. Who are we going to pick? So they call you. They ask if you're interested. If you say yes, you have to have all of this kind of background checks and have a lot of conversation with security people.

[Adam Friedland]

They looked into the Starbucks, right?

[Lina Khan]

Probably.

[Adam Friedland]

They probably, like, call someone at the Starbucks.

[Lina Khan]

Yeah, they call people who know you to kind of try to figure out what's going on. And then sometimes you don't hear for a while and you have no idea, am I in or am I out? In my case, I ended up being told that I had been picked as a commissioner and they were gonna announce it.

[Adam Friedland]

Like, had you spoken to president Biden before?

[Lina Khan]

No.

[Adam Friedland]

Really?

[Lina Khan]

Yeah.

[Adam Friedland]

He wasn't like, kiddo, kiddo. The malarkey of you. You've got no malarkey.

[Lina Khan]

No, we didn't get to have that conversation.

[Adam Friedland]

So you came into it, from what I understand, and as you alluded to from Reagan till the time you came. Which. 20.

[Lina Khan]

20. 2021.

[Adam Friedland]

Yeah, 2021. Like, from. So for what, 30 years? It was basically a completely. Just. What did they. They did herbalife. Right. Was that their big hit?

[Lina Khan]

For 30 years, they were very focused on, you know, frauds and scams. And, you know, it's staffed by very well meaning people. But there definitely had been kind of a real narrowing in their ambition.

[Adam Friedland]

Well, so you walked into the office, everyone's Hawaiian shirt, beer, pongo. Were people doing, like, xeroxes of their butts.

[Lina Khan]

You know, it was still Covid. So it took a while till everybody was, like, back in. But no, I mean, you know, the staff there was very hardworking. There had been people who'd been there since you Know, for decades.

[Adam Friedland]

She won't talk shit. They were definitely like, look at this homework nerd coming in, trying to make us work for the first time ever.

[Lina Khan]

No, I mean, you know, I was an unusual pick for a bunch of reasons. So, you know, it was a bit of an adjustment for the agency.

[Adam Friedland]

Yeah.

[Lina Khan]

Yeah.

[Adam Friedland]

How'd you get picked?

[Lina Khan]

It's a great question.

[Adam Friedland]

Because you're not Nepo, right?

[Lina Khan]

No. I mean, no.

[Adam Friedland]

You're like the smartest one. They never picked the smartest one. Seriously, it's like a rarity. That's why I'm so fascinated by it.

[Lina Khan]

Yeah.

[Adam Friedland]

Especially so young. They hate youth in Hollywood. In ugly Hollywood. I mean, in D.C. they have a contempt for youth.

[Lina Khan]

It was an unusual pick, and I think it really did speak to how in a pretty small number of years, the kind of elite, even elite consensus about antitrust has started to change. And so there was a growing sense that the kind of Reagan approach, which had become a bipartisan approach. Right.

[Adam Friedland]

Undercutting.

[Lina Khan]

The incredible thing about Reagan was, like, when they came in, the stuff they were pushing was seen as really fringe, and there were deep partisan fights. But then you fast forward 12 years after eight years of Reagan, four years of Bush, and the stuff that had been really fringe of theirs was now just the new common wisdom. And so they were pretty masterful in kind of getting their set of ideas and ideology to become the new mainstream. And it took until 2018, 2019, 2020, for there to be a greater recognition that that had been the wrong path. And we needed to kind of reinvigorate this area of the law.

[Adam Friedland]

Even from what I understand, people that were supporting the Harris campaign were kind of. Kind of going at your ass a bit. Is that correct? It wasn't clear if Kamala won, if she would continue. Kind of your project.

[Lina Khan]

Yeah, look, I mean, a president has the prerogative to kind of pick their own team, so they were the bad guys, not choosing who they were going to have in place before they won.

[Adam Friedland]

But you're a first round draft pick.

[Lina Khan]

You know, I think it would have been her. It was an honor to serve, and it would have been her prerogative to kind of choose the path forward. But it's true that there were people who were upset by what we were doing and that were kind of being very vocal about that.

[Adam Friedland]

There were a lot of people who were upset.

[Lina Khan]

I don't know if I'd say a

[Adam Friedland]

lot in the newspaper. I believe. Wait, what did I find? There's like 53 op eds against you after you came into the FTC at least. Yes, they were saying they were why you drove them nuts. You were living rent free because it's tech. Was it big tech and hedge funds?

[Lina Khan]

There was some big tech trade groups. A lot of it was also the deal makers. So parts of Wall street that make a lot of fees off of mergers and acquisitions.

[Adam Friedland]

But you're just some lady. I mean, you're what, five foot four?

[Lina Khan]

Yeah, 5,455.

[Adam Friedland]

And there look at brain death at Khan's FTC and Lina Khan blocks cancer cures at hedge fund that made a killing betting against Lina Khan. Lina Khan needs to see Shark Tank's Kevin o' Leary Linacon whiffs again. Why were you such a lightning rod? I mean, how are you like this? But then in, in the court, you're like that.

[Lina Khan]

I mean, I think there were a few things. I think we had had several decades of elite impunity where if you were breaking the law, but you were in a C suite, the government would go light on you. And even in places like the ftc, sometimes there had been a double standard where if you kind of found that there was some small time scammer or fraudster, you would bring the full force of the law against them. But then if you kind of found that a fancy CEO was breaking the law and their company was publicly traded, you might go a little lighter.

[Adam Friedland]

They were contributing to your campaign.

[Lina Khan]

And I thought that was just really problematic. And so we were very clear that we were going to enforce the law in an evenhanded way, no matter kind of what your political connections were. We just had to look at are you breaking the law or not? And I think that approach to enforcing the law upset some people.

[Adam Friedland]

Two things. Did President Biden, when you came in, give you that mandate? Was he like, go for it?

[Lina Khan]

The White House was very supportive of kind of what we were doing. President Biden did sign this executive order in 2021 that was pretty significant. I mean, he basically said the last 40 years of kind of Robert Bork style antitrust has been a total mistake. And I'm directing my government to basically turn the page on that failed approach. And that means the ftc, the doj, but also all of these other agencies need to really focus on taking on Monopoly. So there was definitely a mandate.

[Adam Friedland]

And they called you a hipster. That was one of the labels that was attached to you. So you were like listening. Grizzly Bear Animal Collective. What was it? What was that? Why did they go there?

[Lina Khan]

You'll have to ask the people who came up with the term, but I think their view was the approach to antitrust that we wanted to advance was like a throwback.

[Adam Friedland]

What was the other thing? Like, Neo Post Brandicean or something, Right?

[Lina Khan]

Neo Brandisian.

[Adam Friedland]

That's pretty cool. You function kind of like as someone that enforced the law. You were kind of like a. Like a cop or like a. Yeah. Did you ever ask for a gun? You should have got a badge.

[Lina Khan]

I know. We probably should have. You know, we did have investigators who, like, went undercover sometimes, and they did have badges.

[Adam Friedland]

Deep undercover in Wall street, usually.

[Lina Khan]

Usually not on Wall street, usually kind of if there were various types of frauds or scams or that sort of thing.

[Adam Friedland]

Did you send guys to Burning man to figure out tech companies?

[Lina Khan]

We didn't have that good idea.

[Adam Friedland]

See, had I gone to law school, I would have had that great idea. They would have been on Mali and they would have been like, we're gonna make one company. The whole economy is gonna be one company pretty soon.

[Lina Khan]

Yeah.

[Adam Friedland]

And they would have been on ketamine or whatever the hell that is.

[Lina Khan]

A very creative investigative technique.

[Adam Friedland]

Can we go back to the FTC and try it? And can we cut that from the episode? Because I feel like we cracked it just now. Go to Burning Man. They're all on drugs over there. Talking about the Singularity, I guess. Today's episode is sponsored by Incogni. Incogni helps to wipe your personal data from the Internet and protect your privacy. Folks, I'm not alone in saying this, but we've all had our data breached. I've been breached numerous times on the PlayStation Network, Supermarket Club card. You get breached. How many emails have you guys gotten saying that? I think I've gotten maybe 100. And I've never done anything about it until I got this great service, Incogni, which assists you in wiping your personal data in the event of a data breach. Thousands of companies are collecting and trading your personal data without you knowing it. You have the right to request data brokers to delete this information they have about you. It would take years to do this manually. Incogni does the messy work for you. Incogni reaches out to data brokers on your behalf, requesting your personal data removal and dealing with their objections. And oftentimes, these data companies hold your most personal information, like your full name, your home address, your Social Security. So get an extra level of protection. With Incogni's custom removals feature in the unlimited plan and Family Unlimited plan, you can point to any people search site or any other website that where your information is visible. And one of their privacy agents will take care of the rest for you. I'll give you guys an example. A couple weeks ago, I don't know if you guys saw in the news, there was a massive data breach of Discord servers. I bet a lot of you bastards are on that. And they are. Now these data brokers are now privy to your emails, your texts, your call, everything. For any of you, for instance, who have used Discord, your personal information could be in the hands of data brokers. And Incogni could be used to get that information removed. You know, it's a real problem. Employers, landlords and random strangers can access your personal details without your consent. So use code tafscogni.com tafs to get an exclusive 60% off. That's code [e-mail] tafs to get an exclusive 60% off. Claim your 60% off and get your personal data off the market. Boys. Hey guys. This episode is sponsored by Lucy. 100% pure nicotine. Always tobacco free. Lucy breakers are nicotine pouches with a little extra surprise and they in your mouth. Each pouch holds a capsule that can be broken open to release extra flavor. And in your mouth, hydration if you will. So set yourself up with a subscription to have Lucy delivered straight to your door. Guys, I use it myself. My favorite flavor is the minty one. My favorite strength is the strongest one. And I throw in my Lucy all day long. Let's level up your nicotine routine with Lucy. So go to Lucy Co TAFS and use promo code TAFS to get 20% off your first order. Lucy has a 30 day refund policy. If you change your mind again, that's Lucy L U C Y CO and use code TAFS to get 20% off. And here comes the fine print. Lucy products are only for adults of legal age. And every order is age verified. Warning. This product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical. So you took this toothless organization, you made it a potent organization for the first time. Did you have any structural changes that you had to enact in order to get the ball rolling there?

[Lina Khan]

Yeah, a few. I mean, first we brought on more technologists because a lot of the economy is now becoming digitized. But you kind of need people on your team who understand how the stuff works. So we brought in a bunch of them. We hired more lawyers, you know, we started litigating more and so we brought on more litigators. The FTC is pretty small relative to the Size of its job and mandate. So we.

[Adam Friedland]

I would imagine you just get outgunned. Like, they have 9,000 lawyers. You have, like, 12 guys.

[Lina Khan]

Yeah, I mean, sometimes the, like, in house lawyers of these companies are greater than, like, the entire, like, competition bureau of the ftc.

[Adam Friedland]

How many guys did you have in total?

[Lina Khan]

We had 1300.

[Adam Friedland]

I thought you were going to say 13. That would have been hilarious.

[Lina Khan]

But no, I mean, we are totally outmatched when it comes to resources and the amount of money they have. So you kind of have to figure out how to navigate that.

[Adam Friedland]

What do you view as, like, your biggest dub?

[Lina Khan]

Gosh. I mean, there are a lot of cases that are still pending.

[Adam Friedland]

You sued Call of Duty.

[Lina Khan]

We did sue to block the Microsoft Activision merger. That merger did go through. We weren't successful.

[Adam Friedland]

And now you can. You can't get it on PlayStation. Call of Duty. I think you can, but I think you get it early on Xbox. Look at what you did, what they did today. You were trying to stand up for Caleb.

[Lina Khan]

Well, there have been a whole bunch of price hikes that I know gamers have been pretty upset about.

[Adam Friedland]

Well, there's the game pass thing.

[Lina Khan]

That's right.

[Adam Friedland]

Caleb, you want to sit in for me and talk about this? I don't care. I hope that $30 now, now it's very expensive. It's $30.

[Lina Khan]

$30.

[Adam Friedland]

Look at what they're doing to my beautiful boy over here. Yeah.

[Lina Khan]

You know, one of we were very focused on healthcare markets just because people depend on healthcare. And one of the initiatives we did was really try to figure out why our drug price is so high. And one reason they're so high is because pharma companies use all sorts of patent tricks.

[Adam Friedland]

The orange book, right?

[Lina Khan]

Yes. Yes. Wow. You went deep.

[Adam Friedland]

I'm a lawyer.

[Lina Khan]

Yeah. Yeah. So we called out those pharmatrics, and three of the four big manufacturers of asthma inhalers dropped the price from hundreds of dollars to just 35. So there are, you know, thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people who rely on inhalers who are paying less today.

[Adam Friedland]

And did you get them scared? Like, were there mergers that weren't attempted because they're like, cons coming according to them.

[Lina Khan]

Yes. They would go on TV sometimes and say, you know, back in the day, we didn't have to think about antitrust risk when we were thinking about our deals, but under this administration, we have to think about it right away.

[Adam Friedland]

And I guess, like, on the politics side, you had there were some Republicans that actually were like, that rode with that fucked with you. I mean, like, where you got it didn't go along partisan lines. I mean. That's right. Josh Hawley was one of them or no.

[Lina Khan]

Yeah, he was pretty supportive of a lot of the FTC's work.

[Adam Friedland]

Who else on the Republican side were, like, kind of like, supported like you?

[Lina Khan]

You know, there were a lot of members who were really concerned about Big Tech in particular, some who were concerned about these pharmacy benefit managers, these, like, drug supply middlemen. So it was kind of issue by issue, but generally speaking, like, taking on corporate power when they're breaking the law is very popular. And there were Republican members that recognized that.

[Adam Friedland]

You went after Meta while you were the ftc.

[Lina Khan]

We sued them. Yeah.

[Adam Friedland]

Yeah. And so. And how did. What was the result of that?

[Lina Khan]

We're actually waiting to find out. The trial happened a few months ago.

[Adam Friedland]

I would think that Trump would just stop that.

[Lina Khan]

So there was a new haircut.

[Adam Friedland]

He got a new haircut, you know. Yeah, he's got a chain and a haircut and he does mma. Case closed.

[Lina Khan]

Yeah. No, I mean, I think there was a big effort. I mean, I know Mark made several visits to the White House leading up to the trial, and there was kind of effort to get them to settle it, but they. They let it go forward. I mean, you know, that doesn't mean they won't. We'll see it all the way through. And I think the lobbying pressure is constant and the type of access these people have to the White House is pretty unprecedented. So we'll have to wait and see.

[Adam Friedland]

So if you went to the South Bay, would you like to wear a bulletproof vest or something like 50 cent? Did you know the song many men buy 50 cent? Have you heard it? No, but does that, as an individual, do you process that? Like, I mean, it is kind of crazy that, like, you drive them nuts.

[Lina Khan]

Yeah, it was pretty striking.

[Adam Friedland]

Have you got phishing emails? Maybe.

[Lina Khan]

Yeah. You always have to be on guard with those phishing emails.

[Adam Friedland]

You know, one thing I think most folks have heard about is that there was a liquidation in the civil service. I think something that's useful to talk about is having a robust civil service is how planes don't crash into each other and we don't get screws in our cans of tuna, I guess. What changes were made at your shop after you left and what have they chosen to pursue since you've been gone? The new commissioner.

[Lina Khan]

Yeah. So I think a lot of people have left, especially in the consumer protection part of the work.

[Adam Friedland]

The. But Xerox Guys are back.

[Lina Khan]

I think they're. You know, they apparently are now trying to hire. Maybe they let too many people go. But there's been a real backsliding. I mean, you know, we were firing on all cylinders and taking on all sorts of, you know, big companies that were breaking the law. And there's definitely been a slowdown in activity there. They've also kind of shifted gears, so they allowed this big merger to go through between these two ad agencies. And one of the conditions of that was basically that they had to buy ads from Elon Musk, more or less platforms under the purview that they couldn't kind of discriminate on political grounds. So it does seem like they're more eager to use the law to kind of advance their political grievances.

[Adam Friedland]

And they pursue sex changes.

[Lina Khan]

Yeah, they're doing some workshops to see if they should go after doctors.

[Adam Friedland]

Workshops?

[Lina Khan]

Yeah.

[Adam Friedland]

Well, like, you go for a weekend

[Lina Khan]

to a hotel, I think it's like a bunch of bureaucrats in, like, a conference room for half a day. But, yeah.

[Adam Friedland]

What was it like being 40 years younger than everyone else?

[Lina Khan]

Actually, it was pretty strange at times. I mean, there were definitely people who'd been there since before I was born.

[Adam Friedland]

And was it a bad hang?

[Lina Khan]

No, I mean, people. You know, I think it had been tough for some people because I had been known before I got to the ftc as a critic of the ftc. And so I think some people interpreted that as kind of, you know, personal criticism. And I had been critiquing, you know, the political leadership and the way they've been doing this. Yeah, there was a sense that, like, wait, why is the hater now our boss? You know, so, you know, had to navigate some of that. But people really came around, and I think people were proud to work at an agency that was on the front lines of protecting people from corporate abuse.

[Adam Friedland]

And so is it supposed to be an independent agency? Like, ostensibly the Justice Department is supposed to be, but we're seeing it's not at all right now. But, like, did you. Is it like the president can't really mess with it, or is it like,

[Lina Khan]

yeah, the president's not supposed to direct us. You know, I'm sure Trump is giving

[Adam Friedland]

them their space right now.

[Lina Khan]

Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting dynamic because previously there used to be a lot of speculation about kind of who's heading what agency, but now it doesn't really matter as much because it's all being run out of the White House. So a lot of those decisions Just, you know, it just doesn't matter.

[Adam Friedland]

And what cases have they carried on from year tenure?

[Lina Khan]

So they're still continuing the case against Amazon, against Facebook. There are a bunch of cases against like ag monopolies against John Deere. It was making it really hard for farmers to fix their stuff. They're continuing some cases against. We have one against Adobe that was making it really hard to Cancel subscriptions for PDFs. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[Adam Friedland]

Acrobat.

[Lina Khan]

Yeah, so. So the vast majority, they've actually continued.

[Adam Friedland]

Oh, really?

[Lina Khan]

The cases. But the place they pulled back are the rules. So we issued a rule that would ban non compete clauses for Americans. These are those like contractual provisions?

[Adam Friedland]

Yeah, they were like doing it to people at McDonald's and like, you can't work at Wendy's after you leave.

[Lina Khan]

That's right. Fast food, security guards, janitors, healthcare workers.

[Adam Friedland]

Why the fuck are they. What's the point of it?

[Lina Khan]

I mean, they would say it's because they're trading in workers and they don't wanna lose their investment, but to a lot of people it's the opposite. Seems like it's just to get greater control and power over the workers.

[Adam Friedland]

I took Introduction to Micro and Macroeconomics, so I'm kind of. I think I'm qualified. I don't want to speak from a position of authority unless I'm qualified, but I think I'm qualified here. But my understanding is the argument for consolidation is they say that it will create more efficiencies that could be passed on in savings to the consumer. Is that. Is that kind of what you've been pushed back on?

[Lina Khan]

That's often the argument.

[Adam Friedland]

Yeah, but it's stupid. No, because it's like if there's one company, they could charge a zillion dollars and still. And make it for cheaper.

[Lina Khan]

Yep.

[Adam Friedland]

And you say that to the judge.

[Lina Khan]

I could be a lawyer. I think so.

[Adam Friedland]

Yeah.

[Lina Khan]

Yeah.

[Adam Friedland]

Do you ever give a closing argument?

[Lina Khan]

No. We had very talented litigators that were in the courtroom. I was not personally making the argument.

[Adam Friedland]

So you do the boring parts of the lawyer.

[Lina Khan]

That's right.

[Adam Friedland]

You don't do the razzle dazzle parts?

[Lina Khan]

No, unfortunately.

[Adam Friedland]

Lena, why are you doing the homework parts? You like. You do the worksheets parts.

[Lina Khan]

Yeah, exactly.

[Adam Friedland]

Oh, you love homework. Why don't you do the, like give a speech.

[Lina Khan]

You know, we had very talented people who were experienced at litigating. Litigating. And did that very well.

[Adam Friedland]

You can't handle this. You never want to do. I want the truth. You would be so good at that.

[Lina Khan]

Thank you.

[Adam Friedland]

Let me write for you.

[Lina Khan]

Yeah,

[Adam Friedland]

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[Lina Khan]

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[Adam Friedland]

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[Lina Khan]

I mean, Brandeis was pretty great.

[Adam Friedland]

Nice.

[Lina Khan]

Jewish.

[Adam Friedland]

Okay. Who's number two?

[Lina Khan]

I don't know. I mean, Thurgood Marshall is pretty great.

[Adam Friedland]

Sick.

[Lina Khan]

Yeah.

[Adam Friedland]

Pretty cool.

[Lina Khan]

Yeah.

[Adam Friedland]

Let's go down the list.

[Lina Khan]

I don't know if I have them ranked beyond that, but.

[Adam Friedland]

What did you do at law school? You didn't play with top five?

[Lina Khan]

We did top five MCs of all time, but really missed out on that. Yeah, I mean, on the jury trial thing, it's interesting because, you know, we did. There was an effort to kind of bring some of these cases before juries, and the companies were really terrified of it. So the Justice Department brought one of their Google cases before a jury. They wanted to have a jury trial and Google basically just gave a bag of money to the Justice Department so that they could avoid the jury trial.

[Adam Friedland]

It was in a bag, more or less.

[Lina Khan]

I think they sent them a check or maybe it was in a bag.

[Adam Friedland]

It would have been cool. In a trash bag.

[Lina Khan]

Yeah.

[Adam Friedland]

Yeah.

[Lina Khan]

And. And you know, there was a recent survey. There was. Law firms are advising their clients, you know, to avoid jury trials because they're realizing that people's sentiments towards corporate America have turned negative.

[Adam Friedland]

People hate companies.

[Lina Khan]

I think so.

[Adam Friedland]

I think that's good though, right? You're gonna follow the rules and not say that's good. I mean, it's good.

[Lina Khan]

I think people are realizing that a lot of the things that's bad in their lives is sometimes being driven by corporations that are breaking the law and

[Adam Friedland]

have bought influence perhaps in our politics.

[Lina Khan]

Perhaps.

[Adam Friedland]

Perhaps you could say yes. Allegedly.

[Lina Khan]

Allegedly.

[Adam Friedland]

Allegedly.

[Lina Khan]

That's right.

[Adam Friedland]

Counselor. Counselor Aston answered hearsay. Have you ever fallen asleep in court and then objected when you wake up?

[Lina Khan]

I haven't had that experience.

[Adam Friedland]

That's from a movie, right? If you ever fall asleep in court, you have to object when you wake up.

[Lina Khan]

Uh huh.

[Adam Friedland]

I think the John Grisham when you enforce a policy as when you were commissioner, you oftentimes would file a lawsuit. A lot of discussion has been made about how the judiciary is kind of, it's a kind of. Is there ever a fear that something could potentially go to the Supreme Court, which is kind of. It's understood to be quite partisan at this point, and 6, 3 to the other side. Is there a fear that you could actually fuck those initial regulations that you're trying to enforce?

[Lina Khan]

Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of strategizing that has to go into like, does it make sense to appeal this case? Is there a risk of making things worse? So we definitely have to think that through.

[Adam Friedland]

But if you win and they appeal, they're like, we're gonna ride this to the top and then they're gonna let us make one company for the whole world. So what is the current state of the judiciary like in your estimation?

[Lina Khan]

You know, I'd say a few things. Like there are a lot of, you know, district court judges, appellate court judges that are just trying to do their jobs and like be faithful to the law. I think there has been a general drift, coinciding with more Republican appointees on the bench of like just more hostility and skepticism of federal agencies when they're trying to use, you know, trying to make things better in the economy, more or less. So that's been a challenge. I mean, during the Biden administration, you know, there were dozens of rules that were basically blocked, sometimes by just a single judge. In Texas. In Texas, even rules that were trying to limit overdraft fees or say that airlines can't lie about the price of a ticket. The FTC non compete rule, we even passed a rule that said companies have to make it as easy to cancel a subscription as it is to sign up. And a lot of those rules ended up being blocked. So there's just greater skepticism of agency power. I think this is going to be a revealing moment as to whether that's selective skepticism. Like, are you only skeptical when it's Democrats in those agencies or is it actually a bit more consistent and principled?

[Adam Friedland]

That's very fair and noble to say. Honestly. I mean, I mean, seriously. I mean, the court shouldn't be partisan, right? They should be enforcing the law.

[Lina Khan]

Yeah. Interpreting the law. That's right.

[Adam Friedland]

What is. If you had to look at the American economy, like, what industry do you think just fucks? Like, are my audience or the people

[Lina Khan]

the most, like, I mean, healthcare probably.

[Adam Friedland]

Yeah, yeah. They have the most blood on their hands.

[Lina Khan]

Yeah, yeah.

[Adam Friedland]

When you. We were talking about the orange book, I. That was me. Something I heard five minutes ago and I said to impress you. But like, one of the ways that they raised the price of inhalers to $500 was that they would file a patent on like a strap.

[Lina Khan]

That's right. Unlike just pieces of plastic that have nothing to do with like the actual drugs. But there are all sorts of tricks. I mean, you know, there are people who have died because they can't afford their medicines in this country. And when we were at the ftc, we would kind of do these regular open meetings where anybody could sign up and come talk to us and we would hear from people who would say, I have a family member who's having to literally ration their insulin or their life saving medicine because it's too expensive. Expensive. And some of that was done through illegal tactics by the drug manufacturers, by these pharmacy benefit managers. And so let alone the fraud that we see in all sorts of parts of the health care system where they're literally defrauding the government and just bilking money.

[Adam Friedland]

Is it like as a member of the civil service? Right. How much do the politicians fuck up? Are they the biggest obstacle to like, you guys, like doing your jobs?

[Lina Khan]

You mean like politicians, like members of Congress?

[Adam Friedland]

Members of Congress? Yeah. Or even the President at this point.

[Lina Khan]

Yeah, I mean, it varies. It's hard to paint in a broad brush. There are a lot of members of Congress that were very supportive of the FTC's work in both parties, even on the Democratic side, kind of abroad, you know, a big tent. And there were big efforts to make sure that these agencies were actually funded and had the resources they needed. Yeah. But I would say that, like, there have been trends that have just made it so expensive to bring These cases, like a single antitrust case, if you're trying to block a merger, you can have to pay an outside economist anywhere from 1 to $5 million. If you're trying to bring a case against a monopoly, you can have to pay an outside expert anywhere from 20 to 30 million dollars just for a single case. And, you know, the budgets of these agencies is, you know, less than half a billion dollars. And so it's just become this. It's actually become somewhat of a grift where it's like these outside experts that are just, like, raking in this money as all of this litigation has become so expensive.

[Adam Friedland]

So if you need money for a lawsuit so that people don't die from a company, you have to go to Congress and be like, please. Yeah, but the poor. I'm a lawyer. Yeah, you have to ask them. And then they're like. They're like. They think they're better than you.

[Lina Khan]

Well, you have to. You know, as chair of the ftc, I would have to go into Congress every year and testify before the House Appropriations Committee. And they're the ones that decide how much money we get.

[Adam Friedland]

Who was on that when you were there?

[Lina Khan]

There were a bunch of people.

[Adam Friedland]

Freak show. House is freak show.

[Lina Khan]

It's different.

[Adam Friedland]

I thought the House was the government. When I met Chris Murphy, he was like, yeah, it's the House. It's not a big deal.

[Lina Khan]

I mean, the House is the most democratic branch of government, you know, do

[Adam Friedland]

you think that they should start wearing nicer clothes again?

[Lina Khan]

I honestly don't have a very strong view on this.

[Adam Friedland]

Don't answer that question. You're so nice. Yeah, I guess the healthcare industry. And then who would you put second? I guess. Who are the top five most evil? You're not gonna answer, but I'm gonna say industries that have the most adverse effect on Americans lives.

[Lina Khan]

I mean, within healthcare, there are a lot of different actors. There are the pharmaceutical companies, you know, after healthcare. I would say in food and agriculture, too. Like, the agriculture industry in this country is so consolidated.

[Adam Friedland]

That was one of your first things, right? The chickens.

[Lina Khan]

That's right, the chickens.

[Adam Friedland]

You want to tell them about the chickens?

[Lina Khan]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, so when I was doing some of this, you know, market research, one of the industries I had seen study very closely was chicken farming. And that's an industry that is consolidated a lot. And so you have millions of consumers, thousands of farmers, but they're just connected by basically four chicken processors. And so if you're a farmer, sometimes your entire livelihood depends on doing Business with just one company, and that company has a ton of power over you, over your livelihood and all sorts of things.

[Adam Friedland]

So small farmers sell their chickens to a big factory guy, to a chicken processor.

[Lina Khan]

Yeah, Like Tyson, you know, Tyson Chickens, Purdue and. And it led to all sorts of abusive tactics. There's also been a phenomena where quotas

[Adam Friedland]

is that, like, they say you have to make your. Like, and they raise the quotas each year.

[Lina Khan]

Yeah, they can raise the quotas. They also can basically, like, penalize farmers by giving them back sharecroppers. It's. It's. People have made that analogy before.

[Adam Friedland]

Sounds like 1880 or something.

[Lina Khan]

Yeah. It's really horrific. And people are actually paying. Have been paying more for meat and chicken, even as the farmers are making less. And it's basically just the middleman taking a bigger and bigger.

[Adam Friedland]

Mr. Tyson goes, Good, that's good.

[Lina Khan]

Well, Mr. Tyson is the one taking more and more of it, of course. Yeah.

[Adam Friedland]

Does it make you cynical? Did it make you cynical? Like, as someone that was trying to enforce something that's like, obviously just being nice, like, to a guy that has a chicken farm, that. Mr. Tyson's like, I need more chickens from you, otherwise I'm gonna. What are they, serfs? Are they. Mr. Tyson is a feudal lord.

[Lina Khan]

There are certain parallels.

[Adam Friedland]

It's feudalism.

[Lina Khan]

It's really wild. Yeah. I mean, you know, I think. I think the fact that more and more people are recognizing that it's really screwed up that so many of the parts of the economy are like this and are kind of demanding that type of change. It's going to take a while, but I think it is a positive sign.

[Adam Friedland]

But they have way more money, and they can just keep doing it because they have more money.

[Lina Khan]

That has been the story so far, but I think if we have political leadership that is able to stand up to money, then maybe it could change.

[Adam Friedland]

What was your most cynical moment as someone that was trying to just simply enforce the law? I mean, you gotta be bummed. Some days you're like, fuck this shit.

[Lina Khan]

I mean, I think I had a real sense of urgency because you never know how much time you're gonna have, and time in government goes really quickly, and these types of windows of opportunity to really do serious pivots in how we've been doing stuff don't come around very often. So I didn't feel like I had time to be cynical or bummed for too long.

[Adam Friedland]

You just had too much work.

[Lina Khan]

Yeah.

[Adam Friedland]

It's kind of chill. It's nice to be busy, right?

[Lina Khan]

Yeah.

[Adam Friedland]

You can't invest your brain in drama.

[Lina Khan]

Yeah. And, like, you know, I was like, well, I'll think about that on the other side, whenever that is.

[Adam Friedland]

What'd you get on the L side? Come on, stop lying. I read. You're just lying to my face. Lina Khan had been around when the typewriter was invented. Lina Khan gets punched back. Lina Khan finished yet? Question mark. An unfawned farewell to Lena. When you see the press, what did you think? Were you laughing?

[Lina Khan]

Sometimes.

[Adam Friedland]

Sometimes you're like, what? This guy's talking shit in the newspaper. Who's the most. It was Wall Street Journal, primarily.

[Lina Khan]

Their editorial board. Yes. Fixated on you.

[Adam Friedland]

Do you think they had a crush, maybe?

[Lina Khan]

It's a good question.

[Adam Friedland]

Did you ever clap back?

[Lina Khan]

Not directly. I mean, I think I did some event with them once, maybe. The Wall Street Journal. Yeah.

[Adam Friedland]

Did you dis. You did a. You had a burn.

[Lina Khan]

I mean, we kind of let our work speak for itself.

[Adam Friedland]

You're so much fun.

[Lina Khan]

A lot of it was just, like, unobjectionable, you know?

[Adam Friedland]

Do you have political ambition?

[Lina Khan]

Like, to run for, like, Congress or something?

[Adam Friedland]

Be the president?

[Lina Khan]

No. I mean, I wasn't born here, so. Makes it easier than that.

[Adam Friedland]

You were born in England. Do you want to be maybe the queen then?

[Lina Khan]

Not. Not especially.

[Adam Friedland]

I can see you as queen. You'd be great. You had little corgis. You shake hands in a line. Would you be a senator? Would you be on a. Would you want to be on the Supreme Court? Like, what. What do you. I guess just from what I'm seeing is, like, you seem very honest and altruistic. And what is your project like? What message do you want to get across?

[Lina Khan]

I mean, I think the current economy is really screwed up, and I think we need an economy that's much more fair and where people can get a fair shot. And the current economy is not just like the product of some natural forces. It's, like, entirely rooted in laws and policies and political choices that we have made. And so I am. You know, my project is to make a case for changes in how we do law and policy so that we have a more fair economy.

[Adam Friedland]

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

[Lina Khan]

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, in some ways what we are seeing now is just like a caricature of being able to violate the law with no consequences.

[Adam Friedland]

It's like TV or something.

[Lina Khan]

Yeah. But I think for a lot of Americans, they feel like there has been a version of this that's been happening for a while. Right. Where they think they were quiet about was maybe a little bit more subtle. But I do think that there was a sense that if you were an elite, you could get away with certain things that non elites couldn't. And I think this is kind of going to bring to the surface a question about what do we want the rule of law to look like in the future? And are we going to be enforcing it equally in a way that even if you're fancy and rich or connected, you actually have to follow the same set of rules and are not able to, you know, engineer a massive financial crisis that is kicking millions of people out of their homes and still kind of, you know, not really face consequences for that. Yeah.

[Adam Friedland]

You're saying that Trump is doing 12 dimensional chess. He's saying the crimes to make it finally illegal to break the law. So you're saying he's kind of actually the hero Gotham needs.

[Lina Khan]

You know, I don't know how much foresight is going on there, but yeah, there is.

[Adam Friedland]

He's doing a great job. I agree.

[Lina Khan]

There is an opportunity, I think, here for Democrats as they think about what the future looks like.

[Adam Friedland]

But as I said before, if there were people that were kind of backing the Harris campaign that were kind of opposed to the work you were doing at the ftc, to what extent can the Democratic Party coalesce around that as a project?

[Lina Khan]

Yeah, it's a great question and I think it's going to be a real choice. Right. Because what some of those people were really saying was that we actually don't like it when the government enforces the law against us.

[Adam Friedland]

Yeah. We liked it with Clinton and Obama when they were.

[Lina Khan]

Yeah.

[Adam Friedland]

And with the guys xeroxing the butts and stuff.

[Lina Khan]

And honestly, I mean, that's not too different from what we're seeing with Trump. Right. We don't want the law to be Enforced selectively. And so when we were at the ftc, we would say, you know, is this corporation breaking the law? If so, let's do something about it. We weren't then thinking, oh, but are there executives, big donors to the Democratic Party? And, you know, I'm personally pretty disturbed by people who think that we should instead have a system where Democrats do stand for that type of selective enforcement. So I think it's going to be a big choice for the party.

[Adam Friedland]

You got 180, didn't you? Just look at it. You got 178 because you were humble. You're like, I'm going to drop two points to be a good guy. Just tell me the number. We'll. We'll bleep it. We'll bleep it.

[Lina Khan]

I truly don't remember, but I'm happy

[Adam Friedland]

you're lying to my face right now. I thought you were a noble jurist. You're lying to me to be nice to me because I'm a stupid guy. I'll tell you mine. No, you. Okay.

[Lina Khan]

Will you tell me?

[Adam Friedland]

Will you?

[Lina Khan]

I mean, I'm happy to guess, but I guess mine, then. I don't know one. Okay. I. I don't know you, baby.

[Adam Friedland]

No. You promised me that you were gonna get more. You were gonna tell me.

[Lina Khan]

If I had to guess, it would be something in the 170s, but I don't remember for sure.

[Adam Friedland]

It is full of shit right now. Just tell me 179. You missed one to be nice. Yeah. I'm jealous of you because you are the. You're the son that my parents wanted. No, I really appreciate your time, and I think, like. I think you contextualizing it as, like, the fraud happening right now is kind of par for the course, for what was happening previously is, like, an important point to make because it's like, I think a lot of the time people view things as exceptional and, like, if we get rid of Trump, then. Then everything will be fine again. But, like, if, you know, if there was a kind of pathway here, I think it's a better way of understanding it, perhaps.

[Lina Khan]

Yeah. I mean, look, no doubt what Trump and the Trump administration is doing is a level of corruption and grift that is pretty unprecedented.

[Adam Friedland]

No, you said he was a good guy earlier.

[Lina Khan]

No, I mean, look, it's. What we are seeing with this administration is like, truly, totally anathema to the rule of law and all the values of this country. And it's a level of corruption and grift that is unprecedented. I think, for a lot of Americans. They've been feeling that the rules have been rigged for some time. And so it's a question about kind of where do we go from here?

[Adam Friedland]

I feel like we've had periods of extreme corruption. Like, the FTC was started because of, like, robber barons and stuff like that, right?

[Lina Khan]

Yeah.

[Adam Friedland]

But there was an effort every time to, like, kind of. Kind of make something that fixes it. And I feel like now it's just like. It's like we're just putting, like, tape over, like, a leak that's coming into the ship. It feels a little bit that way to me at least.

[Lina Khan]

I mean, I do think we need, you know, like, a New Deal style level of ambition.

[Adam Friedland]

Do you think I should. You think I should run for president? Okay. Do I have to do the thing. We're going to close on it, the FTC thing. All right. Because it's. Because this I. So our audit is a comedy show, so I have to just. I'm sorry about this.

[Lina Khan]

Okay.

[Adam Friedland]

I just wanted to do. Should I do it or. No. She's so nice. Okay. Ftc. Does that stand for Fart Tits Cock? Does that stand for Fuck this crap? I'm sorry. Shit. Fat Titty Committee, Funny Titty Committee, Friend Friends? That Crap Fart tc. We just need for the audience. They're not. They're gonna like. I just needed to put in something immature for them because I've been so mature in this interview.

[Lina Khan]

Totally. No, you got to play to your audience.

[Adam Friedland]

I really appreciate your time.

[Lina Khan]

Yeah, no, it's good fun.

[Adam Friedland]

Should I go to law school?

[Lina Khan]

I mean, you know, it seems like you. You're really.

[Adam Friedland]

Can you write me a letter?

[Lina Khan]

Happy to.

[Adam Friedland]

For an elder student, I would be in your class. I'd be older than you. I'd be 38.

[Lina Khan]

I guess by I'd be like, who

[Adam Friedland]

the hell do you think you are, talking to an elder like this? She's gonna get me into law school, dude. My dad's gonna finally tell me he's proud of me. No, he loves the show, actually. What? Today was very educational. Because of the stuff I said? Mostly, yeah. We didn't count everyone. Did you have fun?

[Lina Khan]

Yeah.

[Adam Friedland]

You've never been around such an unserious person.

[Lina Khan]

It was a very different interview than most of mine.

[Adam Friedland]

What are you talking about? I'm the Charlie Rose of millennials. I thought that was really fun. Lena hated it, but I thought it was fun.

[Lina Khan]

Lena.

[Adam Friedland]

You want to watch Arsenal this weekend? Are we rolling? Ladies and gentlemen, at 32 years old, she became head of the FTC under Joe Biden. Give it up for former FTC Chair Lita Khan. Or is it Commissioner? Is it commissioner or chair?

[Lina Khan]

You can call me Lena.

[Adam Friedland]

No. Were you the commissioner or chair? I was the chair.

[Lina Khan]

I was the chair. The chair, yes.

[Adam Friedland]

Did you want to change the name at any point? You could have been Grand Pooh. Bah.

[Lina Khan]

It's actually in the text of the law.

[Adam Friedland]

Really?

[Lina Khan]

Yeah.

[Adam Friedland]

I really appreciate it.