LINA KHAN Talks FTC, Monopolies, Biden

Summary

The Adam Friedland Show – "Lina Khan Talks FTC, Monopolies, Biden"
Date: November 12, 2025

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Overview

This episode of The Adam Friedland Show features former FTC Chair Lina Khan in an animated, sharp, and often comedic interview about her tenure at the Federal Trade Commission, her groundbreaking work on antitrust, and the renewed scrutiny on American monopolies. Khan discusses her ideology, the politics of competition law enforcement, and why the FTC shifted from a "toothless" agency to an active regulator under her leadership. The hosts—Adam Friedland and Caleb Pitts—balance irreverent banter and insightful questions, leading to a freewheeling and accessible exploration of complex policy topics.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

Lina Khan’s Background and Rise (07:23–08:40; 18:21–19:19)

• Grew up in the UK (Boulders Green, a heavily Orthodox neighborhood) and later Westchester NY, was a high school newspaper editor who drew NYT attention for a story on Starbucks’ student policy (08:56).
• Academic journey: considered journalism versus law; wrote her college thesis on Hannah Arendt, focusing on technological progress, expertise, and political crises (11:12).
• Early stardom due to her law review article criticizing antitrust’s failure to address Amazon’s power, which became a “vehicle to tell this broader story about changes in our antitrust laws” (13:38–15:17).
• Notable quote:

  “There was a real gap between how the experts... were understanding what was going on in the economy and how... people doing business with this company understood it.” (15:04 – Lina Khan)

Antitrust Law, Monopolies, and Corporate Power (15:18–18:21; 23:04–24:05)

• Amazon’s strategy: using low prices to drive out competition, not strictly illegal under then-prevailing Reagan-era antitrust interpretations (“monopolies are good unless a narrow set of practices are present”).
• FTC/DOJ approach since the 1980s prioritized short-term price over competitive structures (23:04).
• Recent rethinking of these assumptions, with moves to "reinvigorate" competition enforcement coming from both sides of the aisle.
• Notable quote:

  “There's long been a recognition that concentrated economic power can go hand in hand with concentrated political power... that's an insight that has been lost more recently, but we're kind of being forced to reckon with again.” (12:33 – Lina Khan)

Becoming FTC Chair—Politics and Controversies (19:33–21:19; 23:49–24:29)

• Khan was the youngest FTC chair in history, a pick that reflected swift establishment acceptance of new thinking on antitrust (19:42–20:14).
• Describes the selection process as mysterious and HR-driven. Did not speak with President Biden before appointment (20:29–21:17).
• Faces resistance: “pretty significant” opposition from Wall Street, Big Tech, and some Democrats—especially as the Harris campaign was seen as less favorable to her philosophy (24:05).
• Notable quotes:

  “We had several decades of elite impunity, where if you were breaking the law... the government would go light on you.” (25:34 – Lina Khan)
  “We were very clear that we were going to enforce the law in an evenhanded way, no matter what your political connections were.” (26:07 – Lina Khan)

FTC Under Khan: Institutional Change & Enforcement (33:33–34:29; 35:25–36:23)

• Hired technologists and more litigators to “keep up with a digitizing economy.”
• Noted drastic resource imbalance: “sometimes the in-house lawyers of these companies are greater than... the entire FT C’s competition bureau.” (34:13)
• High impact: Suits against Microsoft-Activision (unsuccessful), but pressure resulted in price reductions in pharma (asthma inhalers from $100s to $35; 35:25–36:02).
• “... Pharma companies use all sorts of patent tricks...” (35:25 – Lina Khan)

Bipartisanship and Political Headwinds (36:24–37:08; 41:03–41:26)

• Noted support from unexpected Republican allies (e.g., Josh Hawley).
• Politics sometimes trumps independence, as during backsliding after her tenure when a new FTC chair “let too many people go” and de-emphasized consumer protection (38:49–39:44).
• FTC is, in theory, independent from the White House, but “a lot of those decisions... [are] run out of the White House” (41:11 – Lina Khan).

The Structure and Economics of Monopolies (42:28–43:03; 53:04–54:20)

• Debunked classic efficiency arguments for consolidation (42:28): “If there’s one company, they could charge a zillion dollars...”
• Explains the cost of fighting antitrust cases: “Hiring a single outside economist can cost $1–5 million,” while budgets are limited (53:04).
• Highlights growing cynicism and the futility many feel: enforcement is massively outspent by private sector (54:20).

Industry Breakdowns: Health Care, Agriculture, Tech (51:50–52:00; 55:29–57:51)

• Healthcare singled out as the most exploitative industry (“the most blood on their hands”)—from patent abuses to forced rationing of life-saving medicine (52:01).
• Food and Agriculture: chicken farming as a metaphor for feudalism; four processors dominate thousands of contract farmers (55:29–57:51).
• Notable quote:

  “It sounds like 1880 or something.” (56:46 – Adam Friedland, on chicken contract farming)
  “There are certain parallels... it's really wild.” (57:29 – Lina Khan)

The Judiciary, Enforcement Limits, and the Rule of Law (49:46–51:38; 60:25–62:31)

• Describes judicial skepticism of agency power, especially among Republican appointees, with many progressive regulations blocked at the district court level (50:28–51:38).
• Enforcement gaps have bred widespread belief that “elites could get away with certain things that non-elites couldn’t” (61:44).
• On the Trump era:

  “What we are seeing with this administration is truly, totally anathema to the rule of law and all the values of this country... a level of corruption and grift that is unprecedented.” (65:38 – Lina Khan)

Khan’s Personal Philosophy and Future (60:25–65:38)

• She frames the economic crisis as stemming from law and policy, not inevitability: “The current economy is not just the product of some natural forces... it’s entirely rooted in laws and policies and political choices” (60:25).
• Has no plans for elected office or “the queen” (59:55–60:02), but advocates for a “New Deal-level ambition” for reform (66:33).
• Subtle but pointed critique: Democrats must decide if selective enforcement is really what they stand for (63:14).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (w/ Timestamps)

• “There was a real gap between how the experts... were understanding what was going on in the economy and how... people doing business with this company understood it.” (15:04 – Lina Khan)
• “There's long been a recognition that concentrated economic power can go hand in hand with concentrated political power... that's an insight that has been lost more recently, but we're kind of being forced to reckon with again.” (12:33 – Lina Khan)
• "We were very clear that we were going to enforce the law in an evenhanded way, no matter what your political connections were." (26:07 – Lina Khan)
• “You know, 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.” (57:32 – Lina Khan)
• "The current economy is not just the product of some natural forces... it's entirely rooted in laws and policies and political choices that we have made." (60:25 – Lina Khan)
• "What we are seeing with this administration is truly, totally anathema to the rule of law and all the values of this country... a level of corruption and grift that is unprecedented." (65:38 – Lina Khan)
• “You can call me Lina.” (69:07 – Lina Khan, in response to title etiquette)
• [Comic relief] “FTC: Does that stand for Fart Tits Committee?” (67:03 – Caleb Pitts)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Lina’s Early Years & Intellectual Formation: 07:23–12:10
• Amazon & Antitrust Scholarship: 13:38–15:17
• Critical View of 20th Century Antitrust Enforcement: 23:04–24:05
• Bipartisan and Big Tech Pushback: 24:05–25:34
• Transforming the FTC: 33:33–34:29
• Major Cases: Pharma, Tech, Gaming: 35:25–36:23
• Judiciary and Rule of Law Challenges: 49:46–51:38
• Healthcare & Agriculture as Monopsonies: 51:50–57:51
• Philosophy & Political Future: 60:25–66:33
• Signature Comedic Exchanges: Interspersed, e.g., “Fart Tits Committee” (67:03), closing banter (69:07)

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Tone and Language

• Lina Khan maintains poise and precision—measured, careful, but not evasive.
• Adam and Caleb infuse irreverent, sometimes juvenile humor, but pivot nimbly to weave in real substance (“Fart Tits Committee” and other comedic riffs).
• The hosts encourage Khan’s candor about policy substance, the politics of enforcement, and her personal philosophy, without ever veering fully into seriousness or full satire.

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Conclusion

This episode delivers a lively, humanized portrait of a central figure in America’s antitrust resurgence. Lina Khan addresses complex legal and economic issues with clarity and insight while holding her own amid a barrage of jokes, meta-commentary, and skeptical banter from the hosts. Listeners will leave with a richer understanding of the stakes in competition law, the limits of government power, and the personal mettle required to lead in an era of both regulatory ferment and reaction.

Transcript

[Adam Friedland]

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You function kind of like.

[Caleb Pitts]

As someone that enforced the law. You were kind of like a, like a cop or like a, you know.

[Adam Friedland]

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.

[Caleb Pitts]

To, like, figure out tech companies?

[Lina Khan]

We didn't have that good idea.

[Adam Friedland]

See, had I gone to law school.

[Caleb Pitts]

I would have that great idea because they would have been on Mali and.

[Adam Friedland]

They would have been like, we're gonna make one company. The whole economy is gonna be one.

[Caleb Pitts]

Company pretty soon, I guess. Go.

[Adam Friedland]

Let's do it.

[Caleb Pitts]

Just let me get over that real quick. Just my feelings being hurt. Hello and welcome back to the Adam Friedland Show. I'm Adam Friedland. Thomas just bullied me. All right.

[Adam Friedland]

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, this 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 adamfreeline show to check it out. We got hoodies, T shirts, hats. The hoodies are fucking flying off the shelves, guys.

[Caleb Pitts]

Hop on those real quick before they sell out.

[Adam Friedland]

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[Caleb Pitts]

Of the Adam Friedland Show Merch if you make your own pants and shoes. That is true. That's a funny line, Caleb.

[Adam Friedland]

Leave that in you deserve. Give it up for Caleb Pitts.

[Caleb Pitts]

Anyway.

[Adam Friedland]

My guest this week is former FTC commissioner Lina Khan. Lena'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, 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.

[Caleb Pitts]

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.

[Adam Friedland]

Think of Lina Khan like Batman.

[Caleb Pitts]

And think of Amazon like the Penguin.

[Adam Friedland]

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.

[Caleb Pitts]

So please.

[Adam Friedland]

Caleb, you crushed it this week. I was on the phone too much and Caleb wrote perhaps the best intro.

[Caleb Pitts]

We'Ve had thus far.

[Adam Friedland]

Give it up for Caleb Pitts one more time. I love my team. Please enjoy my conversation with Lina Khan. Great job, everyone.

[Caleb Pitts]

Hey, folks.

[Adam Friedland]

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[Lina Khan]

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

[Caleb Pitts]

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

[Lina Khan]

I lived in Boulders Green.

[Caleb Pitts]

Yeah.

[Adam Friedland]

That's where the Frummers lived.

[Lina Khan]

Is it?

[Caleb Pitts]

That's really 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.

[Caleb Pitts]

Thank God.

[Lina Khan]

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

[Caleb Pitts]

Dude, she's a gooner.

[Adam Friedland]

Do you hear that?

[Caleb Pitts]

Arsenal fan. Oh, really? Yeah.

[Lina Khan]

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

[Adam Friedland]

Stop being a lawyer. Just lie. Have you learned to lie? You're allowed to lie.

[Lina Khan]

It is, like, against my disposition at this point.

[Caleb Pitts]

I know 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 testify before Congress where, like, the main goal is not to lie, it's like that becomes, like, really ingrained in your.

[Caleb Pitts]

I agree. Yeah.

[Adam Friedland]

People.

[Caleb Pitts]

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?

[Caleb Pitts]

Yeah.

[Lina Khan]

Yeah.

[Caleb Pitts]

Okay. Because we're ready. Doing the interview.

[Lina Khan]

Okay.

[Caleb Pitts]

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

[Lina Khan]

I probably have, like as a kid or something, but not since you were a kid? I don't know.

[Caleb Pitts]

I lied.

[Adam Friedland]

My whole life is a lie. This is a lie.

[Lina Khan]

It looks pretty legit.

[Caleb Pitts]

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.

[Caleb Pitts]

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

[Lina Khan]

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

[Caleb Pitts]

And what did you do about it?

[Lina Khan]

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

[Caleb Pitts]

You're Martin Luther King, but didn't you.

[Adam Friedland]

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 or something.

[Adam Friedland]

So were you a little bit sucking.

[Caleb Pitts]

Up to the popular girls that were at Starbucks?

[Lina Khan]

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

[Caleb Pitts]

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.

[Caleb Pitts]

Have you ever gotten a B?

[Lina Khan]

A B?

[Caleb Pitts]

Yeah, probably.

[Lina Khan]

Yeah. And some.

[Adam Friedland]

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

[Lina Khan]

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

[Caleb Pitts]

I need to get. I need to swear you in.

[Adam Friedland]

You never gotta be.

[Caleb Pitts]

You gotta be in hard math.

[Lina Khan]

Some hard math? Yeah.

[Caleb Pitts]

How did it feel to get a beat?

[Lina Khan]

It was humbling, but in a good way.

[Caleb Pitts]

Humbling.

[Adam Friedland]

Did you take the LSAT June 2009 Dino game?

[Lina Khan]

No. No, I took it later.

[Caleb Pitts]

Do you know the dino game?

[Adam Friedland]

The logic game with dinosaurs?

[Lina Khan]

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

[Caleb Pitts]

I took it right before you.

[Lina Khan]

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

[Caleb Pitts]

What'd you get now?

[Lina Khan]

I don't remember.

[Caleb Pitts]

Come on.

[Lina Khan]

I really don't.

[Caleb Pitts]

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

[Lina Khan]

I don't. I don't think so.

[Caleb Pitts]

Straight up, 180.

[Lina Khan]

I. I'd have to go back and try.

[Adam Friedland]

Did you finish first?

[Caleb Pitts]

Were you, like, done?

[Lina Khan]

I don't think so.

[Caleb Pitts]

You definitely did.

[Adam Friedland]

So I like.

[Caleb Pitts]

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]

So your thesis in college was on Hannah Arendt. What was your.

[Caleb Pitts]

What was your area of focus? I think it's pretty interesting for the Times. We're kind of living it 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, you know, airplanes, like, allow us to do pretty great stuff and, like, make physical distance shorter, but it requires an altitude that makes you see less. And I analogize how she talked about kind of expertise and what can get lost in it to how we got into the financial crisis.

[Caleb Pitts]

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.

[Caleb Pitts]

Her romance with. With Heidegger.

[Lina Khan]

Oh, yeah.

[Adam Friedland]

The Nazi and the Jew.

[Lina Khan]

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

[Adam Friedland]

One thing I heard you say in.

[Caleb Pitts]

An interview was that prior to the establishment of the Third Reich as a centralized power structure, that industrial conglomeration or was a big component of it. Is that correct? Or am I trying to say words. I feel like I'm copying words that I heard on tv, on succession, maybe?

[Lina Khan]

Yeah. You know, obviously there were 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.

[Caleb Pitts]

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.

[Adam Friedland]

She knows all the rules. You know, all the rules. Okay, so let's explain to our audience.

[Caleb Pitts]

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.

[Caleb Pitts]

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 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, the general consensus in DC was that Amazon is this company that is 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 law review article.

[Adam Friedland]

So in essence, you're saying that they.

[Caleb Pitts]

Were dropping prices so low that mom and pop were 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 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.

[Caleb Pitts]

Sears catalog is gonna drive the general store out of business.

[Adam Friedland]

Is it just that like.

[Caleb Pitts]

Yeah, like Bezos kind of reinvented a supply chain. But I can get any crap I want tomorrow.

[Adam Friedland]

Do you get crap on there?

[Lina Khan]

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

[Caleb Pitts]

You're not a prime. What are you doing?

[Adam Friedland]

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.

[Caleb Pitts]

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 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 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.

[Caleb Pitts]

Both consumers fucked everyone off.

[Lina Khan]

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

[Caleb Pitts]

Sorry for cussing.

[Lina Khan]

Also it's not a good situation and a lot of that is because they don't face real competition.

[Caleb Pitts]

Do you think the game monopolies may be problematic for people's understanding of Monopoly power?

[Adam Friedland]

No one wins that monopoly.

[Caleb Pitts]

And everyone's like, you're a bad guy.

[Lina Khan]

Right.

[Caleb Pitts]

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?

[Caleb Pitts]

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.

[Caleb Pitts]

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

[Lina Khan]

Just briefly, yeah.

[Caleb Pitts]

Were you offered like a federal clerkship or something?

[Adam Friedland]

I mean it seems like from your.

[Caleb Pitts]

Resume, like you could have.

[Lina Khan]

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

[Caleb Pitts]

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.

[Caleb Pitts]

How did you get drafted in the league at 32?

[Lina Khan]

It's a great question. I have.

[Caleb Pitts]

No, 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. How did you get scouted?

[Caleb Pitts]

Like, how did they know that you were the goat? It's really cool that President Biden was like, this is the one.

[Lina Khan]

Yeah.

[Caleb Pitts]

And you, like, changed. We'll get into it, but you changed the way kind of a toothless part of the executive functioned, from what I understand.

[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.

[Caleb Pitts]

From the monopolies, man.

[Lina Khan]

From. 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. Security people.

[Caleb Pitts]

They looked into the Starbucks, right?

[Lina Khan]

Probably.

[Caleb Pitts]

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 my out. In my case, I ended up being told that I had been picked as a commissioner and they were going to announce it.

[Adam Friedland]

Had you spoken to president Biden before?

[Lina Khan]

No.

[Caleb Pitts]

Really?

[Lina Khan]

Yeah.

[Adam Friedland]

He wasn't like, cato, kiddo, the malarkey of you.

[Caleb Pitts]

You 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.

[Caleb Pitts]

And as you alluded to, from Reagan till the time you came, which. 20. 20.

[Lina Khan]

2021.

[Caleb Pitts]

Yeah, 2021. Like, from. So for what, 30 years. It was basically a completely.

[Adam Friedland]

Just what they did.

[Caleb Pitts]

Her Herbalife. Right.

[Adam Friedland]

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]

So you walked in the office, everyone's Hawaiian shirt, beer pong. Were people doing, like, xeroxes of their butts.

[Lina Khan]

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

[Caleb Pitts]

She won't talk shit.

[Adam Friedland]

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, there. You know, it was. It was. I was an unusual pick for a bunch of reasons. So, you know, it was a bit of an adjustment for the agency.

[Caleb Pitts]

Yeah.

[Lina Khan]

Yeah.

[Caleb Pitts]

How'd you get picked?

[Lina Khan]

It's a great. It's a great question.

[Caleb Pitts]

Because you're not nepo, right?

[Lina Khan]

No. I mean, no.

[Caleb Pitts]

You're like the smartest one. They never picked the smartest one.

[Adam Friedland]

Seriously, it's like a rarity. That's why I'm so fascinated by it.

[Lina Khan]

Yeah.

[Adam Friedland]

Especially so young.

[Caleb Pitts]

They hate youth in Hollywood. In ugly Hollywood.

[Adam Friedland]

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.

[Caleb Pitts]

Yeah.

[Lina Khan]

And so there was a growing sense that the kind of Reagan approach, which had become a bipartisan approach. Right.

[Caleb Pitts]

Undercutting.

[Lina Khan]

I mean, 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.

[Caleb Pitts]

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, you know, a president has the prerogative to kind of pick their own team. So they were the bad guys, not, not, not choosing who they were gonna. Who they were gonna have in place before they won.

[Caleb Pitts]

But you're a first round draft pick.

[Lina Khan]

You know, I. 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.

[Sponsor/Announcer]

Very vocal about that.

[Caleb Pitts]

There were a lot of people who were upset.

[Lina Khan]

I don't know if I'd say a.

[Caleb Pitts]

Lot, but in the newspaper, that I believe. Wait, what did I find? There's like 53 op eds against you after you came into the FTC, at least.

[Adam Friedland]

Yes, they were saying they were. Why you drove them nuts. You were living rent free because it's tech.

[Caleb Pitts]

Was it big tech and hedge funds?

[Lina Khan]

There was some big tech trade groups. A lot of it was, you know, also the dealmakers. 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, five, four, five fives.

[Adam Friedland]

Look, Brain death at Khan's ftc and Lina Khan blocks cancer cures at hedge.

[Caleb Pitts]

Fund that made a killing betting against Lina Khan.

[Adam Friedland]

Lina Khan needs to see Shark tank's Kevin o'. Leary. Lina Khan whiffs again.

[Caleb Pitts]

Why were you such a lightning rod?

[Adam Friedland]

I mean, how are you like this? But then 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, you know, even in places like the ftc, sometimes there had been a double standard where if you kind of found that there was some, like, small time scammer or fraud fraudster, you would, like, bring the full force of the law against them. But then if you kind of found that a fancy CEO was breaking the law and their company was publicly traded, you might go a little lighter.

[Caleb Pitts]

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.

[Caleb Pitts]

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, you know, directing my government to basically turn the page on that failed approach. And that means the ftc, the doj, but also all of these other agencies need to really focus on taking on monopolies. So there was definitely a mandate.

[Adam Friedland]

And they called you a hipster. That was one of the labels that.

[Caleb Pitts]

Was attached to you.

[Adam Friedland]

So you were like listening to Grizzly Bear Animal Collective. What was it? Why. 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. 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 Brandeisian or something?

[Lina Khan]

Right? Neo Brandeisian.

[Caleb Pitts]

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, you.

[Adam Friedland]

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. Deep undercover in Wall street usually? No, 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.

[Caleb Pitts]

To, like, figure out tech companies?

[Lina Khan]

We didn't have that. That good idea.

[Adam Friedland]

See, had I gone to law school.

[Caleb Pitts]

I would have that great idea because they would have been on Mali and.

[Adam Friedland]

They would have been like, we're going to make one company. The whole economy is going to be.

[Caleb Pitts]

One company pretty soon.

[Lina Khan]

Yeah.

[Caleb Pitts]

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

[Lina Khan]

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.

[Caleb Pitts]

Talking about the Singularity, I guess.

[Adam Friedland]

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So you took.

[Caleb Pitts]

This toothless organization, you made it. You made it a potent organization for the first time. Did you have any structural changes that you had to enact in order to. 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, 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.

[Caleb Pitts]

I would imagine you just get outgunned.

[Adam Friedland]

Like, they have 9,000 lawyers.

[Caleb Pitts]

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.

[Caleb Pitts]

How many guys did you have in total?

[Lina Khan]

We had 1300.

[Caleb Pitts]

I thought you were gonna 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. So you kind of have to figure out how to navigate that.

[Caleb Pitts]

What do you view as your biggest dub?

[Lina Khan]

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

[Caleb Pitts]

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't get it on PlayStation. Call of Duty.

[Caleb Pitts]

I think you can, but I think you get it early on Xbox. Look at what you did, what they did today.

[Adam Friedland]

You're 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.

[Caleb Pitts]

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?

[Caleb Pitts]

I don't care.

[Adam Friedland]

I hope that's $30 now.

[Caleb Pitts]

It's very expensive.

[Adam Friedland]

It's $30.

[Lina Khan]

$30.

[Adam Friedland]

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

[Caleb Pitts]

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 are drug prices 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.

[Caleb Pitts]

I'm a lawyer. Yeah.

[Lina Khan]

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

[Caleb Pitts]

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, 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.

[Caleb Pitts]

Like, on the politics side, you had. There were some Republicans that actually were like, that rode with that fuck that fucked with you.

[Adam Friedland]

I mean, like, where you got it.

[Caleb Pitts]

Didn'T go along partisan lines. I mean, like, there was. Josh Hawley was one of them or no.

[Lina Khan]

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

[Caleb Pitts]

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

[Lina Khan]

You know, there were a lot. 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.

[Caleb Pitts]

You went after Meta while you were in the ftc.

[Lina Khan]

We sued them. Yeah.

[Caleb Pitts]

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.

[Caleb Pitts]

I would think that Trump would just stop that. So there was a big haircut.

[Adam Friedland]

He's got a chain and a haircut.

[Caleb Pitts]

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 let it go forward. I mean, you know, that doesn't mean they will see it all the way through. And I think the lobbying pressure is constant and the type of access these people have to the White House is pretty unprecedented. So we'll have to wait and see.

[Adam Friedland]

So if you went to the South.

[Caleb Pitts]

Bay, would you, like, wear a bulletproof vest or something like 50 cent? Did you know the song many men buy 50 cent? Have you heard it?

[Adam Friedland]

No, but does that, as an individual, do you process that? Like, I mean, it is kind of.

[Caleb Pitts]

Crazy that 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.

[Caleb Pitts]

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, like, we don't get screws in our cans of tuna, you know?

[Lina Khan]

Yeah.

[Caleb Pitts]

Like, I guess, like, what changes were made at your shop after you left? And, like, what have they chosen to pursue since you've been gone? The new commissioner.

[Lina Khan]

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

[Caleb Pitts]

The.

[Adam Friedland]

But Xerox guys are back.

[Lina Khan]

I think they're. You know, they apparently are now trying to hire. Maybe they. 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, you know, they allowed this big merger to go through between these two ad agencies. And one of the conditions of that was basically that they had to buy ads from Elon Musk more or less on these 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.

[Caleb Pitts]

And they pursue sex changes.

[Lina Khan]

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

[Caleb Pitts]

Workshops?

[Lina Khan]

Yeah.

[Caleb Pitts]

Well, like, you go for a weekend to a hotel.

[Lina Khan]

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

[Caleb Pitts]

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.

[Caleb Pitts]

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.

[Caleb Pitts]

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 that like.

[Lina Khan]

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

[Caleb Pitts]

Them their space right now.

[Lina Khan]

Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting dynamic because people, 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.

[Caleb Pitts]

And what cases have they carried on from your 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 far 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.

[Caleb Pitts]

Acrobat.

[Lina Khan]

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

[Caleb Pitts]

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?

[Caleb Pitts]

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

[Lina Khan]

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

[Caleb Pitts]

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

[Lina Khan]

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

[Caleb Pitts]

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 what, like my understanding is the argument for consolidation is they say that it'll create more efficiencies that could be passed on in savings to the consumer. Is that kind of what you've been pushed back on?

[Lina Khan]

That's often the argument.

[Caleb Pitts]

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.

[Caleb Pitts]

And you say that to the judge.

[Lina Khan]

I could be a lawyer. I think so.

[Caleb Pitts]

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 those arguments.

[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, how are you doing the homework part? 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 the truth.

[Caleb Pitts]

You never wanted to.

[Adam Friedland]

I want the truth. You would be so good at that.

[Lina Khan]

Thank you.

[Adam Friedland]

Let me tell you.

[Lina Khan]

Let me write for you.

[Adam Friedland]

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[Caleb Pitts]

Folks.

[Adam Friedland]

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[Caleb Pitts]

That money was a stressful thing. And when you're stressed about money, you're.

[Adam Friedland]

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[Adam Friedland]

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[Caleb Pitts]

They find the perfect fundamentals.

[Adam Friedland]

This is creatine done right. Right now, Momentous is offering our listeners up to 35% off your first order with the promo code TAFS. So go to Live Momentum and use promo code TAFS for up to 35 off your first order. That's livemomentous.com promo code TAFS. Who's your favorite? Who's your favorite?

[Caleb Pitts]

Like Supreme Court justice.

[Lina Khan]

I mean Brandeis was pretty great.

[Caleb Pitts]

Nice. Okay, what is number two?

[Lina Khan]

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

[Caleb Pitts]

Sick.

[Lina Khan]

Yeah.

[Caleb Pitts]

Pretty cool.

[Lina Khan]

Yeah.

[Caleb Pitts]

Let's go down the list.

[Lina Khan]

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

[Caleb Pitts]

Do at law school? You didn't play with top five?

[Lina Khan]

We did five NC's 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.

[Caleb Pitts]

It was in a bag, more or less.

[Lina Khan]

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

[Caleb Pitts]

It would have been cool. Trash bag.

[Lina Khan]

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

[Caleb Pitts]

People hate companies, I think. So 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 thing that's bad in their lives is sometimes being driven by corporations that are breaking the law and.

[Caleb Pitts]

Have bought influence perhaps in our politics.

[Lina Khan]

Perhaps.

[Caleb Pitts]

Perhaps you could say yes, allegedly.

[Lina Khan]

Allegedly. That's right.

[Adam Friedland]

Counselor. Counselor Astin answered.

Hearsay.

[Caleb Pitts]

Have you ever fallen asleep in court and then objected when you wake up?

[Lina Khan]

I haven't had that experience.

[Caleb Pitts]

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.

[Caleb Pitts]

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.

[Adam Friedland]

It'S a kind of. Is there ever a fear that something.

[Caleb Pitts]

Could potentially go to the Supreme Court, which is kind of. It's understood to be quite partisan at this point. And six, three 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.

[Caleb Pitts]

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.

[Adam Friedland]

So what is the current state of.

[Caleb Pitts]

The judiciary like in your estimation?

[Lina Khan]

Like, you know, I'd say a few things. Like there are a lot of, you know, district court judges, appellate court judges that are just trying to do their jobs and like be faithful to the law. I think there has been a general drift coinciding with more Republican appointees on the Bench of like just more hostility and skepticism of federal agencies when they're trying to use, you know, trying to make things better in the economy, more or less. 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, you know, limit overdraft fees or say that airlines can't lie about the price of a ticket. The FTC non compete rule, you know, we even passed a rule that said companies have to make it as easy to cancel a subscription as it is to sign up. And a lot of those rules ended up being blocked. So 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?

[Caleb Pitts]

That's very fair and noble to say, honestly. 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.

[Caleb Pitts]

What is.

[Adam Friedland]

If you had to look at the.

[Caleb Pitts]

American economy, like, what industry do you think just fucks like our. My audience or the people the most?

[Lina Khan]

I mean, healthcare probably.

[Caleb Pitts]

Yeah. They have the most blood on their hands. Yeah, yeah. When we were talking about the orange book, that was me. Something I heard five minutes ago and I said to impress you, but like one of the ways that they raised the price of inhalers 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 see, sign up and come talk to us. And we would hear from people who would say, I have a family member who's having to literally ration their insulin or their life saving medicine because it's too expensive. And some of that was done through illegal tactics by the 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 like.

[Adam Friedland]

Bilking money, is it like as a member of the civil service?

[Caleb Pitts]

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?

[Caleb Pitts]

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, you know, broad brush. There are a lot of members of Congress that were very supportive of the, the FTC's work in both parties. Even on the Democratic side, kind of abroad a big tent. And there were big efforts to make sure that these agencies were actually funded and had the resources they needed. But I would say that 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 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.

[Caleb Pitts]

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.

[Lina Khan]

Yeah.

[Adam Friedland]

But a poor.

[Caleb Pitts]

I'm a lawyer.

[Adam Friedland]

Yeah, you have to ask them.

[Caleb Pitts]

And then 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.

[Caleb Pitts]

Who was on that when you were there?

[Lina Khan]

There were a bunch of people.

[Caleb Pitts]

Freak show.

[Adam Friedland]

House is freak show.

[Lina Khan]

It's different.

[Caleb Pitts]

I thought the House was the government.

[Adam Friedland]

When I met Chris Murphy, he was.

[Caleb Pitts]

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.

[Caleb Pitts]

Do you think that they should start wearing nicer clothes again?

[Lina Khan]

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

[Caleb Pitts]

Don't answer that question. You're so nice.

[Adam Friedland]

Yeah, I guess the healthcare industry.

[Caleb Pitts]

And then who would you put second? I guess.

[Adam Friedland]

Who are the top five most evil?

[Caleb Pitts]

You're not going to answer, but I'm going to say industries that have the most adverse effect on Americans lives.

[Lina Khan]

I mean, within health care, there are a lot of different actors. There are the pharmaceutical companies, health insurers. After healthcare, I would say in food and Agriculture, too. The agriculture industry in this country is so consolidated.

[Caleb Pitts]

That was one of your first things, right?

[Adam Friedland]

The chickens.

[Lina Khan]

That's right, the chickens.

[Caleb Pitts]

You want to tell them about the chickens?

[Lina Khan]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, so when I was doing some of this market research, one of the industries I had to study very closely was chicken farming. And that's an industry that is consolidated a lot. And so you have 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 issues.

[Caleb Pitts]

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

[Lina Khan]

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

[Adam Friedland]

Is that, like, they say you have to make your.

[Caleb Pitts]

Like, and they raise the quotas, you know?

[Lina Khan]

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

[Adam Friedland]

It 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.

[Caleb Pitts]

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

[Lina Khan]

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

[Caleb Pitts]

Does it.

[Adam Friedland]

Does it make you cynical?

[Caleb Pitts]

Did it make you cynical, like, as.

[Adam Friedland]

Someone that was trying to enforce something.

[Caleb Pitts]

That'S like, obviously just being nice, like.

[Adam Friedland]

To a guy that has a chicken farm, that. Mr. Tyson's like, I need more chickens.

[Caleb Pitts]

From you, otherwise I'm going to.

[Adam Friedland]

What are they, serfs?

[Caleb Pitts]

Are they.

[Adam Friedland]

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 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.

[Caleb Pitts]

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.

[Caleb Pitts]

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.

[Caleb Pitts]

You just had too much work.

[Lina Khan]

Yeah.

[Caleb Pitts]

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

[Lina Khan]

Yeah.

[Caleb Pitts]

Invest your brain in. 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.

[Caleb Pitts]

What'd you get on the L side?

[Adam Friedland]

Come on, stop lying.

[Caleb Pitts]

I read.

[Adam Friedland]

You're just lying to my face.

[Caleb Pitts]

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 Khan.

[Adam Friedland]

When you see the press, what did you think?

[Caleb Pitts]

Were you laughing?

[Lina Khan]

Sometimes.

[Adam Friedland]

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

[Lina Khan]

Their editorial board. Yes.

[Caleb Pitts]

They're editorial board fixated on you. 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.

[Caleb Pitts]

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

[Lina Khan]

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

[Caleb Pitts]

You're so much.

[Lina Khan]

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

[Adam Friedland]

Do you have political ambition, like, to.

[Lina Khan]

Run for, like, Congress or something?

[Caleb Pitts]

Be the president?

[Lina Khan]

No. I mean, I wasn't born here, so it makes sense for that one.

[Caleb Pitts]

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

[Lina Khan]

Not especially.

[Caleb Pitts]

I could see you as queen.

[Adam Friedland]

You'd be great. You had little corgis.

[Caleb Pitts]

You shake hands in a line.

[Adam Friedland]

Would you be a senator?

[Caleb Pitts]

Would you be on a. Would you want to be on the Supreme Court?

[Adam Friedland]

Like, what do you. I guess just from what I'm seeing.

[Caleb Pitts]

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.

[Caleb Pitts]

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.

[Adam Friedland]

Like, this is the law I'm breaking right now.

[Caleb Pitts]

You know, like he's just saying it and it's fascinating to watch because it's.

[Adam Friedland]

Like you're supposed to lie.

Right.

[Caleb Pitts]

And he's like, in this way, I'm doing some sort of fraud.

[Adam Friedland]

Right.

[Caleb Pitts]

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 we can't go back? Can I think 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's been a version of this that's been happening for a while. Right. Where they think 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 are 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.

[Caleb Pitts]

Yeah, you're saying that Trump is doing 12 dimensional chess. He's saying the crimes to make it finally illegal to break the law.

[Adam Friedland]

So you're saying he's kind of actually.

[Caleb Pitts]

The hero Gotham needs.

[Lina Khan]

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

[Caleb Pitts]

He's doing a great job. I agree.

[Lina Khan]

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

[Adam Friedland]

But as I said before, like, if there were people that were kind of.

[Caleb Pitts]

Backing the Harris campaign that were kind of opposed to the work you were doing at the ftc, you know, to what extent can the Democratic Party coalesce around that as a, 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.

[Caleb Pitts]

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

[Lina Khan]

Yeah.

[Caleb Pitts]

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 enforce 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.

[Caleb Pitts]

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

[Lina Khan]

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

[Adam Friedland]

To my face right now. I thought you were a noble jurist.

[Caleb Pitts]

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?

[Caleb Pitts]

Will you?

[Lina Khan]

I mean, I'm happy to guess, but I, I guess mine then. I. I don't know. 169. Okay. I. I don't know.

[Adam Friedland]

You baited.

[Lina Khan]

No.

[Adam Friedland]

You promised me that you were gonna.

[Caleb Pitts]

Get more that 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.

[Caleb Pitts]

It is four full of shit right now. Just tell me. 179. You missed one to be nice.

[Adam Friedland]

Yeah.

[Caleb Pitts]

I'm jealous of you because 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 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.

[Caleb Pitts]

No, you said he was a good guy earlier.

[Lina Khan]

No, I mean, look, it' swhat 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.

[Caleb Pitts]

Yeah.

[Lina Khan]

And so it's a question about kind of where do we go from here.

[Caleb Pitts]

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

[Adam Friedland]

But there was an effort every time.

[Caleb Pitts]

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. Does 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.

[Caleb Pitts]

Do you think I should. You think I should run for president?

[Adam Friedland]

Okay, Do I have to do the thing.

[Caleb Pitts]

We're gonna close on it, the FTC thing. All right.

[Adam Friedland]

Because it's.

[Caleb Pitts]

Because this I. So our audio is a comedy show, so I have to just. I'm sorry about this.

[Sponsor/Announcer]

Okay.

[Caleb Pitts]

I just wanted to do. Should I do it or. No. She's so nice. Okay. Ftc. Does that stand for fart tits? Does that stand for this crap? I'm sorry. Fat titty committee. Funny. City 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 gotta play to your audience.

[Caleb Pitts]

I really appreciate your time.

[Lina Khan]

Yeah, I know. It's good fun.

[Caleb Pitts]

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?

[Caleb Pitts]

Happy to Elder. For an elder student.

[Adam Friedland]

I would be in your class.

[Caleb Pitts]

I'd be older than you. I'd be 38.

[Lina Khan]

I guess by.

[Adam Friedland]

I'd be like, who the hell do.

[Caleb Pitts]

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.

[Adam Friedland]

What?

[Caleb Pitts]

Today was very educational.

[Adam Friedland]

Because of the stuff I said?

[Caleb Pitts]

Mostly, yeah. We didn't proud everyone. Did you have fun?

[Lina Khan]

Yeah.

[Caleb Pitts]

You've never been around such an unserious person.

[Lina Khan]

It was a very different interview than most of mine.

[Caleb Pitts]

What are you talking about?

[Adam Friedland]

I'm the Charlie Rose of millennials.

[Caleb Pitts]

I thought that was really fun. Lena hated it, but I thought it was fun.

[Adam Friedland]

Lena, you want to watch Arsenal this weekend?

[Caleb Pitts]

Are we rolling?

[Adam Friedland]

Ladies and gentlemen, at 32 years old, she became head of the FTC under Joe Biden. Give it up for former FTC chair Lina Khan. Or is it Commissioner? Is it commissioner or chair?

[Lina Khan]

You can call me Lena.

[Caleb Pitts]

No.

[Adam Friedland]

Were you the commissioner?

[Lina Khan]

I was the chair. I was the chair.

[Caleb Pitts]

The chair, yes. Would you want to change the name at any point? You could have been Grand Poobah.

[Lina Khan]

It's actually in the text of the law.

[Caleb Pitts]

Really?

[Lina Khan]

Yeah.

[Caleb Pitts]

I really appreciate it, Sam.