The Hidden Plot to Legalize Corruption with David Sirota
00:45:
(David Sirota)
I actually think at one level, like obviously Donald Trump statement by statement is a pathological liar.
00:51:
(David Sirota)
I mean, he has no regard for the truth at all.
00:53:
(David Sirota)
But I actually think at the vibe level, at the kind of brand level, that Donald Trump is actually painfully honest about the fact that he sees government as a transactional endeavor.
01:05:
(David Sirota)
And I guess he wouldn't call it corruption.
01:07:
(David Sirota)
He just calls it like government.
01:09:
(David Sirota)
But I think my point here is, is that
01:11:
(David Sirota)
In some ways, that does a little bit of a favor in the sense that no one can deny it anymore.
01:21:
(Chris Hayes)
Hello and welcome to Why Is This Happening with me, your host, Chris Hayes.
01:29:
(Chris Hayes)
I saw an item in the news today that I found kind of amusing.
01:32:
(Chris Hayes)
It's about the FBI director, Kash Patel.
01:34:
(Chris Hayes)
And he's dating a woman who's like a country music performer who lives in Nashville, Tennessee.
01:39:
(Chris Hayes)
And she gave a performance at State College, Pennsylvania, which of course is where Penn State is.
01:45:
(Chris Hayes)
And there's public flight records of all the flights.
01:48:
(Chris Hayes)
And someone very smartly noted that a plane that was...
01:51:
(Chris Hayes)
registered to the FBI, was in state college, and then flew to Nashville after the performance.
01:58:
(Chris Hayes)
And it was like, oh, that's Kash Patel's girlfriend.
02:01:
(Chris Hayes)
And he's flying her back to Nashville after her concert on a government plane.
02:06:
(Chris Hayes)
And this was in the same day that there was this news that multiple Trump administration officials have taken over the houses of military officers that are usually used for military officers since they can live in them.
02:17:
(Chris Hayes)
And at some level, it's like, we were talking about this today on my editorial call.
02:21:
(Chris Hayes)
Somehow the plane is like this crystalline example of corruption that just feels like an easier story to tell than just the avalanche of corruption, unlike anything we've ever seen of the last few years, where I feel overwhelmed by the story.
02:35:
(Chris Hayes)
It can be hard to conceptualize.
02:38:
(Chris Hayes)
It's happening at many different levels.
02:39:
(Chris Hayes)
It's happening at such a level of abstraction.
02:41:
(Chris Hayes)
It's also happening at such a high dollar level that it doesn't seem real, like, oh, $3 billion in crypto here and
02:48:
(Chris Hayes)
They're going to sell the UAE these chips that they say they wouldn't because the UAE apparently got into bed with them on crypto.
02:56:
(Chris Hayes)
But it's also, I think, I've been wrestling with why I feel like it hasn't broken through more because it feels like it hasn't.
03:02:
(Chris Hayes)
And I think I've come to the conclusion that people have come to the conclusion that, like, America is so corrupt, that the system is so corrupt.
03:09:
(Chris Hayes)
They can no longer see these distinctions, even though I will say, having covered a country that does have a lot of corruption, particularly in the structural way that our elections are funded and the system works, we really are in like completely different territory now.
03:24:
(Chris Hayes)
But I think the inability to see that territory, like it's all kind of coming together, these various threads in this moment, like Trump's personal corruption, a multi-decade generational effort to
03:35:
(Chris Hayes)
Make different forms of corruption legal as a sort of political legal movement.
03:40:
(Chris Hayes)
The Supreme Court's jurisprudence on corruption, which it has essentially in case after case removed inhibitions on corruption, the enforcement of it, the prosecution of it.
03:52:
(Chris Hayes)
And so I thought it'd be great to talk to my old buddy, David Sirota, who's got a new book out called Master Plan, The Hidden Plot to Legalize Corruption in America.
04:00:
(Chris Hayes)
That's co-authored along with Jared King Mayer.
04:03:
(Chris Hayes)
He's also the founder, right?
04:05:
(Chris Hayes)
Editor of The Lever, which is a great site you should check out.
04:07:
(Chris Hayes)
So David, welcome to the program.
04:09:
(Chris Hayes)
Thank you.
04:09:
(Chris Hayes)
Thanks for having me.
04:15:
(Chris Hayes)
Let's start on this
04:36:
(Chris Hayes)
And all that's bad and been there and gotten worse.
04:39:
(Chris Hayes)
And then there's like what we're seeing now, which also seems like both a continuation and a difference in kind from what we've seen before.
04:46:
(Chris Hayes)
Like as someone who's thought about this so much, where do you see it?
04:49:
(David Sirota)
The way you started this is about self-enriching corruption.
04:54:
(David Sirota)
And I think that has been part of the American story.
04:57:
(David Sirota)
Frankly, that's been part of human history forever.
04:59:
(David Sirota)
Totally.
05:00:
(David Sirota)
Political leaders who skim off the top, who use the powers of the state for luxury stuff, for self-enrichment schemes.
05:08:
(David Sirota)
And I think what we have to understand is there's that...
05:12:
(David Sirota)
next to the structural corruption of, for instance, money going into the political system to elect politicians who will do the bidding of industries and make our lives worse.
05:26:
(David Sirota)
And I think what's going on here is that the American public has gotten inured
05:32:
(David Sirota)
Right.
05:53:
(David Sirota)
Like the real corruption, I think, that really bothers people is the kind of corruption that they also know exists and has been normalized, which is health insurance companies give a lot of money to politicians to elect the Congress they want to create a health care system that then screws me over.
06:09:
(David Sirota)
And that is the kind of corruption that I think people are aware of and angry about, but I do also think feel helpless to deal with.
06:18:
(David Sirota)
And what our book traces is how the structural corruption was normalized and legalized.
06:26:
(David Sirota)
And where that story starts in the modern sense is after Watergate.
06:30:
(David Sirota)
And we can get into some of the details, but I think what happened in
06:33:
(David Sirota)
Watergate was the first in the modern era dark money scandal.
06:36:
(David Sirota)
We're talking about suitcases of cash from major brand name Fortune 500 companies literally being flown into Washington to the president's campaign.
06:46:
(David Sirota)
I mean, that like literally happened, right?
06:48:
(David Sirota)
And out of that,
06:50:
(David Sirota)
came a series of reforms, the modern campaign finance reforms, that tamped down on the really kind of grimy corruption, like the cash in the envelope corruption, the graft, the self-enriching gross corruption.
07:04:
(David Sirota)
And there was kind of a crackdown on that.
07:06:
(David Sirota)
But what also came out of Watergate was the normalization of the structural corruption,
07:12:
(David Sirota)
No longer do you have to fly in suitcases of cash.
07:15:
(David Sirota)
You can actually write a nice big check from the company with the company's logo on it and deposit it in a bank account or in a super PAC at unlimited levels.
07:26:
(David Sirota)
And that's the kind of corruption that actually affects the policies that we all live under.
07:33:
(David Sirota)
And the process of normalizing and legalizing that is what our book is about.
07:38:
(David Sirota)
And what I think people think, you know, a hidden plot,
07:40:
(David Sirota)
The thing is, is that I think people know there's corruption, but I think they don't know how deliberate the plot was to make all of that kind of systemic corruption legal, acceptable and normal, because that's the kind of corruption that people with lots of money that they really want because it gets them the policies that keep them rich and powerful.
08:02:
(Chris Hayes)
And there's innovation on that score too.
08:04:
(Chris Hayes)
Like one of the things that Trump has come up with is new ways to replace, like even under an incredibly deregulated system, he's come up with new ways to replace the suitcase of cash, which is like, I'm going to sue you and we can settle.
08:16:
(Chris Hayes)
And now you're paying me $20 million.
08:19:
(Chris Hayes)
I've never seen a politician do that before, but it's like, yeah, Disney paid him however much or, you know, the ballroom, right?
08:24:
(Chris Hayes)
Like coming up with new ways again to sidestep what is even at this point a truly minimally regulated system.
08:31:
(Chris Hayes)
Yep.
08:32:
(Chris Hayes)
to get back to like the absolute pure pay-for-play, old-fashioned, like industrial built-in-age system where powerful interests give you money and they get favors in return.
08:45:
(David Sirota)
Yeah, I actually think at one level, like obviously Donald Trump statement by statement is a pathological liar.
08:51:
(David Sirota)
I mean, he has no regard for the truth at all.
08:53:
(David Sirota)
But I actually think at the vibe level,
08:56:
(David Sirota)
at the kind of brand level, that Donald Trump is actually painfully honest about the fact that he sees government as a transactional endeavor.
09:05:
(David Sirota)
And I guess he wouldn't call it corruption.
09:07:
(David Sirota)
He just calls it like government.
09:10:
(David Sirota)
But I think my point here is, is that in some ways that does a little bit of a favor in the sense that no one can deny it anymore.
09:16:
(David Sirota)
Like there's no denying like you and I were old enough to have lived through like the 90s and the 2000s where it was like both sides were sort of like money buys access, but that's not really corruption.
09:26:
(David Sirota)
And like this sort of this soft corruption and this pretense that it's not corruption.
09:29:
(David Sirota)
I think Trump like rips that veneer completely off.
09:32:
(David Sirota)
And I don't think anybody would say that what's going on isn't pay to play, influence, buying, et cetera, et cetera.
09:37:
(David Sirota)
Like, so in a sense, that kind of advances the way we can at least talk about this.
09:42:
(David Sirota)
Yeah.
09:42:
(David Sirota)
in saying, okay, I don't have to convince you it's happening.
09:45:
(David Sirota)
Now let's talk about whether it's preventable, it's bad, or if it's something we just want to accept.
09:50:
(Chris Hayes)
Well, I think that gets to something I think it's worth kind of wrestling with is like what we mean by corruption and how we deal with the actions of different institutions and entities in a democratic society.
10:00:
(Chris Hayes)
And just to like briefly kind of take the other side of the Citizens United argument, which we can talk about in a little bit, is like there is some level at which, whether it's a small nonprofit or it's a block association or it's individuals or it's individuals banded together,
10:12:
(Chris Hayes)
every institution, every entity in a democratic society does have the right to petition their government, right?
10:17:
(Chris Hayes)
That's guaranteed by the Constitution.
10:20:
(Chris Hayes)
And the car dealers are going to band together.
10:22:
(Chris Hayes)
And they're definitely going to spend money to go lobby the Hill for regulations favorable to car dealers.
10:28:
(Chris Hayes)
And that's
10:29:
(Chris Hayes)
At some level, like that is democracy, right?
10:31:
(Chris Hayes)
A liberal democracy has to deal with different interests competing.
10:34:
(Chris Hayes)
And you kind of got to let them do that.
10:36:
(Chris Hayes)
So the question of like, when does that pitch over from that's an irreducible part of democracy, different interests fighting, sometimes very powerful interests and something that's corrupt.
10:45:
(Chris Hayes)
How do you understand that line?
10:47:
(David Sirota)
Well, first, we can go to the Supreme Court itself.
10:50:
(David Sirota)
It is the Roberts Court.
10:51:
(David Sirota)
It doesn't treat its precedents seriously, but let's just treat its precedents seriously.
10:55:
(David Sirota)
Even after Citizens United, the basic idea is that money directly to a politician can be corrupting.
11:02:
(David Sirota)
That's why.
11:02:
(David Sirota)
at least for now, and there's a case that's led by J.D.
11:05:
(David Sirota)
Vance to try to destroy this, but even in the post-Citizens United era, the idea of there can be limits on direct campaign contributions because money going directly to a politician or their campaign can be corrupting, whether into their personal bank account or their campaign.
11:20:
(David Sirota)
Now, if that is the case, then when we see lots of money going to politicians, I think that is a corrupting force.
11:28:
(David Sirota)
Now, politicians will say, well, that may buy access, but it's not corrupting unless there's a direct quid pro quo.
11:36:
(David Sirota)
That's sort of politicians' arguments.
11:38:
(David Sirota)
But of course, the Supreme Court
11:39:
(David Sirota)
has joined into that argument on a sort of separate track from the campaign finance track, which is on the anti-bribery laws.
11:46:
(David Sirota)
You know, there's this string of cases from overturning the conviction of Bob McDonald to overturning the Chris Christie AIDS convictions to overturning the Andrew Cuomo AIDS convictions to the mayoral in Indiana, that one that happened last year where a mayor gave a government contract to a contractor, got a payment.
12:02:
(David Sirota)
And because of the sequence of it, the court said, that's not a bribe, that's a gratuity.
12:06:
(David Sirota)
So, I mean, it's unbelievable.
12:07:
(David Sirota)
It's truly unbelievable.
12:08:
(David Sirota)
The gratuity finding is so good.
12:10:
(Chris Hayes)
It's incredible.
12:11:
(Chris Hayes)
Basically, it's that he got the contribution after he made the decision to favor them.
12:16:
(Chris Hayes)
So it's a tip.
12:17:
(Chris Hayes)
So it's not a bribe.
12:18:
(Chris Hayes)
If you give the money and then you get the contract, it's a bribe.
12:20:
(Chris Hayes)
But if you get the contract and afterwards, it's like you throw your bucks at him.
12:24:
(David Sirota)
I mean, it sounds like we're making this up.
12:26:
(David Sirota)
Like, no, that's the actual finding.
12:28:
(David Sirota)
Literally what happened.
12:29:
(David Sirota)
Like literally the court intervened to overturn the conviction to be like, not a bribe.
12:33:
(David Sirota)
It's a gratuity.
12:34:
(David Sirota)
And that's fine.
12:35:
(David Sirota)
Right.
12:35:
(David Sirota)
I mean, that's where we are.
12:37:
(David Sirota)
Right.
12:37:
(David Sirota)
So I would argue that at minimum money directly into a politician's campaign or their personal bank account in exchange for an official act.
12:46:
(David Sirota)
Again, the Supreme Court narrowing what an official act is determined.
12:50:
(David Sirota)
But we all know it when we see it.
12:51:
(David Sirota)
That is corrupting.
12:52:
(David Sirota)
So at one level.
12:54:
(David Sirota)
The legal campaign contributions to candidates in large sums, et cetera, et cetera, is corrupting.
13:01:
(David Sirota)
And I do think explains why we don't have policies that a lot of the public wants.
13:06:
(David Sirota)
Now, in addition to that, where the Citizens United really made this so much worse was the idea that an independent candidate
13:14:
(David Sirota)
I'm putting independent in quotes.
13:17:
(David Sirota)
A super PAC that's helping elect a certain senator can't be corrupting of the senator because it's independent.
13:25:
(David Sirota)
Now, I put independent in quotes because oftentimes a super PAC is run by the senator's old colleagues or members of their party, right?
13:32:
(David Sirota)
So the Supreme Court and Citizens United said that kind of money can't be regulated because it's independent and therefore it can't be corrupting.
13:41:
(David Sirota)
That's the part that's insane.
13:42:
(Chris Hayes)
Right, so it doesn't have this nexus, right?
13:45:
(Chris Hayes)
So we have to defer to the speech interest here.
13:47:
(Chris Hayes)
If someone wants to come along and say, I have a speech interest in getting this person elected and I'm not actually the campaign.
13:54:
(Chris Hayes)
Now, what's happened, of course, is there was a lower court opinion that kind of created the structure for super PACs after that.
13:59:
(Chris Hayes)
Yes.
14:00:
(Chris Hayes)
And I don't think that's ever been challenged.
14:02:
(Chris Hayes)
It's sort of the law of the land.
14:03:
(Chris Hayes)
It's all been operating.
14:04:
(David Sirota)
It's being challenged right now.
14:05:
(Chris Hayes)
Yeah, take me through that one.
14:06:
(David Sirota)
Yeah, so what's happening right now, there's two sets of cases that people need to know about.
14:11:
(David Sirota)
One, there's a case being spearheaded by J.D.
14:14:
(David Sirota)
Vance to say that coordinated spending from parties to candidates should not be able to be regulated.
14:22:
(David Sirota)
That was one of the last remaining things campaign finance law is standing after Citizens United.
14:27:
(David Sirota)
The idea being, if you get rid of that,
14:29:
(David Sirota)
then the parties just become a pass-through for almost unlimited money.
14:32:
(David Sirota)
So J.D.
14:33:
(Chris Hayes)
Vance- Which is kind of what they were before McCain-Feingold or had grown to be before McCain-Feingold.
14:38:
(David Sirota)
Right.
14:38:
(David Sirota)
So J.D.
14:39:
(David Sirota)
Vance, they're trying to knock down everything.
14:41:
(David Sirota)
Now, separately, there is a case spearheaded by Larry Lessig, a ballot initiative that passed in Maine, which would say, okay, we're going to take the Supreme Court's own precedence here and saying that money directly to candidates is corrupting.
14:56:
(David Sirota)
And they're challenging the idea that Maine passed a ballot measure saying you can limit the amount of money that goes into super PACs.
15:04:
(David Sirota)
Ostensibly independent.
15:05:
(David Sirota)
Ostensibly independent, right.
15:07:
(David Sirota)
And saying that these are not really operating independently at all.
15:12:
(David Sirota)
And if we can establish that,
15:15:
(David Sirota)
then we can establish that those super PACs cannot raise unlimited amounts of money.
15:20:
(David Sirota)
And remember, they're raising unlimited amounts of money, oftentimes dark money.
15:24:
(David Sirota)
Like we don't even know where it's coming from.
15:26:
(David Sirota)
Because what they list on their donors is like, maybe a billionaire like Elon Musk will let his name be listed.
15:30:
(David Sirota)
But then there's like Americans for Americans gave, you know, the 501c4 gave $10 million.
15:36:
(David Sirota)
And we have no idea who put that into the super PAC.
15:38:
(David Sirota)
So there is a chance that the Supreme Court, using its own precedence, could say, okay, super PACs are
15:45:
(Chris Hayes)
are regulatable.
15:46:
(Chris Hayes)
So I want to talk about some of the arguments people make about money in politics, which has gotten very complex, I think, in our current regime.
15:52:
(Chris Hayes)
I mean, one thing that's clear is post-Citizens United sort of all bets are off and you've got the richest man in the world can write a hundred million dollar check.
16:00:
(Chris Hayes)
He can write a billion dollar check.
16:01:
(Chris Hayes)
Like that just didn't happen before.
16:02:
(Chris Hayes)
It was the kind of thing that did happen quite famously during the Gilded Age.
16:05:
(Chris Hayes)
Right.
16:06:
(Chris Hayes)
But the post-Watergate reforms and then McCain-Feingold, you know, however they had normalized a certain amount of soft corruption, that specific ability of just pure,
16:16:
(Chris Hayes)
billionaire writes a check for $100 million, you just could not do.
16:20:
(Chris Hayes)
That is now on the table and has totally changed things.
16:23:
(Chris Hayes)
There's sort of two arguments I hear people make.
16:25:
(Chris Hayes)
One is that at the highest levels, at least, money doesn't matter as much, right?
16:30:
(Chris Hayes)
Trump got outspent.
16:31:
(Chris Hayes)
He still won.
16:32:
(Chris Hayes)
When you're dealing with a national election where people are so saturated that it's not like an extra few hundred million dollars, where I'm speaking to you in New York on the eve of this
16:41:
(Chris Hayes)
election, which has a very strong public financing mechanism.
16:44:
(Chris Hayes)
But even with that public financing mechanism, they can't get rid of super PACs because the court has said that's a constitutional right, essentially.
16:50:
(Chris Hayes)
How do you think about how money works at this point?
16:53:
(Chris Hayes)
And does it matter what level we're talking about, starting like presidential down to state rep?
17:01:
(David Sirota)
It's a great question.
17:02:
(David Sirota)
I think money, arguably in the final stages of either a presidential campaign or
17:09:
(David Sirota)
Or perhaps a few, what you'd call top tier, high profile races matters somewhat less because of things that you've written about, which is the attention economy.
17:20:
(David Sirota)
There is so much inherent media attention on, you know, a couple handful of Senate races.
17:25:
(David Sirota)
The New York mayor's race sort of sticks out as a special case.
17:28:
(David Sirota)
It's the media capital of the world and the presidential race.
17:31:
(David Sirota)
But I also think even in those races where money really does matter is before you get to that final stage.
17:39:
(David Sirota)
Who are the candidates who are taken seriously?
17:42:
(David Sirota)
Who are the candidates who flame out?
17:44:
(David Sirota)
So I think at that level, who is able to raise or has access to, in the case of billionaire self-funding candidates, who's able to have the money is who's able to even be in the conversation.
17:56:
(David Sirota)
Now, I think you go one level down.
17:59:
(David Sirota)
Just let's go to the U.S. House governors.
18:02:
(David Sirota)
And then you get down to the state legislative level, the local level.
18:05:
(David Sirota)
I think money determines most of what happens there.
18:09:
(David Sirota)
I say that because those races do not have access to something that can arguably compete with money, which is attention.
18:18:
(David Sirota)
If you are running for state legislature, and I'm talking to you, you know, I don't think my wife will get mad at me.
18:24:
(Chris Hayes)
I live in a household.
18:25:
(David Sirota)
Yeah, right.
18:25:
(David Sirota)
Your spouse is a state legislator.
18:27:
(David Sirota)
Is a state legislator.
18:28:
(David Sirota)
I think my wife is a great state legislator.
18:30:
(David Sirota)
She does really great work.
18:32:
(David Sirota)
She's focused on the state budget here in Colorado.
18:34:
(David Sirota)
Maybe she could ban me for saying this, but like her job is not to nationalize her race.
18:38:
(Chris Hayes)
No, it's not.
18:39:
(Chris Hayes)
It's not to like.
18:40:
(Chris Hayes)
And she's not like going to go viral.
18:42:
(Chris Hayes)
And she's not like, it's like.
18:43:
(Chris Hayes)
Exactly.
18:43:
(Chris Hayes)
That doesn't.
18:45:
(Chris Hayes)
And you've got local journalism has been hollowed out.
18:47:
(Chris Hayes)
So the.
18:47:
(Chris Hayes)
If you said there was anyone covering these races before, there's fewer and fewer.
18:51:
(Chris Hayes)
Exactly.
18:51:
(David Sirota)
So candidates like that, they have a choice.
18:54:
(David Sirota)
They can, I guess, try to go viral by, but like that's not, and there's no local media.
18:59:
(David Sirota)
So it's not really a realistic path or they can try to scrape grassroots money together.
19:05:
(David Sirota)
But there's always the threat of like the local or frankly, national oligarch just diving in, writing a, you know, a $300,000 check, which is nothing to a billionaire.
19:15:
(Crosstalk)
Nothing.
19:15:
(David Sirota)
and just buying a bunch of seats.
19:17:
(David Sirota)
So I think at that level, and one other thing to say about that, those are the levels that then become the potential future Senate candidates and presidential candidates.
19:26:
(David Sirota)
So the bottom part of the ladder is like so much about
19:32:
(David Sirota)
And so that's where the corruption, I think, really happens.
19:38:
(David Sirota)
And to be clear, it's not just like the money goes in and a favor is bought, right?
19:43:
(David Sirota)
It's like if you're only talking to donors on the phone, right?
19:47:
(David Sirota)
your view of what's possible, what's not possible, your view of what's happening in the world, what's not happening in the world, is skewed because you're chasing after people who can write relatively big checks.
19:59:
(David Sirota)
I mean, and we're talking $1,000.
20:01:
(David Sirota)
I mean, most people cannot write a $1,000 check.
20:04:
(David Sirota)
There's a certain segment of the population that can.
20:08:
(Chris Hayes)
Very, very small percentage of the population that writes $1,000 checks.
20:12:
(Chris Hayes)
By the way, in politics, that's not even a big check.
20:14:
(Chris Hayes)
No, that's a small check.
20:15:
(Chris Hayes)
It's a small check.
20:15:
(Chris Hayes)
Yeah.
20:16:
(David Sirota)
Yeah, right.
20:16:
(David Sirota)
And then on top of that, there's another form of corruption that I think doesn't get talked about a lot that I think is really important for people to understand, which is the corruption where the money doesn't even change hands.
20:27:
(David Sirota)
So I think a lot about the crypto industry in Congress.
20:31:
(Chris Hayes)
This is the clearest one to me right now.
20:33:
(Chris Hayes)
Yes.
20:33:
(Chris Hayes)
Crypto is the clearest one because it's almost old school.
20:37:
(Chris Hayes)
Right.
20:37:
(Chris Hayes)
It's like when the banks got together on the credit card bill.
20:40:
(Chris Hayes)
They've got an agenda.
20:40:
(Chris Hayes)
Right.
20:41:
(Chris Hayes)
They have no ideological commitments.
20:43:
(Chris Hayes)
Right.
20:43:
(Chris Hayes)
They'll give money to whoever.
20:45:
(Chris Hayes)
No one cares really that much one way or the other.
20:47:
(Chris Hayes)
It's not like a mass issue.
20:48:
(David Sirota)
That's right.
20:49:
(David Sirota)
When I mean money doesn't necessarily change hands, in the 2024 election, they spent a lot of money to defeat a few of what they identified as their big critics.
21:01:
(David Sirota)
Katie Porter in the Senate race, Sherrod Brown in the Ohio Senate race.
21:05:
(David Sirota)
And they did that, in my view, not just to take out their perceived critics.
21:10:
(David Sirota)
But they did do that.
21:12:
(David Sirota)
But to send a message to everybody else in politics that if you cross us, you could be next.
21:19:
(David Sirota)
I had a senator explain it to me this way.
21:21:
(David Sirota)
He said, you know, if I come up with a bill that antagonizes a very powerful industry,
21:27:
(David Sirota)
Not only am I risking myself getting spent into the ground, but let's say I'm willing to take that risk.
21:32:
(David Sirota)
I feel like I'm okay with taking that risk.
21:34:
(David Sirota)
The problem is that industry, all they have to do is walk around the Senate and wave their wallet around to other senators to keep them off my bill, to keep them voting against my bill, to keep them stalling it in committee.
21:46:
(David Sirota)
So in that sense, the deregulated campaign finance system that was created by this master plan
21:52:
(David Sirota)
That is the outgrowth of it where the corruption is like baked in and half of the corruption, the money isn't even changing hands.
22:01:
(Chris Hayes)
It's just the threat of the money.
22:02:
(Chris Hayes)
I think in the 2024 primaries, the two biggest outside group spending in Democratic primaries were APAC and crypto interest, basically.
22:11:
(Chris Hayes)
And these were just, you know, very targeted.
22:13:
(Chris Hayes)
It was like, here's a person that is on the wrong side of our issues.
22:16:
(Chris Hayes)
in these primaries, and we're just going to dump, in some cases, tens of millions of dollars on them.
22:22:
(David Sirota)
And the thing is, whether those critics won or lost, that was the other thing that I thought.
22:27:
(David Sirota)
Like, whether the crypto critics, Sherrod Brown, Katie Porter, whoever else, won or lost, it was the spectacle of the spending itself that was the point, is to say to every other senator, listen, you got a re-election in the next two years, four years?
22:41:
(David Sirota)
You don't want us coming into your state.
22:43:
(David Sirota)
And by the way, I didn't tell the end of the story of the crypto story.
22:45:
(David Sirota)
Soon after the 2024 election, you saw 18 Democrats join with Republicans in 2025 in the Senate to vote through the crypto industry's big bill.
22:57:
(David Sirota)
Like, that is a direct relationship there.
22:59:
(Chris Hayes)
Like, those senators saw that and responded.
23:02:
(Chris Hayes)
And the other thing that I got a little texture to this, which I think you'll agree with, you know, having spent a lot of time around these folks and talked to them,
23:09:
(Chris Hayes)
All of these industries have a lot of smart, persuasive people working for them who actually do make arguments to you, right?
23:17:
(Chris Hayes)
So like, it's not just that they say, because people do have some self-respect, right?
23:23:
(Chris Hayes)
And they do have some integrity.
23:24:
(Chris Hayes)
So it's not just like they come in and they say, it's not just a mob thing.
23:28:
(Chris Hayes)
be with us or else.
23:29:
(Chris Hayes)
It's like, here, we've got this great white paper.
23:31:
(Chris Hayes)
This guy's a Nobel economist or this, we're bringing this guy to talk to you about why this is actually good policy.
23:37:
(Chris Hayes)
And they have access to you, spend a lot of time.
23:40:
(Chris Hayes)
And these are, I gotta be, I've been on the other side.
23:42:
(Chris Hayes)
They're genuinely persuasive people.
23:43:
(Chris Hayes)
They're not idiots.
23:44:
(David Sirota)
Like, they know what they're doing.
23:46:
(David Sirota)
Most politicians,
23:48:
(David Sirota)
do not want to look in the mirror and be like, I sold out my constituents, right?
23:52:
(David Sirota)
It's not like, I think of the scene in The Untouchables where that like city councilman walks in to try to, with literally an envelope of cash to try to like bribe Elliot Ness and Elliot Ness is like, get out of my office, right?
24:02:
(David Sirota)
Like, it's because like, no politician wants to think they were bribed, but it's like, there's like a, here's the money.
24:09:
(David Sirota)
Oh, and you can feel good about being with us, not just because you're helping yourself, you're helping your constituents.
24:16:
(David Sirota)
It's sort of like an issue capture
24:18:
(David Sirota)
I mean, I wrote about this in my first book that I ever wrote, which is called Hostile Takeover, which is the theory of the book was if you make sure that the choices in American politics, if you're an industry, are a set of choices, any of the choices that you like, you don't really have to be buying everybody all the time.
24:34:
(David Sirota)
You just have to immerse them in your stuff.
24:40:
(Chris Hayes)
More of our conversation after this quick break.
25:24:
(Chris Hayes)
You know, one of the things that's always interesting to me, like any case that gets up to the Supreme Court, if you read the briefs, they're both pretty persuasive.
25:31:
(Chris Hayes)
Yes.
25:31:
(Chris Hayes)
A lot of times there's like genuinely complex issues with incredibly smart, prepared people who are good at persuasive writing, making good cases.
25:38:
(Chris Hayes)
So in all these places, there's some plausible case.
25:42:
(Chris Hayes)
Right.
25:42:
(Chris Hayes)
That you're being presented with.
25:43:
(Chris Hayes)
So you've got the combination of like, if I cross them, I'm dead.
25:46:
(Chris Hayes)
I've gotten a bunch of these briefings.
25:48:
(Chris Hayes)
I got these white papers.
25:49:
(Chris Hayes)
Also, they want to support me like all this kind of wraps around in this way that is very seamless.
25:55:
(David Sirota)
Yes.
25:55:
(David Sirota)
I will say about the Supreme Court, I think the arguments are becoming you have to read them closely.
26:01:
(David Sirota)
to really see where we're going.
26:03:
(David Sirota)
I mean, you know, the metaphor of the frog in the boiling water, right, where the frog is sitting there, the water's getting hotter, it doesn't jump out even when it's boiling.
26:09:
(David Sirota)
I mean, there's this case, an appeal at the Supreme Court to go back to this line of rulings about limiting corruption, where there was a corruption conviction in Ohio.
26:18:
(David Sirota)
And actually, it's a Democrat who was pardoned by Donald Trump.
26:22:
(David Sirota)
This is the first case where somebody who was pardoned
26:24:
(David Sirota)
convicted on corruption, pardoned, is still appealing the conviction.
26:28:
(David Sirota)
And what was fascinating in the briefing papers, and this is a case being represented by Trump's former solicitor general.
26:35:
(David Sirota)
So there's a conservative movement around this case to try to elicit a ruling.
26:39:
(David Sirota)
And the argument, I'm not making this up.
26:42:
(David Sirota)
You reported on it on your TV show, the story of Donald Trump reportedly saying to the fossil fuel industry, give me a billion dollars and I will give you policy favors.
26:52:
(David Sirota)
Right.
26:52:
(David Sirota)
And the brief cites that not as proof that corruption laws need to be strengthened, but as proof that an aggressive prosecutor could end up prosecuting that kind of thing as quid pro quo and that we shouldn't allow that to happen because that would be out of control prosecution.
27:12:
(David Sirota)
In other words, citing...
27:14:
(David Sirota)
The system that you just described, citing I want a billion dollars, I'll give you policy favors, citing that as proof that corruption is so pervasive and normalized, it should no longer be seen by the high court as even prosecutable.
27:29:
(David Sirota)
That's where we are.
27:31:
(David Sirota)
And I cite that to say that's where we are.
27:34:
(David Sirota)
But we don't have to be there.
27:36:
(David Sirota)
And we haven't been there in most of our at least modern history.
27:41:
(David Sirota)
So as normal as that may seem, as much as the water only seems to be warm and not boiling, like that's unprecedented.
27:49:
(Chris Hayes)
That's not where we have been in the past.
27:51:
(Chris Hayes)
No.
27:51:
(Chris Hayes)
And in fact, I'm old enough that I've watched this happen.
27:55:
(Chris Hayes)
Right.
27:55:
(Chris Hayes)
I mean, I like the concerns of the structural effect of money and politics now seem quainter and quainter.
28:02:
(Chris Hayes)
Partly, I think there's something interesting about the shift from industries to billionaires.
28:07:
(Chris Hayes)
Good point.
28:07:
(Chris Hayes)
And that's not to say one is better than the other, but there's a kind of volatility and a true kind of
28:14:
(Chris Hayes)
terminal stage feeling when it's just like six dudes are going to just make all the decisions.
28:21:
(Chris Hayes)
Because at some level, to go back to the point I was making before, it's like it has always been in every country.
28:25:
(Chris Hayes)
Like you read history and it's like, yeah, this industry is working their politicians about X.
28:30:
(Chris Hayes)
Like that has been true.
28:31:
(Chris Hayes)
And there's different ways to regulate that.
28:32:
(Chris Hayes)
So you're limiting improper influence, right?
28:35:
(Chris Hayes)
But allowing for proper influence.
28:37:
(Chris Hayes)
But like the Musk spectacle to me felt like the kind of terminal endpoint of this.
28:42:
(David Sirota)
Yeah.
28:42:
(David Sirota)
It's like when I think of the Gilded Age metaphor, the Gilded Age is like literally J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, and John Rockefeller, like three dudes who are like, if they wake up in the morning and they decide they want something, you know, something giant, like to change the whole country, they can essentially do that.
29:00:
(David Sirota)
And like, we had a whole 20th century that was like, okay, that's not a great idea.
29:04:
(Crosstalk)
That's bad.
29:05:
(Crosstalk)
Yeah.
29:05:
(David Sirota)
So it's like one thing you have, like the banking industry or the, you know, the construction industry.
29:12:
(David Sirota)
In theory, like there can be a lot of corruption there that's not good.
29:15:
(David Sirota)
You're right.
29:15:
(David Sirota)
It's like more it's more stable, predictable.
29:18:
(Chris Hayes)
Exactly.
29:18:
(Chris Hayes)
It's more.
29:19:
(Chris Hayes)
Yes, exactly.
29:19:
(Chris Hayes)
It's more stable, predictable.
29:21:
(Chris Hayes)
And it's closer to something that's genuinely democratic than just a few dudes.
29:26:
(Chris Hayes)
Yes.
29:26:
(Chris Hayes)
With their, you know, unlimited amounts of.
29:28:
(David Sirota)
Yeah, and the other thing is, I would argue that the height of the New Deal, the way that that era came about was there was countervailing forces.
29:36:
(David Sirota)
There was industry, there was labor, right?
29:39:
(David Sirota)
It wasn't just like a couple billionaires would wake up in the morning and be like, I want to just change the whole country.
29:43:
(David Sirota)
And then like, I'll use this, right?
29:45:
(David Sirota)
Like the countervailing power theory of an economy, of a society kind of breaks down
29:51:
(David Sirota)
When the society has, you know, six or seven dudes twisting their mustaches, waking up on a given day and deciding to do whatever they want and using a deregulated campaign finance system to do that.
30:00:
(Chris Hayes)
I want to talk about the countervailing power because there's this kind of discourse that's emerged.
30:05:
(Chris Hayes)
I'm really curious to hear your thoughts on it.
30:07:
(Chris Hayes)
That's about small dollar donors.
30:09:
(Chris Hayes)
Right.
30:10:
(Chris Hayes)
Which is, you know, again, everyone needs money at this point.
30:12:
(Chris Hayes)
So like no one's no one's like no one can really just step out of the system.
30:16:
(Chris Hayes)
Right.
30:16:
(Chris Hayes)
You got to raise money, right?
30:17:
(Chris Hayes)
So you're going to have some big super PAC with big checks.
30:20:
(Chris Hayes)
You're going to have big hard money checks of the kind of people that can write two, $3,000 checks.
30:24:
(Chris Hayes)
And you can go to law firms and you can go.
30:25:
(Chris Hayes)
And there's some power centers for Democrats, right?
30:29:
(Chris Hayes)
That industries and power centers are some law firms you can go through and some people in Hollywood and other places.
30:34:
(Chris Hayes)
And then there's some industries, right, which you will give to both sides.
30:38:
(Chris Hayes)
There's also small dollar donors and small dollar donors have been in many ways kind of an amazing countervailing force, right?
30:44:
(Chris Hayes)
Because, you know, AOC doesn't have to really worry about, you know, and she's rare.
30:51:
(Chris Hayes)
She's, you know, she's kind of one-on-one in terms of her ability to raise that money.
30:54:
(Chris Hayes)
But there's an argument on the other side, right?
30:56:
(Chris Hayes)
Which is that in the same way that like donor dependence is distorting, if you're getting it from crypto, that it can be distorting for small dollar donors, right?
31:04:
(Chris Hayes)
That, you know, at one level, the things you have to do, which is like, and you see this on the right a lot, right?
31:09:
(Chris Hayes)
Like staged moments of controversy, right?
31:12:
(Chris Hayes)
So that you can go raise money, but also that small dollar donors to the point you made about like, there's not that people who can write a thousand dollar check, right?
31:20:
(Chris Hayes)
Like even the kinds of person that writes a $50 check are somewhat unrepresentative, right?
31:25:
(Chris Hayes)
Of the electorate.
31:26:
(Chris Hayes)
Like it is a different kind.
31:27:
(Chris Hayes)
They're more tuned in.
31:28:
(Chris Hayes)
They have stronger ideological commitments.
31:30:
(Chris Hayes)
And then that has a distorting effect itself.
31:33:
(David Sirota)
Look, it's the phenomenon that's known, for instance, in media as audience capture.
31:38:
(David Sirota)
Exactly, exactly.
31:39:
(David Sirota)
Audience capture being that
31:41:
(David Sirota)
If you are supported by hundreds, thousands of ideologically motivated grassroots donors, you are incentivized to constantly take a maximalist position on that particular set of ideas, regardless of whether the facts change, regardless of whether you need to make a compromise in a city council or a state legislature to get something done.
32:02:
(David Sirota)
And yes, I think that is a tough thing to navigate.
32:07:
(David Sirota)
I certainly wouldn't argue that small dollar donations are more
32:11:
(David Sirota)
or distortive or worse than large because you can be audience captured by big donors.
32:16:
(Chris Hayes)
No, if you have to choose between the two.
32:17:
(David Sirota)
For sure.
32:18:
(Chris Hayes)
Right, yeah.
32:18:
(Chris Hayes)
Right.
32:19:
(David Sirota)
And I look to what they have built in New York City.
32:22:
(David Sirota)
And I say, if you're looking for something, if you're worried about endemic corruption and you're looking for a takeaway from the New York City mayor's race, and there's been a lot of, you know, is it his charisma?
32:33:
(David Sirota)
Is it his slick ads?
32:34:
(David Sirota)
Was it his message?
32:36:
(David Sirota)
I think all those factors were important.
32:38:
(David Sirota)
But the only, in my mind,
32:39:
(David Sirota)
The only way there's been a competitive Zoran Mamdani campaign for mayor is because New York, after a corruption scandal in the late 1980s, created a public financing system of campaigns that now has been expanded to match every one small dollar donation, one dollar of a small dollar donation with eight dollars of public money up to a certain point.
33:00:
(David Sirota)
which has allowed a candidate like Mamdani to not outspend his opponents, but at least run a competitive campaign with all of that oligarch money coming at him.
33:11:
(David Sirota)
Running Zoran Mamdani's campaign against the oligarchy in that city, against billionaires, without a public financing system, I don't think there is a campaign.
33:20:
(David Sirota)
Yeah, I think it's much, much harder.
33:22:
(David Sirota)
Like, you're not going to be able, where are you going to raise the money?
33:24:
(Chris Hayes)
Yeah.
33:25:
(Chris Hayes)
Where are you going to get the attention?
33:26:
(Chris Hayes)
How are you going to even get people to hear your message?
33:28:
(Chris Hayes)
And one of the things that's interesting, too, about the New York City system, right, which has increased that matching, you know, year after year, is that because, like, where there's a will, there's a way, corruption will always find a way, right?
33:39:
(Chris Hayes)
We've also had this series of, like, minor scandals of straw donations, right?
33:43:
(Chris Hayes)
So there's been a bunch of people who get fake donors, basically, so they can get the matching funds.
33:48:
(Chris Hayes)
But the reason I bring this up is there's no foolproof system.
33:51:
(Chris Hayes)
Right.
33:51:
(Chris Hayes)
But also, those have been caught and prosecuted.
33:54:
(Chris Hayes)
Yes.
33:55:
(Chris Hayes)
Which gets us back to the- It worked.
33:56:
(Chris Hayes)
Right.
33:57:
(Chris Hayes)
Well, this gets us back to the craziness of what the court is doing.
34:00:
(Chris Hayes)
Because the point is, if any system you set up is going to have holes, any system is going to have load poles, there is going to be efforts to find ways around it.
34:09:
(Chris Hayes)
There's going to be people who are pushing the envelope.
34:11:
(Chris Hayes)
They're in the gray area.
34:12:
(Chris Hayes)
They're coming very close to quid pro quo.
34:14:
(Chris Hayes)
They're not.
34:14:
(Chris Hayes)
They're coming up with straw donors to kind of manipulate what I think is a good system of public financing.
34:19:
(Chris Hayes)
There's got to be some enforcement at some point, right?
34:22:
(Chris Hayes)
There's got to be like someone bringing cases saying like that is over the line.
34:27:
(Chris Hayes)
And one of the craziest things that's happening in the court is just case after case after case saying you can't do that.
34:34:
(Chris Hayes)
That's not criminal.
34:35:
(Chris Hayes)
That's not criminal.
34:36:
(Chris Hayes)
No matter how far the envelope is pushed, if you don't have some kind of enforcement mechanism, it doesn't even matter what the system is, right?
34:42:
(Chris Hayes)
Like you're essentially in just the Wild West.
34:45:
(Chris Hayes)
And I think we have to ask the question, who wants that?
34:48:
(David Sirota)
Who does want that?
34:49:
(David Sirota)
And I think there's an answer to that.
34:51:
(David Sirota)
And I go back to, again, let me go back to the 1970s.
34:55:
(David Sirota)
I'll put people in the moment.
34:57:
(David Sirota)
1971, you've got Ralph Nader is like winning big things in Congress, consumer safety, the auto companies, food safety, et cetera, et cetera.
35:06:
(David Sirota)
He's profiled in Fortune magazine, and it really, really pisses off
35:12:
(David Sirota)
this tobacco lawyer, Lewis Powell.
35:14:
(David Sirota)
And Lewis Powell writes this now famous or infamous, depending on- The Powell Memo.
35:18:
(David Sirota)
Yeah, the Powell Memo, which basically urges corporate America oligarchs to invest seriously in politics and media because Ralph Nader and the Naderites represent a threat to free market capitalism.
35:30:
(David Sirota)
And what we unearth in our book is sort of some of the most powerful people in the country get together, create a secret Powell memo task force at the Chamber of Commerce to begin implementing this in all sorts of ways.
35:42:
(David Sirota)
And Powell, I should mention, soon after gets on the Supreme Court and is in a position to execute on his master plan, helping engineer first a radical court ruling that says money in politics is not corruption or influence.
35:53:
(David Sirota)
Money in politics is constitutionally protected speech.
35:56:
(David Sirota)
Then Powell works behind the scenes on a relatively obscure case from Massachusetts saying corporations now have access to those same constitutional rights to buy elections.
36:06:
(David Sirota)
Powell is then succeeded by Anthony Kennedy, who writes Citizens United.
36:10:
(David Sirota)
And so it goes.
36:10:
(David Sirota)
But the reason I bring this up is because who wants...
36:14:
(David Sirota)
corruption to be legal is the big question.
36:17:
(David Sirota)
And I think when you take it all together, what you see is this is actually the democracy crisis, meaning in a functioning one person, one vote democracy, corporate America and the oligarchy realized the government was going to do things that reduce the wealth and concentrated power of corporate America and oligarchs.
36:39:
(David Sirota)
And they didn't like that.
36:41:
(David Sirota)
And they realized that
36:42:
(David Sirota)
they needed a way to short circuit that democratic, small d democratic process.
36:49:
(David Sirota)
And so that's why one of their top agenda items was deregulating the campaign finance system and narrowing the anti-bribery laws because that allows a kind of $1 one vote situation.
37:02:
(David Sirota)
That allows them to short circuit that link between what the public wants and what the government does.
37:09:
(Chris Hayes)
One of the things I think is interesting is the trajectory of the Powell movement, to call it that, right, or plan.
37:16:
(Chris Hayes)
It had a bunch of different channels, you know, and you and I have over the years reported on this and looked at this, right?
37:21:
(Chris Hayes)
There was all this money that started to flow to think tanks and it flowed into conservative publications and it flowed into, you know, making the case, you know, for not just like the thing I was saying before about the crypto people, right?
37:32:
(Chris Hayes)
They're not just giving money, they're making a case.
37:34:
(Chris Hayes)
One of the things that's so interesting to me is how bankrupt that entire intellectual project feels right now, even as it's winning...
37:43:
(Chris Hayes)
like its biggest victories.
37:45:
(Chris Hayes)
You know what I mean?
37:45:
(Chris Hayes)
Like it's really notable to me how little, I mean, Trump never talks about free markets or like all of the kind of language that exists in the Powell memo, which is both a reflection of a set of material interests and a sincere ideological commitment that fit together, right?
38:02:
(Chris Hayes)
Like they both believe in it and it benefits them, right?
38:05:
(Chris Hayes)
And a whole generation of people that were capable on the right, particularly or at the US Chamber of Commerce, of a language, Reagan, right, of making arguments to the public about why, like, minimal regulation is better than a lot of it.
38:18:
(Chris Hayes)
It's so wild to me how Trump doesn't do that.
38:22:
(Chris Hayes)
Right.
38:22:
(Chris Hayes)
And how and how and how contemporary Republicans have kind of just given up and how the public doesn't really believe in free markets anymore.
38:30:
(Chris Hayes)
Like all of that stuff that was there, even in a Romney campaign in 2012 or a Ryan, you know, Paul Ryan, it's just absent now.
38:38:
(Chris Hayes)
It feels like it's just pure power politics, pure transactionalism, pure pay to play.
38:46:
(Chris Hayes)
And no one's like convinced one way or the other the way that it used to feel like people were right.
38:50:
(Chris Hayes)
Like it really used to feel like we were having a debate about because it's true, like some regulations can be bad.
38:55:
(Chris Hayes)
And, you know, there are two sides to all these questions.
38:57:
(Chris Hayes)
And it used to feel like you were debating it.
38:59:
(Chris Hayes)
Do you feel that way?
39:00:
(Chris Hayes)
Like, it's so striking me how there's nothing being debated anymore.
39:03:
(David Sirota)
Nothing's being argued really on the merits at all.
39:06:
(Chris Hayes)
Nothing's being argued.
39:08:
(Chris Hayes)
Like I covered Washington for a living.
39:10:
(Chris Hayes)
No one's making arguments.
39:11:
(David Sirota)
No, no one's making arguments.
39:12:
(David Sirota)
But here's the thing.
39:13:
(David Sirota)
I mean, maybe I'm an eternal optimist and I'm crazy, but I actually think, assuming there is something beyond a sort of Trump MAGA era,
39:22:
(David Sirota)
or arguably even inside of a Trump MAGA era, it opens up the possibility of a new set of arguments.
39:30:
(David Sirota)
In other words, if that side has stopped making an argument- They have stopped.
39:35:
(David Sirota)
Which they have.
39:36:
(David Sirota)
Yes.
39:36:
(David Sirota)
And they've actually opened up inadvertently a space for different arguments about whether the market should be regulated, how it should be regulated, whether we should care about sort of Reaganist free market rhetoric and ideology.
39:49:
(David Sirota)
It means there's an opening-
39:50:
(David Sirota)
for a different kind of argument.
39:52:
(David Sirota)
So all that is to say is I do think in the political realm that there's a case to be made that in Donald Trump's behavior and MAGA's behavior and corruption being so explicit, it creates the potential for a kind of reaction that is far stronger than just a kind of, you know, antebellum, if you will, like move back to the old normal reaction.
40:17:
(David Sirota)
Right.
40:17:
(David Sirota)
I guess what I'm saying is, it's like, I'll use AOC as a proxy.
40:20:
(David Sirota)
Like, does Donald Trump actually create a more realistic path for the politics of Bernie and AOC to actually be realized at the national level rather than just a politics that moves back to sort of the normal center of the Democratic?
40:36:
(David Sirota)
I think it does.
40:41:
(Chris Hayes)
More of our conversation after this quick break.
41:26:
(Chris Hayes)
Well, I mean, I think to go back to the Watergate example where we started, I mean, we need more than post-Watergate reforms.
41:32:
(Chris Hayes)
But in that case, you know, there really was a lot of stuff that happened.
41:35:
(Chris Hayes)
Yes.
41:35:
(Chris Hayes)
And across a range, right?
41:36:
(Chris Hayes)
Because a whole bunch of stuff got blown up.
41:38:
(Chris Hayes)
Like, at the same time, like, all of the, like, COINTELPRO and J. Edgar Hoover stuff and the CIA and, you know, and we had the church committee and we had...
41:46:
(Chris Hayes)
I mean, enormous amount of reform legislation, the Foreign Intelligence Service Surveillance Act, like all this stuff is getting passed sort of in response to what's being revealed.
41:54:
(Chris Hayes)
You know, we obviously need some era of profound reform if we come out the other side with like something that looks like an intact democracy.
42:03:
(Chris Hayes)
And I do think everyone's on the same page about that broadly.
42:06:
(Chris Hayes)
I mean, the other thing I think to your point about the space that's opened up, like I think that neoliberalism and
42:13:
(Chris Hayes)
The intellectual project, to the extent there was an intellectual aspect of the Powell memo and Milton Friedman and Reaganism and Thatcher, is a dead project intellectually right now.
42:23:
(Chris Hayes)
And rhetorically, just in the discourse of American life.
42:26:
(Chris Hayes)
Like, no one talks about it.
42:28:
(Chris Hayes)
Like, no one's defending it.
42:29:
(Chris Hayes)
Donald Trump doesn't even pretend to defend it.
42:32:
(Chris Hayes)
I mean, the guy's slapping tariffs on every night and day.
42:36:
(David Sirota)
Well, I do think the next era, I think one question is whether one of the reactions to Trumpism—
42:42:
(David Sirota)
is a kind of, frankly, it could come from Democrats, it could come from Republicans.
42:46:
(David Sirota)
It could be like an attempt to make the reaction a kind of return to Reaganism.
42:52:
(David Sirota)
It wouldn't be called that.
42:53:
(David Sirota)
But I think some of the Democratic response, as an example, to the tariffs.
42:57:
(David Sirota)
Now, I want to be clear.
42:58:
(David Sirota)
Trump's, the way he's using tariffs is super destructive, not well thought out, not constructive, et cetera, et cetera.
43:05:
(David Sirota)
But I think some of the reaction, the initial reaction to the Trump tariffs from the Democrats was they sort of floated a kind of like free trade, like let's go back to NAFTA.
43:16:
(David Sirota)
And I think that will be trial ballooned.
43:18:
(David Sirota)
But I don't think that's really the way forward.
43:20:
(Chris Hayes)
I agree with you.
43:21:
(Chris Hayes)
Although it's funny because I have found myself, right?
43:24:
(Chris Hayes)
Like I went back and was looking at the parts of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, which, by the way, is a very misunderstood book, which is like.
43:29:
(Chris Hayes)
Yes, it is.
43:30:
(Chris Hayes)
a much more politically sophisticated book than its sort of reductivist idea.
43:34:
(Chris Hayes)
But, you know, one of the things he's talking about, it's a critique of mercantilism, is that mercantilism is corrupt.
43:39:
(Chris Hayes)
Like, the idea that the king or whoever unilaterally slaps tariff on, you know, the industries that are on the wrong or right side of it come to him, and you're seeing, like, the nexus of that.
43:51:
(Chris Hayes)
Like,
43:51:
(David Sirota)
I mean, there was that study.
43:52:
(David Sirota)
Do you see that?
43:52:
(David Sirota)
There was that study of the first term in the Trump administration with his tariffs, where the companies that gave the Republicans money, they were the ones that got more of the tariff relief.
44:02:
(David Sirota)
It's a tool of corruption.
44:03:
(David Sirota)
So I agree with you that the neoliberal project, as we understand it, is a dead end.
44:08:
(David Sirota)
The question of what comes next, I think that's the big question.
44:11:
(David Sirota)
And I wrote a piece for The Bulwark about how I really do think
44:16:
(David Sirota)
that a kind of McCain lane, as I called it, is a possible lane for somebody in the Democratic Party in specific right now.
44:25:
(David Sirota)
And by that, I mean.
44:26:
(Chris Hayes)
Particularly for centrists, I think.
44:28:
(Chris Hayes)
Honestly, like.
44:28:
(Chris Hayes)
I agree.
44:29:
(Chris Hayes)
I think the McCain lane, like, because there's all this conversation right now.
44:32:
(Chris Hayes)
And I think, you know, this conversation.
44:33:
(Chris Hayes)
Yeah, we're talking about an anti-corruption lane, to be clear.
44:35:
(Chris Hayes)
And anti-corruption lane, and the reason I say for Central, what I mean by that and what I think is important is there's all this discussion right now about Democrats and big tent and moving the center.
44:44:
(Chris Hayes)
And one of the things I think everyone agrees on, right?
44:47:
(Chris Hayes)
Everyone who's got any sense is like, you're not going to run Zora Mamdani for the Senate race in Iowa.
44:53:
(Chris Hayes)
We all get that.
44:54:
(Chris Hayes)
Everyone understands, right?
44:55:
(Chris Hayes)
Right.
44:56:
(Chris Hayes)
Of course.
44:56:
(Chris Hayes)
You got to try to win Iowa.
44:57:
(Chris Hayes)
Like, what's a Democrat in Iowa going to sound and look like?
45:00:
(Chris Hayes)
They're going to be different than AOC.
45:02:
(Chris Hayes)
And we all get that.
45:03:
(Chris Hayes)
Now, the rubber hits the road in, like, real substantive stuff, right?
45:06:
(Chris Hayes)
Like, what are they going to say about Iowa trans kids in sports?
45:11:
(Chris Hayes)
It's not an easy question, right?
45:12:
(Chris Hayes)
The polling's one way.
45:13:
(Chris Hayes)
Like, those are difficult things.
45:15:
(Chris Hayes)
But what can they do to distinguish themselves from
45:19:
(Chris Hayes)
In an electorate that is a plus five or six R electorate, from the kinds of caricatures of Democrats that the voters they need to win don't like, that also isn't just beating up on 16-year-old trans kids that want to play sports and immigrants.
45:34:
(David Sirota)
That's right.
45:34:
(Chris Hayes)
Someone's got to come up with something.
45:36:
(Chris Hayes)
Right.
45:36:
(David Sirota)
And like, I mean, it's not going to like, I mean, they try, you know, is it John Kerry with the rifle on the duck hunt?
45:42:
(David Sirota)
Like that didn't really work.
45:43:
(David Sirota)
Right.
45:44:
(David Sirota)
Like, so I would argue that, again, you and I are old enough to remember this.
45:48:
(David Sirota)
In 1999, 2000, John McCain runs for president as Mr. Anti-Corruption.
45:54:
(David Sirota)
And it's important to understand that John McCain was singed by a massive corruption scandal.
45:59:
(David Sirota)
Yes.
46:00:
(David Sirota)
Although it's a corruption scandal, unfortunately, that now seems quaint.
46:03:
(Chris Hayes)
Unbelievably quite.
46:04:
(Chris Hayes)
I actually was.
46:04:
(Chris Hayes)
It's like cute, right?
46:05:
(Chris Hayes)
It's like the Keating Five scandal is like cute.
46:07:
(Chris Hayes)
He like met with some people who gave him donations.
46:12:
(David Sirota)
Right.
46:12:
(David Sirota)
It was like a donor came to him and was like, hey, this regulators, you know, up in my face.
46:16:
(David Sirota)
Can you help you and my and the people I've donated to push this regulator away?
46:19:
(David Sirota)
They had like one or two meetings.
46:21:
(David Sirota)
Huge corruption scandal.
46:23:
(David Sirota)
John McCain comes to the anti-corruption cause with the zeal of a convert.
46:28:
(David Sirota)
Maybe you could argue he did it to sort of politically protect himself.
46:30:
(David Sirota)
That doesn't really matter.
46:31:
(David Sirota)
I mean, politicians are opportunists.
46:33:
(David Sirota)
He comes to this anti-corruption cause and he runs for president.
46:37:
(David Sirota)
And for a brief moment, it was like he might actually win the Republican nomination against Mr. Big Money, George W. Bush.
46:44:
(David Sirota)
His campaign is so popular and successful that George W. Bush, after being elected, has to reluctantly sign the McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill.
46:54:
(David Sirota)
I bring this up to say that that was a time where sort of soft money corruption was endemic.
47:01:
(David Sirota)
I mean, it was actually arguably on corruption, like explicit corruption.
47:05:
(David Sirota)
It was actually a little bit of a better time.
47:07:
(David Sirota)
Like people weren't as flagrant as Donald Trump is being.
47:09:
(David Sirota)
And yet-
47:10:
(David Sirota)
I say that because McCain was able to elevate that to a really national cause and a national level.
47:17:
(David Sirota)
And the key is that he was able to do it because he talked about the whole system.
47:21:
(David Sirota)
He wasn't just talking about, you know, Clinton in the Lincoln bedroom.
47:24:
(David Sirota)
He made it a sort of systemic my party, the other party critique, which gave him authenticity.
47:30:
(David Sirota)
And I really genuinely believe there's a lane for a Democrat to speak honestly about this.
47:35:
(David Sirota)
This is why in the piece I wrote, you know, I was really struck by John Ossoff.
47:40:
(David Sirota)
the Georgia senator.
47:41:
(David Sirota)
He was on Pod Save America.
47:43:
(David Sirota)
And look, I don't agree with everything that John Ossoff has done.
47:45:
(David Sirota)
And, you know, he was one of the senators who voted for crypto.
47:48:
(David Sirota)
But what was striking to me was he was on Pod Save America.
47:50:
(David Sirota)
He's talking to a liberal audience that's used to hearing that every problem is Donald Trump.
47:55:
(David Sirota)
And I'm paraphrasing here, but Ossoff basically said, look, the problem is billionaire and corporate money.
48:00:
(David Sirota)
And that's going to continue to be the problem with or without Trump being here.
48:06:
(David Sirota)
And it was slightly discordant in the sense of the Democrats are constantly saying it's Trump, it's Trump, it's Trump.
48:11:
(David Sirota)
And look, it is Trump.
48:12:
(David Sirota)
But Ossoff is actually making, he was making a much more systemic argument.
48:18:
(David Sirota)
And he was also, by the way, making clear, here's how corruption hurts you, right?
48:22:
(David Sirota)
Like the corruption is why your healthcare bills are higher.
48:25:
(David Sirota)
That to me is a very, very active lane in 2026 and 2028.
48:31:
(Chris Hayes)
Yeah, I go back and forth on this because one of the things I've, I think you're, there's a weird, when you say, you use the word discordant, like there's a strange thing right now I find with corruption, which is like, there's a ubiquity to people's perception of it that itself has inured, in your words, people to it, right?
48:46:
(Chris Hayes)
And so the flagrant way that Trump is going about it, like Palantir gave me money for my golden ballroom.
48:55:
(Chris Hayes)
Like my son is on the board of a drone company that just got a Pentagon contract.
49:00:
(Chris Hayes)
It's like, what are you talking about?
49:03:
(Chris Hayes)
Like, it's like we're living in a political cartoon.
49:05:
(Chris Hayes)
I mean, it really is.
49:05:
(Chris Hayes)
We're like inside the cartoon.
49:07:
(Chris Hayes)
And so that doesn't seem to cut through.
49:10:
(Chris Hayes)
But these broader messages do.
49:12:
(Chris Hayes)
If you pull like the Stock Act is a great example, which again, like at some level, I mean, it's a good piece of legislation I would vote for.
49:19:
(Chris Hayes)
It doesn't quite get at the issue.
49:21:
(Chris Hayes)
But for some reason, it's not.
49:22:
(Chris Hayes)
The Stock Act bans personal stock trading by members of Congress, which, by the way, like I don't trade individual stocks as a journalist because I think it's not ethical.
49:30:
(Chris Hayes)
It's like crazy to me.
49:32:
(Chris Hayes)
I mean, I don't trade individual stocks because it's like it's like a casino unless you got inside information.
49:36:
(Chris Hayes)
Yeah.
49:37:
(Chris Hayes)
What am I doing?
49:37:
(Chris Hayes)
Right.
49:37:
(Chris Hayes)
Yes.
49:38:
(Chris Hayes)
Right.
49:39:
(Chris Hayes)
But but I also don't make like in our own finding, like there's a there's a basket of things.
49:44:
(Chris Hayes)
That sits there.
49:45:
(Chris Hayes)
I don't touch it.
49:45:
(Chris Hayes)
And there are times where, like, I know something because I'm not even, like, private information.
49:50:
(Chris Hayes)
Just, like, I'm really read in on this.
49:52:
(Chris Hayes)
Like, you could, you know, or you could go into the betting markets on an election and, you know, buy Mamdani at 40 cents when he was, you know, when he was, like, that would be crazy for me to do.
50:02:
(Chris Hayes)
That would be wildly unethical.
50:03:
(Chris Hayes)
So people really like the Stock Act to ban congressional stock trading.
50:07:
(Chris Hayes)
It pulls at, like, 75%.
50:09:
(Chris Hayes)
AOC and a bunch of Republicans and Democrats are like on it.
50:12:
(Chris Hayes)
I don't think that's the real corruption issue.
50:15:
(Chris Hayes)
No.
50:16:
(Chris Hayes)
But the reason I'm saying all this is at the same time that people say in order to Trump, that polls higher than almost anything in Congress, making your point that like there's some space for that message.
50:28:
(Chris Hayes)
That is also a space that is a little orthogonal to the normal left-right access.
50:34:
(Crosstalk)
Yes.
50:35:
(Chris Hayes)
That is extremely important for a Democratic Party that does need to break out of that access to expand its appeal in places where it's been having a hard time winning.
50:45:
(David Sirota)
And the thing is, we're talking right now at a moment, and this is going to blow people's minds.
50:49:
(David Sirota)
We're talking at a moment where the most recent Reuters poll shows that the Republicans have a, I think it was a six or seven point lead on who do you trust in
51:00:
(David Sirota)
to combat corruption.
51:02:
(Chris Hayes)
I saw that.
51:03:
(Chris Hayes)
Okay.
51:03:
(Chris Hayes)
That was one of those polls that really made me feel like giving up.
51:07:
(Chris Hayes)
I was just like, what am I even doing?
51:10:
(David Sirota)
Same thing, man.
51:11:
(David Sirota)
I'm like, wait, we're putting out a book called The Master Plan that I didn't plot to legalize corruption.
51:15:
(David Sirota)
And like Donald Trump's party is winning this debate.
51:17:
(David Sirota)
And just to make it really bad, the last poll before the 2016 election, the Democrats were winning on basically every issue except for one.
51:25:
(David Sirota)
Except for corruption.
51:26:
(David Sirota)
Corruption.
51:26:
(David Sirota)
Yep.
51:27:
(David Sirota)
Now, you can argue, OK, well, people define corruption differently.
51:29:
(David Sirota)
And what does it mean?
51:30:
(David Sirota)
Like George Soros, is that like the Republicans are taught that George Soros is corruption?
51:34:
(David Sirota)
Yeah.
51:34:
(David Sirota)
But clearly it's about like money has power and the public thinks that's, you know, disproportionate power and public thinks that's bad.
51:42:
(David Sirota)
And they trust Republicans more than Democrats.
51:44:
(David Sirota)
OK, so that so.
51:45:
(David Sirota)
I would argue not only is there a lane, there's a necessity if you don't want to see the continuation of the MAGA movement.
51:53:
(David Sirota)
I agree with you.
51:54:
(David Sirota)
Part of the problem with the sort of, I don't want to call it small board because the Stock Act is important, right?
52:00:
(David Sirota)
The make dark money more transparent is definitely- It is, yeah.
52:03:
(David Sirota)
They're all important.
52:04:
(David Sirota)
But it's kind of like you've got to actually go to what is affecting human beings today.
52:12:
(David Sirota)
in their daily life now.
52:14:
(David Sirota)
That's why I go back to, Ossoff gave a separate speech where he was like, corruption is the reason your healthcare bill is high.
52:21:
(David Sirota)
Corruption is the reason your rent is high and that when you call your landlord, you know, you can't get them to fix your gas stove or whatever.
52:29:
(David Sirota)
It's the reason Congress doesn't, not only doesn't do anything about this, but that Congress is often on the side of the industries and the billionaires who are harming you directly.
52:42:
(David Sirota)
And additionally, it's corruption on all sides, both sides.
52:46:
(David Sirota)
We are all players in this corrupt game.
52:50:
(David Sirota)
I think that argument, that is where
52:53:
(David Sirota)
there can be salience.
52:55:
(David Sirota)
The reason why the stock act or make dark money transparent has less salience, although they're important is because it's like, I feel like the average person's like, I'm struggling to get by.
53:06:
(David Sirota)
Like the politicians are there, they're like messing around and they're, they're corrupt over there.
53:10:
(David Sirota)
But like, I'm really worried about paying my bills.
53:12:
(David Sirota)
And like that stuff over there is like, fine, they're getting rich and I hate that.
53:15:
(David Sirota)
But like, what's really making me mad is like, I can't pay my bills.
53:18:
(David Sirota)
Yeah.
53:18:
(David Sirota)
now, oh, wait a minute, I can't pay my bills because some industry or billionaire gave my congressman, my senator, or the president lots of money, and that's literally why I'm being fleeced?
53:29:
(David Sirota)
Yeah.
53:29:
(Chris Hayes)
Like, that's a different argument.
53:31:
(Chris Hayes)
Yeah, and I think Ossoff, again, independent of what one thinks of his politics or voting record, like,
53:36:
(Chris Hayes)
It's a guy who won a hard contest in like people that have won those kinds of races to me have like a real elevated level of credibility on the like what Dems should do question as opposed to like me or someone random person on Twitter.
53:50:
(David Sirota)
I want to be clear because I'm going to get a bunch of emails being like you're saying John Ossoff is like the president.
53:54:
(David Sirota)
I'm not saying that.
53:55:
(David Sirota)
No, no.
53:55:
(David Sirota)
But you're right.
53:56:
(David Sirota)
No, no.
53:56:
(David Sirota)
The point is that like, it's really hard.
53:59:
(Chris Hayes)
Like, I go to like, there are certain people where I'm like, hey, I'm willing to like, listen to what you think about how this all works because you've had to do it.
54:06:
(Chris Hayes)
I haven't.
54:07:
(Chris Hayes)
And I do think there's really something to that.
54:09:
(Chris Hayes)
The McCain example, particularly, I mean, to add one more detail to what you were saying.
54:13:
(Chris Hayes)
he had the highest favorability rating of any politician in America for years.
54:17:
(Chris Hayes)
Years.
54:17:
(Chris Hayes)
I mean, you know, he lost that 08 race because I think it was sort of after the war and that had changed a lot.
54:23:
(Chris Hayes)
But in that period, 99, 2000, like, he was the most popular politician in America.
54:29:
(David Sirota)
And I think...
54:29:
(David Sirota)
the sort of the structural nature of the Republican primaries.
54:32:
(David Sirota)
Once he hit South Carolina, it was basically over.
54:34:
(David Sirota)
But if you remember, he was winning the states that had the open primaries.
54:38:
(David Sirota)
So the independent vote was like huge for him.
54:42:
(David Sirota)
And I just think like you look at that model and you say,
54:46:
(David Sirota)
That is where the Democrats need to go.
54:48:
(David Sirota)
And by the way, Chris Murphy, the senator from Connecticut, he had said something recently.
54:52:
(David Sirota)
He had said something to the effect of, you know, the Democrats, we used to talk all the time about systemic corruption, campaign finance reform.
54:58:
(David Sirota)
And we just sort of stopped talking about that for the last 10 years.
55:01:
(Chris Hayes)
Well, let me say one last thing before we go, because I think, is there anything you can do with this court, right?
55:08:
(Chris Hayes)
I mean, part of the reason I think they stopped talking about it is like,
55:10:
(Chris Hayes)
The court is unilaterally dismantling everything.
55:13:
(Chris Hayes)
They find some new constitutional right to be corrupt.
55:15:
(Chris Hayes)
So like you could spend a lot of time passing some new McCain-Feingold.
55:19:
(Chris Hayes)
So I do think that's a big part of the reason, right?
55:21:
(Chris Hayes)
What can you do with this court?
55:23:
(Chris Hayes)
That's a great question.
55:24:
(David Sirota)
Okay, so I think there's a lot you can do.
55:26:
(David Sirota)
One, in the Citizens United ruling itself,
55:29:
(David Sirota)
It talks a lot about how disclosure is good.
55:32:
(David Sirota)
So absolute minimum, what you can do is what the state of Arizona did at its ballot.
55:37:
(David Sirota)
70 plus percent of people voted to force and require dark money disclosure of spending by anonymous donors to be disclosed.
55:45:
(David Sirota)
Now that's being argued in state court right now.
55:48:
(David Sirota)
Of course.
55:48:
(David Sirota)
Yeah.
55:49:
(David Sirota)
And it'll be challenged.
55:50:
(David Sirota)
But the Supreme Court really was like crazy clear about that.
55:54:
(David Sirota)
Now, I say all of this stipulating the fact that the Supreme Court has not had much respect for its own precedents.
56:00:
(David Sirota)
So I just want to overlay all this with the idea that, yes, it's possible that the Supreme Court can wake up.
56:05:
(David Sirota)
Yeah.
56:05:
(David Sirota)
in the future and dismantle everything that the Supreme Court has already said.
56:09:
(David Sirota)
But I don't think that should preclude action here in the present for future theories.
56:15:
(David Sirota)
The second thing that can be done is what's happening in Montana.
56:19:
(David Sirota)
So in Montana, luminaries of both parties are pushing a ballot measure, which basically stipulates that the Supreme Court's ruling on most of this stuff is predicated on state laws that treat corporations as people.
56:34:
(David Sirota)
Now, without going into the whole history of it, state laws didn't always used to do that.
56:40:
(David Sirota)
There was a long race to the bottom about 100 years ago where states were competing for corporations.
56:45:
(David Sirota)
And they basically said, okay, fine.
56:47:
(David Sirota)
The ultimate bottom is corporations are humans.
56:49:
(David Sirota)
But the Supreme Court has consistently upheld the idea that states grant powers to corporations.
56:55:
(David Sirota)
Corporations are artificial entities created by the states.
56:59:
(David Sirota)
And if states are treating corporations as people, then we will rule on these issues as if corporations are people.
57:06:
(David Sirota)
But again, it's all balanced on the idea that states are the ones treating corporations as people.
57:11:
(David Sirota)
So in Montana, what they are proposing, and they're
57:15:
(David Sirota)
The idea that the state will grant its corporations all the powers to do all the business that they do except for one power.
57:21:
(David Sirota)
They cannot spend in elections.
57:23:
(David Sirota)
And here's the beauty of this idea.
57:25:
(David Sirota)
It's not just for the corporations headquartered in Montana.
57:29:
(David Sirota)
It's for corporations also operating in Montana.
57:32:
(David Sirota)
So it's not going to solve the problem in California or all the other states.
57:37:
(David Sirota)
But it arguably helps start solving the problem of corporate spending and elections inside of Montana.
57:45:
(David Sirota)
Other states, blue states, for instance, can start passing this in their legislatures.
57:50:
(David Sirota)
And the thing is, what's really interesting about this is if it gets to the Supreme Court, if it passes, gets to the Supreme Court,
57:56:
(David Sirota)
The Supreme Court would have to kind of dismantle all of this corporate law that it really doesn't want to dismantle.
58:04:
(David Sirota)
It's really interesting.
58:05:
(David Sirota)
To deal with this, right?
58:07:
(David Sirota)
So that's another thing that can be done.
58:09:
(David Sirota)
And then again, I go back to New York.
58:12:
(David Sirota)
If you're listening to this and you think that corruption is endemic in your state, in your city, in your town, New York has a public financing system.
58:19:
(David Sirota)
14 states, 26 localities have some versions of public campaign financing systems.
58:25:
(David Sirota)
They can be expanded.
58:26:
(David Sirota)
They can be built upon.
58:27:
(David Sirota)
They can be created in places that they aren't created yet.
58:31:
(David Sirota)
California.
58:32:
(David Sirota)
has a ballot measure on its ballot, just referred by Gavin Newsom's past in the legislature, to end the ban.
58:38:
(David Sirota)
I mean, it's kind of shocking that there is a ban.
58:40:
(David Sirota)
A ban on localities in California doing public financing.
58:44:
(David Sirota)
So, look, that's a long road.
58:45:
(David Sirota)
Yeah.
58:46:
(David Sirota)
I get it.
58:46:
(David Sirota)
But that's a lot of stuff.
58:47:
(David Sirota)
But that's a real thing.
58:48:
(David Sirota)
Yeah.
58:49:
(David Sirota)
And I just want to add, you asked about the court.
58:51:
(David Sirota)
The Supreme Court
58:52:
(David Sirota)
has consistently said that public financing of campaigns is fine.
58:56:
(David Sirota)
Now, it limited one piece of Arizona's public financing system, the part that was going to give matching funds if a millionaire or billionaire went over the limits.
59:04:
(David Sirota)
But even in that ruling, it was like public campaign financing systems were not questioning whether they can exist or not.
59:10:
(David Sirota)
So those are like three areas that, again, I just want to reiterate this.
59:15:
(David Sirota)
Yes, in some future, the Roberts court or the Donald Trump Jr. court or whatever might just say, nothing that we've said ever matters.
59:24:
(David Sirota)
But that can't be a rationale to not do things here in the present.
59:28:
(Chris Hayes)
David Sirota is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Lever.
59:30:
(Chris Hayes)
He has been in this game for more than a minute.
59:34:
(Chris Hayes)
I've known him since I was, what, 25, 26?
59:36:
(Chris Hayes)
He's an author of The Master Plan, The Hidden Plot to Legalize Corruption, and America's co-author is Jared Jakang Mayer.
59:43:
(Chris Hayes)
David, it was great to have you on.
59:44:
(Chris Hayes)
Thank you.
59:45:
(Chris Hayes)
Thanks so much for having me, Chris.
59:50:
(Chris Hayes)
You can get in touch with us by emailing withpod at gmail.com.
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(Chris Hayes)
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59:55:
(Chris Hayes)
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