Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome back to Drilled. I'm Amy Westerveldt. For years,
Speaker 1: literally years, people have been pitching me their excellent books
Speaker 1: on climate and policy and energy and democracy. And I
Speaker 1: love all the books, and I never have time to
Speaker 1: read them and do reviews, and I feel terrible about it.
Speaker 1: So we're changing that over here at Drilled. We've launched
Speaker 1: a series called Drilling Deep, in which we will be
Speaker 1: talking to authors about their books. And the hack here
Speaker 1: is that it won't always be me. In fact, it
Speaker 1: might never be me, even though I.
Speaker 2: Do really enjoy reading them and learning more about them.
Speaker 2: This week, Adam Lowenstein, who is doing most of these
Speaker 2: interviews for US, talks to Casey Michelle, the author of
Speaker 2: Foreign Agents, How American lobbyists and lawmakers Threatened democracy around
Speaker 2: the World. The book was actually published last year, but
Speaker 2: Michelle just wrote a really interesting piece in The Atlantic
Speaker 2: that kind of updates the thinking from the book for
Speaker 2: the second Trump administration. Just one quote, America has never
Speaker 2: seen corruption like this. Michelle's book explored the web of lobbyists,
Speaker 2: pr gurus, and former politicians who are paid to influence
Speaker 2: the US government on behalf of foreign regimes and no
Speaker 2: surprise here. One of Trump's first moves in office was
Speaker 2: an executive order stopping enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
Speaker 2: Adam had a great conversation with Michelle. I hope you
Speaker 2: enjoy it. Check out the book. We'll link to both
Speaker 2: the book and the Atlantic piece in the show notes,
Speaker 2: and we'll see you back here soon for more drilling.
Speaker 3: Deep cool, let's get into it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, good place to start is your recent piece in
Speaker 4: the Atlantic titled America has Never seen corruption like This,
Speaker 4: which pretty much sums it up. But let's start with
Speaker 4: some of the arguments you make in that piece.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Well, thank Adam, of course. First things first, thanks
Speaker 5: for having me back. It's great to reconnect. Of course,
Speaker 5: as we were just talking off Mike, I wish it
Speaker 5: was under better circumstances, but that's the world that we
Speaker 5: live in.
Speaker 3: Thanks for coming back on.
Speaker 4: And yeah, we left off at an interesting place during
Speaker 4: the Biden years, and we might get into that a little.
Speaker 5: Yes, the Biden years, I remember those fondly the past,
Speaker 5: truly as a foreign country. Yeah. Look, so the article
Speaker 5: that I have in the Atlantic that you mentioned just
Speaker 5: the other day was not pegged to anyone news development,
Speaker 5: anyone revelation, anyone exposure, or anyone international corruption network. It
Speaker 5: was trying to survey the field over the last six
Speaker 5: months or so, now that we're about six months into
Speaker 5: the new administration, of just how frankly historic the scope
Speaker 5: and the scale of the corruption emanating from and running
Speaker 5: through the White House, and of course the broader kind
Speaker 5: of world of Trump affiliates and the Trump family and
Speaker 5: of course the Trump organization. Truly is what I have
Speaker 5: found on my end is maybe not the most effective things,
Speaker 5: but one effective thing that I found on my end
Speaker 5: in my rioting is trying to examine historic parallels such
Speaker 5: as they are throughout predominantly American history, of networks of valances,
Speaker 5: of stories of corruption, almost all of which throughout the
Speaker 5: predominant of American history have been domestic. Donald Trump is
Speaker 5: by no means the first president of the first administration
Speaker 5: that has been embroiled in corruption scandals. You know, I
Speaker 5: laid out at the outset of the Peace it self
Speaker 5: that you go back to the days of Ulysses S.
Speaker 5: Grant and his family members in inner circles, It go
Speaker 5: back to the days of Warren Harding and Teapot Dome.
Speaker 5: Of course, go back to the days of Richard Nixon
Speaker 5: and a Watergate, even though that is predominantly remembered as
Speaker 5: a political story, which it absolutely was. There's also a
Speaker 5: story of rank corruption, especially corporate corruption, regarding linkages with
Speaker 5: with the White House, and that's all true. Those are
Speaker 5: all scandals under themselves. Of course, Teapot Dome for nearly
Speaker 5: a century was kind of the shorthand for presidential corruption.
Speaker 5: But what we we have seen over the last five
Speaker 5: six months now, you know, it blows all of that
Speaker 5: out of the water. There really is no historic comparison
Speaker 5: for the scope, the scale, and of course the speed
Speaker 5: with all with which all of this has happened itself.
Speaker 5: And you can talk about specific incidents of it. You
Speaker 5: can talk, of course about the Katari Jet, the forms
Speaker 5: million dollar luxury liner gifted from a foreign dictatorship directly
Speaker 5: to a sitting president. You can talk about the crypto
Speaker 5: and the meme coins. Of course, you could talk about
Speaker 5: the Trump organization itself. That's all perfectly true, that's all
Speaker 5: beyond anything we've ever seen before. But you could also
Speaker 5: talk about the policy developments on how the administration has
Speaker 5: really taken an absolute sledgehammer to whatever kind of anti
Speaker 5: corruption bona fides the US once had, you know, going
Speaker 5: all the way back, maybe fifty years or so in
Speaker 5: the post Watergate era is when you can really begin
Speaker 5: to examine the rise of this kind of anti corruption
Speaker 5: regime or these anti corruption policies. Almost all of those
Speaker 5: have been completely decimated, either unenforced, completely dissolved in terms
Speaker 5: of some task forces, no resourcing for actual investigations themselves.
Speaker 5: And of course what we've seen take place at the
Speaker 5: Department of Justice with the clear quid pro quo in
Speaker 5: terms of dropping certain prosecutions, including against our beloved mayor
Speaker 5: here in New York City, who was allegedly going around
Speaker 5: the world, especially in places like Turkey and asking for
Speaker 5: a campaign financing, which was of course the reddest of
Speaker 5: red lines. I mean, Adam, look, I could talk to
Speaker 5: you and maybe we will talk for a full hour
Speaker 5: about all of the developments out of it. That is
Speaker 5: sort of the plan that's about the Trump administration. But
Speaker 5: it was it was an exercise in trying to get
Speaker 5: all of this into one single article. I still left
Speaker 5: plenty of material on the chopping block, right. I don't
Speaker 5: think I mentioned once maybe I mentioned in passing the
Speaker 5: role and relationships of Jared Kushner and the billions of
Speaker 5: dollars that the president's son in law has brought in
Speaker 5: from dictatorship after dictatorship, as far as anyone can tell,
Speaker 5: only because he is, of course, the son in law
Speaker 5: of a sitting president. I mean, that's just one figure
Speaker 5: among many that I had to leave out of this article.
Speaker 5: The list goes on and on and on.
Speaker 4: One of the things you mentioned in that Atlantic piece
Speaker 4: is the Foreign Corrupt Practice Act. Can you talk about
Speaker 4: what that law is or was, and what it means
Speaker 4: for the Trump administration to stop enforcing it.
Speaker 5: The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, it's known by its acronym
Speaker 5: the FCPA, and that's what I'll generally refer to it
Speaker 5: as this was really the bedrock of America's anti corruption
Speaker 5: statutes or policies going back nearly fifty years. You know,
Speaker 5: I talked a moment ago about about Watergate. In the
Speaker 5: aftermath of Watergate and the revelations they were in and again,
Speaker 5: it wasn't just about about a burglar at the Watergate hotel.
Speaker 5: It wasn't just about the links that Richard Nixon would
Speaker 5: go to to remain in power as Congressional investigators discovered
Speaker 5: there were any number of leading American corporations secretly bankrolling
Speaker 5: Richard Nixon's re election campaign in nineteen seventy two. Again,
Speaker 5: this was contravening all manner of campaign finance law back
Speaker 5: in the nineteen seventies. But it wasn't just that. It
Speaker 5: was also that many of these companies were going around
Speaker 5: the world and bribing corrupt officials in places like Japan
Speaker 5: and South Korea, places like the Netherlands, but also places
Speaker 5: like Saudi Arabia, and finding corrupt regimes, corrupt officials that
Speaker 5: they could pay off to open the doors for American
Speaker 5: business and American commerce and of course keep those regimes
Speaker 5: in power for as long as they wanted as well.
Speaker 5: And when these revelations came out, right, we're talking tens
Speaker 5: hundreds of millions of dollars, significant amounts of money. When
Speaker 5: these revelations came out, you know, it wasn't just a
Speaker 5: scandal that American companies are going around the world and bribing,
Speaker 5: you know, autocratic regimes in places like Honduras. It is
Speaker 5: also that when those revelations came out, all of a sudden,
Speaker 5: all manner of anti American forces and political parties and
Speaker 5: movements could point to those regimes and point to those
Speaker 5: American companies and say, look at what is happening, Look
Speaker 5: at what the US is doing, what it is allowing,
Speaker 5: and look at what these American companies are doing in
Speaker 5: terms of smothering any kind of democracy again, in places
Speaker 5: like the military dictatorship South Korea, autocracy on Honduras, so
Speaker 5: on and so on. It's funny I was rereading this
Speaker 5: earlier this morning. Some of the congressional testimonies, some of
Speaker 5: the biggest benefactors of all these revelations were things like
Speaker 5: communist parties. Again, remember the nineteen seventies, near the height
Speaker 5: of the Cold War, and all of a sudden, the
Speaker 5: Communists can point to officials in Italy or the Netherlands
Speaker 5: or wherever it is, and say, look at just how
Speaker 5: corrupt the Americans and their lackeys in power here are.
Speaker 5: So that's all kind of a long winded way of
Speaker 5: setting the stage for what legislators ended up doing in
Speaker 5: nineteen seventy seven, realizing just how damaging this was to
Speaker 5: American policies and an American foreign policy especially, they passed this
Speaker 5: thing called the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which is really
Speaker 5: I want to make sure to kind of convey just
Speaker 5: how monumental this was. This wasn't just the first time
Speaker 5: in American history that it was now a crime for
Speaker 5: American corporations or American businessman to bribe foreign officials. This
Speaker 5: was the first time anywhere had ever passed anything like this,
Speaker 5: the first time in global history any country had made
Speaker 5: it a crime to engage in bribery, not in that
Speaker 5: country and specifically, but a foreign country in and of itself.
Speaker 5: So again, what the FCPA does is it makes it
Speaker 5: illegal for any American in any American company, any American
Speaker 5: business person, or any foreign company that's listed on an
Speaker 5: American stock exchange, even if they're not technically American companies themselves,
Speaker 5: to engage in bribery abroad in any country around the world.
Speaker 5: And this was nineteen seventy seven, This was nearly fifty
Speaker 5: years ago. And that's really, again I used the term earlier,
Speaker 5: the kind of the bedrock from where we saw over
Speaker 5: the ensuing decades, all of these other anti corruption policies
Speaker 5: really stem from that really declared American leadership in this space.
Speaker 5: We eventually saw it replicated in places like Canada. The
Speaker 5: European Union, United Kingdom, but also really set the kind
Speaker 5: of the baseline for where American anti corruption policy would
Speaker 5: go from there. So then eventually you had things like
Speaker 5: Shell company transparency. Eventually you had things like new task
Speaker 5: forces dedicated to targeting and seizing and returning dirty money.
Speaker 5: Of course, you had the Department of Justice prosecuting all
Speaker 5: around the world corrupt networks. Again, that was a long
Speaker 5: winded way of saying the FCPA was wonderful, and technically
Speaker 5: it is still on the books, but in one of
Speaker 5: the very first things that Donald Trump did in returning
Speaker 5: to the presidency was announced effectively it was no longer
Speaker 5: going to be enforced. As he saw it, it was
Speaker 5: a quote horror show of a law that prevented American
Speaker 5: businesses from engaging in routine business practices abroad and damaging
Speaker 5: American competitiveness, which is just a nice little euphemistic way
Speaker 5: of saying American companies and American businessmen should be able
Speaker 5: to bribe whoever they want without being concerned by without
Speaker 5: being worried about prosecution from the Department of Justice. It
Speaker 5: was devastating to see. It was a monumental, even generational setback.
Speaker 5: The Silver lining is it's still on the books, and
Speaker 5: a potential future administration could of course begin reinforcing it.
Speaker 5: But it was a very clear sign of the direction
Speaker 5: this administration was going to go in.
Speaker 4: That raises an important distinction, which is the direction of travel,
Speaker 4: the direction of corrupt travel? I guess which is The
Speaker 4: FCPA focuses on American companies illegally or unlawfully or unethically
Speaker 4: influencing governments around the world. Your book, Foreign Agents, which
Speaker 4: we talked about last year, focuses on sort of the
Speaker 4: reverse direction of corruption. Obviously it's all interrelated, but focuses
Speaker 4: on the government's authoritarian regimes around the world hiring US officials, politicians,
Speaker 4: influencers of various kinds who have access to the US
Speaker 4: government and can shape American policy. What is the state
Speaker 4: of the corrupt Union when it comes to foreign influence
Speaker 4: on the United States?
Speaker 5: The state of affairs right now is I don't know, terrible, terrifying, unsettling.
Speaker 4: Yes, it depends if you are making money or not.
Speaker 5: Oh sure, sure, it depends on what kind of line
Speaker 5: of work you're in. And I suppose what kind of morals,
Speaker 5: if any, you have about or scruples I should say
Speaker 5: about working with some of those the most heinous regimes
Speaker 5: around the world. Again, just as a little bit of context.
Speaker 5: I know Adam and I spoke about this in the past.
Speaker 5: In the United States of America, it's not illegal. It's
Speaker 5: perfectly legal for you or I or any other American
Speaker 5: to go lobby on behalf of not only any cause
Speaker 5: that we want, but any regime that we want. You
Speaker 5: and I can right now go talk to our legislators
Speaker 5: about how actually wonderful the regime in Saudi Arabia or
Speaker 5: the United Arab Emirates or Gabone or Venezuela or whatever
Speaker 5: it is might be. That's predominant because in the First Amendment,
Speaker 5: we have the right to petition the government for redress
Speaker 5: of grievances, which is just an old timey way of
Speaker 5: saying lobbying. You and I can go lobby for whatever
Speaker 5: cause we want. That is not illegal. All Americans have
Speaker 5: to do is register their work. If they're being paid
Speaker 5: to do that by these foreign governments. They just have
Speaker 5: to register with the Department of Justice and declare what
Speaker 5: they're doing and disclose how much they're making and so
Speaker 5: on and so forth. And you and I can go
Speaker 5: online to the Department of Justice website and take a
Speaker 5: look through that database of all of these American lobbyists
Speaker 5: we're selling themselves to regime after regime around the world.
Speaker 5: And again, as you just laid out, it's not even
Speaker 5: just traditional lobbyists, right, these kind of traditional lobbying firms
Speaker 5: in DC. It's a pr specialists, it's consultants, it's of
Speaker 5: course many former members of Congress or of Cabinet or
Speaker 5: previous administrations themselves. It is, you know, a whole kind
Speaker 5: of constellation of American industries are now congealing within the
Speaker 5: one broader umbrella industry of foreign lobbying. And because of
Speaker 5: Donald Trump's first term, again, this is now a multi
Speaker 5: billion dollar industry itself. These are extremely effective lobbyists. These
Speaker 5: are extremely effective networks at implementing policies that these foreign
Speaker 5: regimes want to see implemented. And again, it's things like
Speaker 5: arms sales, it's things like the lifting or prevention of sanctions.
Speaker 5: It's even things and we were talking about this off
Speaker 5: my in terms of climate it's even things like fast
Speaker 5: tracking energy policies that benefit hydrocarbon producers and pushing off
Speaker 5: or gutting green or clean tech reforms that again, places
Speaker 5: like China or Azerbaijan or Saudi Arabia, the major oil
Speaker 5: producers do not want to see pursued. It's been extremely
Speaker 5: effective because because of Donald Trump's first term, there was
Speaker 5: kind of a rising salience about some of these threats
Speaker 5: because it's not just that their lobbying officials. What a
Speaker 5: lot of folks realized is that these lobbyists were really
Speaker 5: enmeshing themselves in the highest levels of American policy making
Speaker 5: in any ways, crafting American foreign policy that should have
Speaker 5: been crafted by American legislators of those in the White House,
Speaker 5: but instead was being directed by these foreign lobbyists themselves.
Speaker 5: And Adam, I can't remember when you and I spoke last,
Speaker 5: but I believe it was after, maybe right around the
Speaker 5: same time as the conviction of former Senator Bob Menendez,
Speaker 5: who was before his conviction, was the chairman of the
Speaker 5: Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the most powerful member of American
Speaker 5: Congress in terms of crafting American foreign policy.
Speaker 4: And a Democrat, which bears emphasizing in this moment.
Speaker 5: He is one of the leaders, was one of the
Speaker 5: leaders for a long time of the Democratic Party, and
Speaker 5: as we also learned recently was secretly moonlighting, conspiring to
Speaker 5: act as as the jury found and guilty of a
Speaker 5: foreign agent for the military dictatorship in Egypt. He was
Speaker 5: secretly lobbying his colleagues in the Senate, secretly ghost riding
Speaker 5: on behalf of his patrons back in Cairo. And he
Speaker 5: was the first American member of Congress to be convicted
Speaker 5: on these charges and was recently sentenced, And if I
Speaker 5: remember correctly, he is actually now in prison on a
Speaker 5: very lengthy stay for again acting as secretly a foreign
Speaker 5: lobbyist on behalf of not his constituents back in New Jersey,
Speaker 5: but the military dictatorship back in Egypt. So again, this
Speaker 5: is just all kind of a little bit of the
Speaker 5: scope and scale of what we see on the foreign
Speaker 5: lobbying side. Fast forward to where we are right now,
Speaker 5: the current administration saying, no, we're not going to enforce
Speaker 5: any of these foreign lobbying laws. We're only going to
Speaker 5: target those that are engaged in traditional espionage. If a
Speaker 5: foreign agent, a foreign lobbyist is somehow somewhere getting a
Speaker 5: hold of classified information and sending it back to their
Speaker 5: patrons and benefactors elsewhere, we will prosecute that but if
Speaker 5: they're not disclosing who they're working for, if they're not
Speaker 5: sharing with the American public who's actually paying them, we're
Speaker 5: not going to prosecute that whatsoever. So it really seems like,
Speaker 5: and again it's going to take years to really figure
Speaker 5: out the breadth of this. Very much seems like we're
Speaker 5: back in the golden era, back in a golden age
Speaker 5: of these kind of foreign lobbying network being able to
Speaker 5: operate in the shadows without the rest of us having
Speaker 5: any idea what they're actually doing.
Speaker 4: I wanted to ask you about what the state of
Speaker 4: the influence industry in Washington is right now, because, on
Speaker 4: one hand, and as you just referenced, there's tons of
Speaker 4: money to be made from foreign governments seeking influence sway
Speaker 4: access to the Trump administration. What I wonder though, is,
Speaker 4: on the other hand, is the fact that the administration
Speaker 4: is so shameless in some ways, or the fact that
Speaker 4: Trump himself is such a you know, as has been
Speaker 4: widely report, or it makes decisions based on who talks
Speaker 4: to him most recently, who flatters him the most, whatever.
Speaker 4: Does that make it harder for some of the traditional
Speaker 4: levers of influence in Washington to do their work, because
Speaker 4: I feel like they at least sell themselves as having
Speaker 4: access that the average person doesn't have. But if you
Speaker 4: can get access to the decider through Fox News, then
Speaker 4: does that mean you don't need to hire Brownstein or whomever.
Speaker 5: You know. It's funny, Adam, and far be it from
Speaker 5: me to feel any kind of bad about any of
Speaker 5: these figures. But yes, there was even through Trump's first
Speaker 5: term and certainly well into the by and earra, there
Speaker 5: was a playbook that they had followed for years and
Speaker 5: years and years for decades, and it was an extension
Speaker 5: of an outgrowth of what traditional lobbying for domestic causes
Speaker 5: looked like. Right. It was the kind of the back
Speaker 5: room conversations. It was having one on one meetings. It
Speaker 5: was in some cases donating directly to a young a
Speaker 5: member of Congresses, or even a presidential candidate's election or
Speaker 5: re election campaigns. I mean again, it's there was no
Speaker 5: real kind of secret sauce to any of it. It
Speaker 5: was about who you knew and who you could access
Speaker 5: and what kind of doors you could open. And now
Speaker 5: what we see with Donald Trump's second term is that
Speaker 5: that playbook certainly still exists. And of course much of
Speaker 5: it does come down to, at the end of the day,
Speaker 5: who these figures, knowing what doors they can open. But
Speaker 5: the range of tactics and tools now available has just
Speaker 5: been blown out of the water, you know. Again, to
Speaker 5: get back to what we were talking about a few
Speaker 5: moments ago, I never in a thousand years thought I
Speaker 5: would ever see the day that a foreign regime, in
Speaker 5: this case out of Katar, would be able to gift
Speaker 5: a four hundred million dollar luxury liner a airplane to
Speaker 5: a sitting president. And yet, and yet here we are.
Speaker 5: I never thought I would see a world in which
Speaker 5: a sitting president has direct access to not only the
Speaker 5: so called coins, but of course is more than willing
Speaker 5: and more than happy to host these effective pay to
Speaker 5: play dinners for both Americans and non Americans alike those
Speaker 5: who have given or invested the most amount of money
Speaker 5: in a specific crypto venture. And of course I never
Speaker 5: thought that I would actually see I should have had
Speaker 5: an idea with Trump's first term, but I never thought
Speaker 5: I would actually see the day where he's sitting president
Speaker 5: has his real estate company gallivanting around the world and
Speaker 5: signing up deals in dictatorship after dictatorship, foreign country after
Speaker 5: form coach. I mean, this is all just unprecedented and
Speaker 5: completely uncharted waters, as we talked about earlier, completely without
Speaker 5: any kind of historic precedent. And I don't know how
Speaker 5: traditional lobbying firms are adapting, but I do think it
Speaker 5: is indicative that one of the key figures that has
Speaker 5: opened up Donald Trump to the world of crypto and
Speaker 5: crypto related investments is someone who emerged from that traditional
Speaker 5: lobbying world, and that is our old friend Paul Manifort,
Speaker 5: who was Donald Trump's first campaign manager and sixteen helped
Speaker 5: launch into the presidency, eventually jailed on foreign lobbying charges
Speaker 5: and then pardoned by Trump, and now in the last
Speaker 5: year or two has emerged as this key player in
Speaker 5: the crypto space that we know from other reporting, has
Speaker 5: led Donald Trump directly into that space and of course
Speaker 5: opened up all manner of new areas of influence. So
Speaker 5: there's a man of fort is many things, but there
Speaker 5: is a certain skill set that he brings to bear
Speaker 5: in terms in terms of opening up avenues of influence.
Speaker 4: What are the currencies of influence these days? You mentioned
Speaker 4: crypto being a big one. You know, there's been some
Speaker 4: reporting about you know, the Saudi government, among others, really
Speaker 4: going all in on AI and data centers to woo
Speaker 4: the administration and its tech oligarch backers. But what are
Speaker 4: how are they? What are they trafficking in these days?
Speaker 5: Well, I mean, look at the barest element of explanation
Speaker 5: is money, right, It's it's whatever means of financing directly
Speaker 5: into the American president's pocket, his family's pockets, his business pockets,
Speaker 5: his allies pockets. It's whatever the vehicle of value is.
Speaker 5: And if that's opening up a new resort in Vietnam,
Speaker 5: Trump Resort in Vietnam, so be it. If that is
Speaker 5: spending three hundred million dollars or investing three hundred million
Speaker 5: dollars on a Trump meme coin so you can have
Speaker 5: dinner with the president, so be it. If that is
Speaker 5: an investment fund in the United Arab Emirates agreeing that
Speaker 5: it will exchange or participate in exchanges using that Trump
Speaker 5: meme coin or whatever the other crypto venture is, you know,
Speaker 5: so be it. I mean, it's funny that you mentioned AI.
Speaker 5: This is actually a space. I don't think it's gotten
Speaker 5: nearly enough attention, but because of not only not only
Speaker 5: the developments in the space, and of itself and the
Speaker 5: implications of either domestic or especially foreign investment in artificial intelligence.
Speaker 5: But it's a very clear direction that especially the Saudi's
Speaker 5: and the Emordies have gone in. And I don't remember
Speaker 5: the figure, I don't have the figures off the top
Speaker 5: of my head, but the most recent visit from or
Speaker 5: agreement between President Trump and golf partners, hundreds of millions
Speaker 5: of dollars in golf investment in artificial intelligence, opening up
Speaker 5: of data centers, and of course providing leverage from these
Speaker 5: regimes themselves over whether it's American AI companies themselves or
Speaker 5: American AI policy writ large. Again, there's no admiration whatsoever,
Speaker 5: but you do have to comment on the relative savvy
Speaker 5: I suppose of figures like NBS in Saudi Arabia or
Speaker 5: NBZ in the United Arab Emirates, realizing which way the
Speaker 5: wind is blowing, and of course realizing that they are
Speaker 5: all manner of tech oligarchs surrounding Donald Trump and his
Speaker 5: presidency and more than willing to back him come hell
Speaker 5: or high water, and then opening up these new streams
Speaker 5: of investment from these dictatorships elsewhere. I mean, look, it's
Speaker 5: all it's one investment vehicle after another. And it's funny,
Speaker 5: I will say, you know you and I are speaking
Speaker 5: here on July twenty second, and just yesterday the administration
Speaker 5: announced that it is going to be, you know, charitably
Speaker 5: kicking the can down the road about new anti money
Speaker 5: laundering rules and regulations for American private equity and venture
Speaker 5: capital and hedge funds. These were anti minor learning policies
Speaker 5: that were supposed to be implemented back in the early
Speaker 5: two thousands, but because of a so called temporary loophole,
Speaker 5: just have never been implemented. And the Biden administration announced
Speaker 5: finally they were going to require these private investment funds
Speaker 5: again that manage total trillions, if not tens of trillions
Speaker 5: of dollars, to just check where that money is coming
Speaker 5: from and flag any concerns for the American government, for
Speaker 5: the federal government. What we saw yesterday is the new administration,
Speaker 5: the Treasure Department announcing no, we're not going to pursue
Speaker 5: those rules and regulations. We're going to open it up
Speaker 5: for discussion. We're going to reconsider, and in the meantime,
Speaker 5: all these private investment funds will be able to have
Speaker 5: an absolute feast and open their doors to anyone and
Speaker 5: everyone they want, foreign regimes, foreign oligarchs, proxies, what have you,
Speaker 5: and acting all of that money and all of that
Speaker 5: wealth into the American economy and throughout the American economy
Speaker 5: without any kind of transparency, any kind of due diligence
Speaker 5: in this whatsoever. And you know, we talked a moment
Speaker 5: ago about Jared Kushner, and it's funny because you know,
Speaker 5: he left the first administration without any private investment, private
Speaker 5: equity experience whatsoever. He was a let's call it, struggling
Speaker 5: real estate developer before he joined Trump's first White House.
Speaker 5: And then he left and almost immediately began taking in
Speaker 5: billions of dollars for his own private investment fund from
Speaker 5: the Saudis, from the Emiraldis, from the Kataris, without any
Speaker 5: kind of experience, any kind of reason to believe that
Speaker 5: those investments would be successful in terms of returning capital
Speaker 5: back to those regimes. But you know, I don't want
Speaker 5: to cast dispersions, but it certainly looks like it's going
Speaker 5: in one direction in terms of influence and in terms
Speaker 5: of access to the man that is now the son
Speaker 5: in law of the city President. And again that's just
Speaker 5: one figure and one fund on the private investment site,
Speaker 5: among a whole slew of others that are still open
Speaker 5: and available to anyone and everyone.
Speaker 4: It is remarkable how much money these regimes have access
Speaker 4: to and how desperate they seem to be defined anywhere
Speaker 4: to invest it. And most of it comes from oil,
Speaker 4: which I think is not new in the sense that
Speaker 4: it's not breaking news, but also bears emphasizing given some
Speaker 4: of these regimes at the same time at least are
Speaker 4: maintaining the facade of transitioning their economies and participating in
Speaker 4: global climate negotiations, transitioning their economies away from oil. But
Speaker 4: at the same time, all of this money is related
Speaker 4: to the extraction and production of fossil fuels, and it
Speaker 4: finally has somewhere to go. I'd be curious what you
Speaker 4: think of this. It seems like any reason for which
Speaker 4: a Western investor or investment fund manager might have had
Speaker 4: for not a accepting that money, any any compunction, I
Speaker 4: guess is the word no longer exists. Is that a
Speaker 4: fair way to put it. There's really no shame associated
Speaker 4: with taking that money anymore.
Speaker 5: No, No, there's no shame. There's no compunction there's no reason,
Speaker 5: and then there's no even structural incentive to say no,
Speaker 5: not only because you know, you should have extremely minimal
Speaker 5: concern about any kind of investigation or prosecution so long
Speaker 5: as you remain in the current administration's good graces, but
Speaker 5: also because you know if you if you do say no,
Speaker 5: then your competitor down the street will say yes, or
Speaker 5: if they don't say yes, and some other competitor will
Speaker 5: end up opening their doors. And again, this is a
Speaker 5: dynamic we have seen elsewhere. It's a dynamic that does
Speaker 5: predate the current president. It's something that we saw in
Speaker 5: the lobbying industry or at large. It's something that we
Speaker 5: saw in the consulting industry, in particular in working with
Speaker 5: regimes like Saudi Arabia. It's I know, you could you
Speaker 5: can look at, you know, oil producing regime after oil
Speaker 5: producing regime around the world. You can look at Russia,
Speaker 5: you can look at Equatorial Guinea, you can look at Libya,
Speaker 5: you can certainly look at Azerbaijan or Kazakhstan. But of
Speaker 5: course the one that we mentioned already a few times
Speaker 5: is Saudi Arabia. It is a breathtaking and I hope
Speaker 5: there are multiple books coming out about it in the
Speaker 5: very near future to see the scope and the breadth
Speaker 5: of opportunities that Saudi Arabia's Sovereign Wealth Fund has opened
Speaker 5: up for the regime, and of course almost all of
Speaker 5: that money, if not all of it, coming from the
Speaker 5: production of oil and the broader climate destruction therein. Because
Speaker 5: it's funny, because if you go back to twenty eighteen,
Speaker 5: twenty nineteen, after the assassination of the journalist Jamalkashoci, Saudi
Speaker 5: Arabia and MBS in particular, they weren't exactly persona non grata,
Speaker 5: but they were having lobbying clients, consulting clients, even investors
Speaker 5: in Silicon Valley and elsewhere in the US turn them
Speaker 5: away and turn them down and say we will not
Speaker 5: have any business, we will not be seen to be
Speaker 5: doing any business with this regime. And again, you want
Speaker 5: to talk about the past being a foreign country, and
Speaker 5: that was only six seven years ago. I can't even
Speaker 5: fathom getting to that point again. I have no idea
Speaker 5: that the Saudi regime would have to do to get
Speaker 5: to that point once more, where American lobbying shops, American
Speaker 5: investors are turning down Saudi money because you know, you
Speaker 5: can just cast around the American economy, whether it's in Hollywood,
Speaker 5: whether it is in the sports industry, especially things like
Speaker 5: golf or tennis or boxing. I'm sure at some point
Speaker 5: down the line, the NBA and the NFL will be
Speaker 5: opening themselves up to Saudi money. I hope to god
Speaker 5: it's not my beloved Portland Trailblazers who are currently for
Speaker 5: sale and I live in dread that the Saudis will
Speaker 5: be the one to purchase them, or or of course
Speaker 5: again all of the image management shops or even things
Speaker 5: like Twitter or x Right. You know, it's just a
Speaker 5: bottomless list of industries that have opened themselves up to
Speaker 5: investments from the regime or open themselves up to the
Speaker 5: private investment the private equity, hedge fund and venture capital
Speaker 5: firms that have opened themselves to with to Saudi financing itself.
Speaker 5: And again it's not just Kushner, it's the Injuries and
Speaker 5: Horowitzes of the world. I mean, it really is the
Speaker 5: biggest names across industry after industry that are now being
Speaker 5: bankrolled directly by or at least indirectly via these private
Speaker 5: investment funds. Saudi wealth, that oil money, that the Saudis
Speaker 5: now have and I think they're going to pass the
Speaker 5: one trillion mark shortly, if they haven't already for the
Speaker 5: private investment fund. And again, this is just one regime
Speaker 5: of many that are realizing. Oh, in the United States
Speaker 5: of America, it is now the golden era of white
Speaker 5: collar crime, right. The crime wave is here. It is
Speaker 5: just white collar, as another writer, Jacob Silverman wrote in
Speaker 5: his new book, and it's not going to end anytime soon.
Speaker 4: That gets at the thing that seems most profound in
Speaker 4: some ways. There's obviously the scale of the literal corruption
Speaker 4: as we've talked about, but there's also just the sense
Speaker 4: of shame that used to be associated with it. And
Speaker 4: this comes to mind when you mentioned the years following
Speaker 4: the murder of Jamal Kaschogi, and there was at least
Speaker 4: a pretense that companies were turning away from doing business
Speaker 4: with a regime that would murder journalists. That was, there
Speaker 4: was always an element of performance there, because they were
Speaker 4: clearly hungry for that money and got back in as
Speaker 4: soon as they could. But what feels different about the
Speaker 4: last certainly the last six months, but even the last
Speaker 4: couple of years, is just how quickly that pretense has faded,
Speaker 4: or at least the sense that they need to keep
Speaker 4: up that performance, and there's just been sort of a
Speaker 4: collective shrug in some ways because it's just too much,
Speaker 4: And I wonder what you make of that.
Speaker 5: You know, again, charitably, if you just pull back and
Speaker 5: examine the kind of incentive structures that these firms, these
Speaker 5: industries written large or are engaging in, you know, there
Speaker 5: is a reality that if they have a fiduciary responsibility
Speaker 5: to shareholders, or if they just have any kind of
Speaker 5: general profit driven motive, yes, orls are great. But if
Speaker 5: you're not committing any crime and you don't have to
Speaker 5: be concerned about any prosecution, then all you're doing is
Speaker 5: seeding ground to your competitors who have fewer scruples in you,
Speaker 5: or maybe who knows, maybe they have just as many
Speaker 5: scruples as you, but also can read the landscape and
Speaker 5: realize that if they don't do this, they don't make
Speaker 5: that kind of first mover step, then someone else will.
Speaker 5: And you know, you can look at this from a
Speaker 5: lot of different different vantages. You can look at this
Speaker 5: from the perspective of, you know, people who are hired
Speaker 5: as as representatives of these regimes, saying, oh, you know,
Speaker 5: I'm actually a good guy. I'm gonna put this money
Speaker 5: to good use. And of course if I'm inside the
Speaker 5: tent rather than outside, it can make more of a difference.
Speaker 5: You can look at it geopolitically. I remember, of course,
Speaker 5: I guess he was then a candidate, Joe Biden saying
Speaker 5: we're going to make Saudi Arabia parian nation, pariah's status.
Speaker 5: And it was what two months, three months in his
Speaker 5: first term where he's there fist bumping MBS itself.
Speaker 3: And asking for more oil production.
Speaker 5: And asking from oil production. Of course, the American Saudi
Speaker 5: partnership has decades and decades behind it at this point.
Speaker 5: And I will say, you know, it's funny, and I
Speaker 5: don't remember if we talked about this last time, but
Speaker 5: there's a chapter of the book of the Foreign Agents
Speaker 5: Book which quotes one of these lobbyists from back in
Speaker 5: the early nineteen nineties who was working for people like
Speaker 5: Saddam Hussein or the vin dictator in places like Liberia,
Speaker 5: I mean, truly the world's worst. And someone asked him
Speaker 5: about it, you know, he said, well, look, it's at
Speaker 5: the end of the day, it's just money and as
Speaker 5: he said, shame is for sissies. That was his quote,
Speaker 5: and that's what ended up being one of the chapter titles.
Speaker 5: And I think that is an ethos that was maybe
Speaker 5: a little ahead of its time, because that is certainly
Speaker 5: something that we see every single day. I mean, there
Speaker 5: is no if there ever was space for or consideration
Speaker 5: of something like shame every day. It appears an outdated
Speaker 5: phenomenon and term. And that's too bad, because shame can
Speaker 5: be a wonderful tool in the right hands.
Speaker 4: Yeah, sometimes the only tool we have too.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it is funny because this is what does The
Speaker 5: kind of ethos of the first four lobbying regulations was, Look,
Speaker 5: we're not going to ban this. This is all the
Speaker 5: way back in the nineteen thirties when they were exposed
Speaker 5: as working for the Nazis and the Soviets and Mussolini.
Speaker 5: We can't ban this, but if we bring it to light,
Speaker 5: bring some transparency, we can shame these Americans into no
Speaker 5: longer working with these regimes. And rarely has that worked. Again,
Speaker 5: It's one thing that's been very nice in theory, but
Speaker 5: when you talk about the kind of money involved in practice,
Speaker 5: it is very rare.
Speaker 4: I wanted to ask you, and this might be a
Speaker 4: hot take that's not worth taking, but it's not a
Speaker 4: leading question. I'm genuinely curious what you think. If there's
Speaker 4: anything to be celebrated is too strong of a word,
Speaker 4: if there is a silver lining of some kind in
Speaker 4: the sense that the Trump regime is doing a lot
Speaker 4: of this stuff so clumsily and shamelessly and publicly, and
Speaker 4: a lot of this stuff has been going on again
Speaker 4: to a lesser extent, but as you've pointed out in
Speaker 4: the book, and as we've talked about previously, has been
Speaker 4: going on for decades. Just now it's happening in the
Speaker 4: open because there's no sense of consequence or shame associated
Speaker 4: with it. Is there anything to be celebrated about that
Speaker 4: fact that people can actually see what's sort of always happened.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean the silver lining is it's impossible to
Speaker 5: escape this. You cannot push it away, as there in
Speaker 5: your news feed every single day. It is overwhelming, It
Speaker 5: is breathtaking, and it forces you to consider, how is
Speaker 5: it that this is happening? Why is it that this
Speaker 5: is happening? And of course the secondary question is, okay, well,
Speaker 5: if these policies were in place before Trump and he
Speaker 5: can simply use them through his advantage or trample them underfoot.
Speaker 5: What does that mean for a potential future administration if
Speaker 5: we do want to shore up if we can possibly
Speaker 5: shore up America's kind of anti corruption, counter cryptocracy regime itself.
Speaker 5: And it's funny because I'm working on. The next book
Speaker 5: that I'm working on is looking at the rise of
Speaker 5: this oligarchic class in the United States of America and
Speaker 5: how that oligarchic class is transformed into not only threats
Speaker 5: domestically in terms of American democracy, but also begun allying
Speaker 5: with foreign regimes themselves that have no interest in restoring
Speaker 5: things as simple as American democracy. And one of the
Speaker 5: things that I'm hoping to do with this book is
Speaker 5: examine the kind of lessons and the periods of previous
Speaker 5: successful reforms. There's two primary ones. There's the nineteen hundred
Speaker 5: and nineteen ten broader progressive era really linked to the
Speaker 5: Teddy Roosevelt administration. There were other, of course, players involved,
Speaker 5: and that was the aftermath of the Gilded Age, which
Speaker 5: is the first kind of really true oligarchic class and
Speaker 5: the kind of threats they are in and that resulted
Speaker 5: in all kinds of things, right, successful prosecutions of course, antitrust,
Speaker 5: mobilization and crackdowns, but also campaign finance reforms, because there's
Speaker 5: one thing that we haven't talked about yet today, and
Speaker 5: that's campaign finance and the role and legacy of things
Speaker 5: like Citizens United in further distorting and in many ways
Speaker 5: i mean degrading, maybe not quite destroying this to the
Speaker 5: point yet American democracy, but really taking again a sledgehammer
Speaker 5: to any kind of sanctity or sovereignty of American democracy.
Speaker 5: You go back to the progressive era and minds of
Speaker 5: lessons there. And then the other one we've already talked about,
Speaker 5: which is the post Watergate era, and that was the
Speaker 5: creation not only the FCPA, but even the Federal Election Commission,
Speaker 5: which is again one of those things that on paper
Speaker 5: it looks like it would have been fantastic but very
Speaker 5: quickly fell apart. And what kind of lessons can we
Speaker 5: mind therein So, yes, it's a silver lining. And it's
Speaker 5: tough to see those silver linings when you're in the
Speaker 5: middle of such a dark cloud as this one. But yeah,
Speaker 5: if you get your binoculars and you appear pretty far,
Speaker 5: sure you can see it out there.
Speaker 4: One of the things we talked about last time was
Speaker 4: the bipartisan history of foreign influence pedaling, and we had
Speaker 4: talked about how weirdly one of the good, positive, small
Speaker 4: baby steps that the Trump administration, the first one, had taken,
Speaker 4: was requiring disclosure of foreign funding for US universities and
Speaker 4: US think tanks, and how the Biden administration had essentially
Speaker 4: stopped enforcing that. Have there been any developments on either
Speaker 4: of those fronts since No.
Speaker 5: Next question this is, Look, there's plenty of disappointing things
Speaker 5: to see in the past few months, and one of
Speaker 5: them is this inability to build on even these small
Speaker 5: victories we have seen. No, there has not been any
Speaker 5: progress in terms of think tank disclosure and in terms
Speaker 5: of university disclosure. Not that that can't change. I wouldn't
Speaker 5: be surprised if we see increasing investigations and transparency requirements
Speaker 5: for American universities. Perhaps not for the best reasons, but
Speaker 5: I don't know, because one of the things that the
Speaker 5: Trump administration wants to do is completely abolished the Department
Speaker 5: of Education, which is the one that houses all of
Speaker 5: the transparency data about how American universities have been taking
Speaker 5: in tens of millions, hundreds of millions in some cases
Speaker 5: billions of dollars from authoritarian regimes around the world in
Speaker 5: terms of gifts and contracts, And if they eliminate the
Speaker 5: Department of Education, then that goes out out the window.
Speaker 5: So yeah, sorry, Adam, I don't have good news.
Speaker 4: Well here's here's more shot at finding good news. Was
Speaker 4: a headline or some reporting that the Wall Street Journal
Speaker 4: has done over the last couple of months about the
Speaker 4: General Services Administration, which, telling Lee is now run by
Speaker 4: a former KKR private equity fund executive, but requiring or
Speaker 4: demanding of consulting giants like McKinsey and BCG Etcenter, my
Speaker 4: former employer Ey and others, to basically justify their huge
Speaker 4: federal contracts. I wonder what you make of that effort,
Speaker 4: whether it's sort of just a anti quote unquote woke,
Speaker 4: anti DEI effort, or if it actually there's some substance
Speaker 4: to telling consulting firms to justify these billions of dollars
Speaker 4: worth of taxpayer contracts.
Speaker 5: I I would think that if anyone is well placed
Speaker 5: to justify billions of dollars of contracts, it would be
Speaker 5: these consulting firms. They'll find a way, they'll they'll find
Speaker 5: a way. Of course, in theory, there's there's nothing wrong.
Speaker 5: It's it's like the it's like doge right. In theory, yes,
Speaker 5: of course we should root out fraud and waste and abuse.
Speaker 5: And yes, of course American tax paid dollars should be
Speaker 5: used for the you know, to the to the first
Speaker 5: this extent they can for the for the minimum amount.
Speaker 5: But that's all fine in theory, of course, saying this
Speaker 5: in practice for reasons that maybe they stem from DEI
Speaker 5: considerations and quote unquote anti Wote considerations. Maybe there was
Speaker 5: just someone at BCG or McKenzie or whomever that caught
Speaker 5: the eye of someone who has Trump's ear. Like I,
Speaker 5: I don't know what is actually leading this this push itself.
Speaker 5: I mean, I will say, of course I have no
Speaker 5: love lost for any of these firms, many of these firms,
Speaker 5: maybe a few, maybe a few of them. And again,
Speaker 5: something you and I have talked about in the past
Speaker 5: is how many of these firms McKenzie, t Enao, Boston
Speaker 5: Consulting Group have worked for regimes like Saudi Arabia and again,
Speaker 5: open up the US to any number all manner of
Speaker 5: Saudi influence as well as plenty of other regimes around
Speaker 5: the world, and the one that comes to mind recently,
Speaker 5: and it was the Financial Times that did this great
Speaker 5: reporting on how Boston Consulting Group had been involved, or
Speaker 5: at least a number of senior partners have been involved
Speaker 5: in euphemistically creating exit packages for Palestinians from Gaza to
Speaker 5: effectively whitewash Israeli ethnic cleansing campaigns. So no, I when
Speaker 5: it comes to the Trump administration in some of these
Speaker 5: consulting firms, please don't ask me who I'm rooting for. Yeah,
Speaker 5: but we'll see what comes.
Speaker 4: I suspect they'll all find a way to win at
Speaker 4: everyone else's expense as they as they typically do.
Speaker 5: Yes, I think that's fine.
Speaker 4: The BCG in Gaza contracts were so revealing in the
Speaker 4: sense that one of the things you talk about in
Speaker 4: your book Foreign Agents, is the work that Ivy Lee,
Speaker 4: the quote unquote father of public relations, did for the
Speaker 4: Nazi regime, And you can draw a direct line from
Speaker 4: that type of work in the nineteen thirties to the
Speaker 4: type of work that BCG has been reportedly doing in
Speaker 4: the twenty twenties. And it's the same playbook with different
Speaker 4: actors different sums of money.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, as Ivy Lee saw it, Adolf Hitler
Speaker 5: was bringing stability to one of the key economic and
Speaker 5: national well nations in Europe. He was a bulwark against
Speaker 5: far left communism emanating from the Soviet Union. And at
Speaker 5: the end of the day, if the Americans didn't partner
Speaker 5: with him, then other regimes who are maybe opposed to
Speaker 5: American interests would partner with him. And don't we want
Speaker 5: to get in on the ground floor. Don't we want
Speaker 5: to at least hear what he has to say. And yes,
Speaker 5: maybe he has his foibles, and maybe there are some
Speaker 5: concerns about what's happening domestically, but look, a lot of
Speaker 5: that is just rhetoric. We don't really need to be
Speaker 5: concerned about what Adolf Hitler is doing in Germany or
Speaker 5: in Europe. And you can find a way to justify
Speaker 5: if you want, and certainly if you are being paid,
Speaker 5: you can find a way to justify almost anything. And
Speaker 5: it has been remarkable to watch Boston Consulting Group try
Speaker 5: to scramble to explain away how multiple senior partners were
Speaker 5: involved in ethnic cleansing, or green lighting ethnic cleansing, or
Speaker 5: spinning ethnic cleansing, and it's just a very short step
Speaker 5: from there to outright genocide. And I have no doubt
Speaker 5: that there are at least some folks in some of
Speaker 5: these firms that have already considered what are the best
Speaker 5: talking points if we do see a genocide or emerge
Speaker 5: wherever it is right, whether it's in Palaesinon or Meanmar
Speaker 5: or Sudan, there's money to be made, and if we
Speaker 5: don't make it, our competitors will. And at the end
Speaker 5: of the day, who needs shame anywhere.
Speaker 4: There was a pattern that played out during the first
Speaker 4: Trump administration of because Trump and his administration were so
Speaker 4: you know, corrupt, outrageous, offensive, crude, that companies could essentially
Speaker 4: step into the breach and be the benevolent, sane, competent
Speaker 4: actors in society. That was I think part of what
Speaker 4: drove the rise of so called ESG and corporate sustainability
Speaker 4: and all this stuff, which is has been a trend.
Speaker 4: That was not the first time companies had pretended to
Speaker 4: save the world. They tend to do this when they're
Speaker 4: facing a lot of backlash. And I wonder if you've
Speaker 4: seen that same pattern play out again this time if
Speaker 4: they're trying to step in and say, you know, he's
Speaker 4: off the rails, but we got this, or if they're
Speaker 4: more like we're just going to ride that wave and
Speaker 4: cash in, well, I.
Speaker 5: Mean, I guess I'm be keen for your perspective. I
Speaker 5: certainly haven't seen any indication of that. And again, I
Speaker 5: think it's multifold. One, we are only six months into
Speaker 5: the new administration. Who knows where we'll be a year
Speaker 5: from now, who knows what will happen after the terms,
Speaker 5: and of course who knows what will actually be taking
Speaker 5: place the final year of this second term. And two,
Speaker 5: we've seen how aggressive the current administration is about swatting
Speaker 5: down or suffocating or whatever term you'd like to use
Speaker 5: private interest that may be opposed to the current administration
Speaker 5: using the power of the state to specifically target any
Speaker 5: in all private organizations, maybe most spectacularly in media with
Speaker 5: paramount in the ABC settlements, that would even think about
Speaker 5: speaking out about the current administration. I Adam, what do
Speaker 5: you have any thoughts on this? Yeah?
Speaker 4: I mean I don't have a more optimistic take, that's
Speaker 4: for sure. It does feel like they got their tax
Speaker 4: cut in twenty seventeen. End of twenty seventeen, so they
Speaker 4: kind of got what they wanted from the administration, and
Speaker 4: then those next couple of years it was kind of
Speaker 4: it seemed like they either saw an opportunity or felt
Speaker 4: an obligation to at least pretend that they were the
Speaker 4: adults in the room. They were the serious people when
Speaker 4: Trump was off the rails, even if they shared ultimately
Speaker 4: the same economic goals. And I agree, now it feels
Speaker 4: like either they're too afraid to do that, but I
Speaker 4: think more realistically they're not interested in doing that performance
Speaker 4: anymore because they feel like they don't have to.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I mean, look, you know, the big beautiful
Speaker 5: bill just passed a few weeks ago. Of course, those
Speaker 5: many of those tax cuts we saw in twenty seventeen
Speaker 5: or are now permanent, you know, again at a very
Speaker 5: what we were talking about earlier, maybe a macro level.
Speaker 5: Right there is no concern about any kind of white
Speaker 5: collar prosecution. There's no concern about any fraud prosecution. There's
Speaker 5: no concern about of course, foreign bribery prosecution. I mean,
Speaker 5: and again, white collar crime is wide open right now
Speaker 5: as long as you stay in the good graces of
Speaker 5: the administration. You know, the only time that we saw
Speaker 5: any kind of outspoken concerns from leaders within the private
Speaker 5: industry space was after the think I guess it was
Speaker 5: in April, if I remember correctly. The first was it
Speaker 5: Liberation date? Right, the announcement of what these tariffs were
Speaker 5: going to look like, and of course the shutter that
Speaker 5: that's sent through private industry that did become more outspoken
Speaker 5: about their concerns about what the administration was doing. And
Speaker 5: I wonder if they can argue to themselves that it
Speaker 5: seems like, oh okay, it was those concerns that that
Speaker 5: put these tariffs kind of off into the future, and
Speaker 5: we were able to sway President Trump. As far as
Speaker 5: I could tell, it was just the bond markets, as
Speaker 5: Trump said, getting jumpy or yippy, whatever the term was,
Speaker 5: that dissuaded him. And clearly tariffs, at least the discussion
Speaker 5: of them, have not gone anywhere. Every single day it
Speaker 5: seems like there's a new proposal, there's a new announcement,
Speaker 5: there's a new postponement, so on and so forth. And
Speaker 5: I know, of course, I don't know how all this
Speaker 5: is going to end, but I especially don't know if
Speaker 5: or what a breaking point would look like for private
Speaker 5: industry regarding at least the terror of conversation, and I
Speaker 5: don't know if there is one, given how the administration
Speaker 5: has used the power of the state thus far to
Speaker 5: target its opponents.
Speaker 4: And it's not like there aren't opportunities in tariffs to
Speaker 4: raise prices. We saw that almost immediately, where you know,
Speaker 4: even before tarists had taken effect or on industries that
Speaker 4: weren't affected by it, they were saying, we have to
Speaker 4: raise our prices because the tariffs. And it's sort of
Speaker 4: like what they did with inflation a couple of years ago,
Speaker 4: where you know, it's an opportunity to get away with
Speaker 4: price increases.
Speaker 5: At the very least, it degrades quality of life for
Speaker 5: the rest of us. It makes things harder, makes things
Speaker 5: more expensive. And if Trump, being the political savant that
Speaker 5: he has apparently been over the last decade, is able
Speaker 5: to distance himself sufficiently from those price increases and for
Speaker 5: goods and services, I wouldn't put it past him. And
Speaker 5: of course, if private industry is not unified in speaking out,
Speaker 5: or at least sufficiently unified speaking out against this, I
Speaker 5: look I look forward to decades of decline with you,
Speaker 5: Adam and commiserating over silver lining, but can't quite get it. Boy,
Speaker 5: that was a depressing comment. I'm sorry.
Speaker 4: I mean it's it's realistic and actually related to that,
Speaker 4: I want to ask you how you are you're sort
Speaker 4: of personally as a human being covering this stuff right now,
Speaker 4: how you are processing this time and history on.
Speaker 5: My most optimistic days. It is what we were talking
Speaker 5: about earlier, trying to convince myself that this is a
Speaker 5: period similar to what we saw in the eighteen eighties,
Speaker 5: eighteen nineties, and similar what we saw in the late
Speaker 5: nineteen sixties early nineteen seventies in terms of not only
Speaker 5: things like wealth inequality or corporates sway and lording over
Speaker 5: American politics, but of course abuse of power, especially out
Speaker 5: of the executive office itself. And now no historic parallel
Speaker 5: is it's exactly parallel. Of course, this era is completely
Speaker 5: different in so many ways. But it is trying to
Speaker 5: find a historic resonance that gives me reason to believe
Speaker 5: that there is to use an overused image, a pendulum
Speaker 5: swing in the offing coming in the near future, and
Speaker 5: on my most optimistic days, that is what I like
Speaker 5: to consider, and of course it is going to be
Speaker 5: part of the book itself now on my most pessimistic days,
Speaker 5: it is simply the reality and the notion that all
Speaker 5: empires fall, and the United States of America has always
Speaker 5: been and continues to be an empire in some cases
Speaker 5: in the most literal sense, with any number of territories
Speaker 5: that we still have not yet elevated to its statehood.
Speaker 5: But of course, the kind of entangling of corporate finance
Speaker 5: within American elections, in American campaigns, and the reduction of
Speaker 5: any kind of American democratic input from American voters in
Speaker 5: the American populace. And this isn't even considering things like
Speaker 5: the fiscal crisis that is now even further staring us
Speaker 5: down the pipeline at some point in the not too
Speaker 5: distant future. So I swing between those depending on the day.
Speaker 5: And I know we talked about media diet a little
Speaker 5: bit off the mic, but I will say one thing
Speaker 5: that gets me through this. You can see a stack
Speaker 5: of Batman comics behind me that always help. But also
Speaker 5: just reading widely on things that have nothing to do
Speaker 5: with American history, or in some cases nothing to do
Speaker 5: with history whatsoever. It is you got to have those
Speaker 5: mental health breaks. You can just be following the news
Speaker 5: all day long, or you'd probably die.
Speaker 4: It's a I mean, I too, am finding a lot
Speaker 4: of solace in books and specifically almost less the subject
Speaker 4: matter in some cases, and more the analog print book,
Speaker 4: where there are no links, there are no ads, there's
Speaker 4: no breaking news. I know, it wasn't written by an algorithm.
Speaker 4: There's sort of a hard separation from the reality of
Speaker 4: the world. And I will actually say the version of
Speaker 4: the world that comes through the media is not the
Speaker 4: whole reality. This is not some you know, raging against
Speaker 4: the fake news media or whatever. But there is a
Speaker 4: you know, obviously an algorithmic bias toward outrage, and there
Speaker 4: is a rebalancing. I feel like, whether it's a graphic
Speaker 4: novel or a comic or just a print book, that
Speaker 4: that helps me reset a little bit.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, you're absolutely right. Look, I'm gonna put
Speaker 5: my old.
Speaker 3: Man hat on and that's my favorite hat.
Speaker 5: That. Yeah, I have to read analog books, right, I
Speaker 5: mean I I don't have a kindle, I don't have
Speaker 5: a nook, right, I have a pen and I have
Speaker 5: I have my book and that's and that's how we're doing.
Speaker 5: Of course, this is one of the benefits of reading
Speaker 5: history is realizing that, oh, you know, the sky has
Speaker 5: been falling for every nation for centuries, from millennia so
Speaker 5: on and so on and so on, and who knows,
Speaker 5: maybe we'll get through this or maybe we won't, but
Speaker 5: much of it is beyond our control. And you know,
Speaker 5: you try to do your good work where you can.
Speaker 5: You try to make a difference with where you can,
Speaker 5: and you try to spend time with people that you
Speaker 5: care about and who care about you. In turn, let
Speaker 5: me ask you, Adam, have you read any good books recently,
Speaker 5: either of fiction non fiction.
Speaker 4: I have read lots of good books. I was actually
Speaker 4: rereading just the other day, There Are No Children Here
Speaker 4: by Alex Kotlowitz.
Speaker 5: Sure, yeah, it's a I've not read that one, but yeah,
Speaker 5: I'm familiar.
Speaker 4: I think it came out in nineteen ninety one. But Coolowitz,
Speaker 4: who I believe is still doing this kind of journalism,
Speaker 4: was living or spending a lot of time with the
Speaker 4: family in a housing project in Chicago in the late
Speaker 4: eighties and basically following these two brothers and their family
Speaker 4: over a few years and just documenting what happens in
Speaker 4: their lives. And I'd read it before, but it hits
Speaker 4: a little differently now. I guess every book, you know,
Speaker 4: if you reread something, it's always going to hit a
Speaker 4: little bit differently. Yeah, but it's I'm definitely finding myself
Speaker 4: drawn to books that were written kind of pre twenty tens,
Speaker 4: and just because the world that they capture is so
Speaker 4: it's not entirely analog, obviously, but compared to where we
Speaker 4: are right now, it was just moving at a different speed.
Speaker 4: And maybe that's just because a millennial. Of course, I'm
Speaker 4: drawn to the nineties and early two thousands, but it's
Speaker 4: it's been a good balance for my normal fiction diet
Speaker 4: of like dystopian cli fi, which I'm having a harder
Speaker 4: time reading these days.
Speaker 5: I recently read in terms of dyscope, it's not quite
Speaker 5: cli fi. I'm assuming that means climate fiction. I guess
Speaker 5: I haven't heard that ten before. There was a book
Speaker 5: came out a few years ago called Prophet Song set
Speaker 5: in a near future dystopian civil war autocratic Ireland, and
Speaker 5: the kind of drivers for that and what it means,
Speaker 5: what it takes for one family to survive. And again
Speaker 5: it's those perspectives to realize, oh, well, we're not quite
Speaker 5: there yet, so maybe things aren't all horrible, all terrible
Speaker 5: all the time. Yes, mining it is funny because you know,
Speaker 5: mining those books and from the eighties and nineties and
Speaker 5: the two thousands before the kind of efflorescence of smartphones
Speaker 5: and all internet all the time, and of course now
Speaker 5: all apps all the time. It really is in many ways,
Speaker 5: like visiting a foreign land, similar themes, similar topics in
Speaker 5: some cases, similar figures and forces in some cases, which
Speaker 5: it led directly to where we are now. But revisiting that,
Speaker 5: relearning that, and re examining what that era held, and
Speaker 5: storing what we're right around the corner, of course, is
Speaker 5: maybe more important now than ever, maybe growing importance every day,
Speaker 5: or at least maybe it's just something to keep us
Speaker 5: busy between doom school.
Speaker 4: All possibilities and all valuable ones. And I wish we
Speaker 4: had less to talk about, but here we are. I
Speaker 4: am grateful for your work and your sense making of
Speaker 4: everything happening these days. And I'm glad you've kept the
Speaker 4: faith and kept the strength to keep doing this stuff,
Speaker 4: because it is important, even when it feels like the
Speaker 4: stuff that you and I talk about human rights, democracy, corruption,
Speaker 4: don't you know not at the top of the Project
Speaker 4: twenty twenty five, let's say, well.
Speaker 5: To quote one of my favorite Batman movies, Adam, the
Speaker 5: night is the darkest just before the dawn. And maybe
Speaker 5: it's not as dark as we can see. Maybe things
Speaker 5: will get darker, yet I suspect they probably will, and
Speaker 5: I certainly hope that there is a dawn coming at
Speaker 5: some point, or at the bare minimum, you and I
Speaker 5: can reconvene here in a few months or a few
Speaker 5: years time, whenever it is, and have more intellectually interesting
Speaker 5: things to talk about, even if it means the world
Speaker 5: is in a little bit worse place, because you've got
Speaker 5: to look for those advantages in those silver linings where
Speaker 5: you can, and you know, again, try to have conversations
Speaker 5: that are worthwhile. So I appreciate you having me on
Speaker 5: today to talk about some of these things.
Speaker 3: Good place to end, Thanks again, Casey.
Speaker 5: All right, Thanks Adam,