Pay Pals: How Billionaires Influence Elections

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Hello, everybody. Welcome once again to the weekly show podcast my name is john stewart and we have a week to go about a little bit a little bit a little bit more i guess than a week and i i i gotta say i i just i feel great i just i feel fucking I think, how could you not? A week to go before one of the most consequential elections of our lifetime.
And I have no idea, no idea what's going to happen. And we've entered the phase of the election that I like to call the Fellini era, the surreal fever dream where I just turned on CNN and it was all about if Donald Trump actually does like Hitler.
And that's always comforting in the run up to an election is when one of the candidates is because his general, John, I'm sure you all understand his former chief of staff was out like, yeah, the guy really, really thought Hitler did a lot of good things. And I was thinking, well, you know, he was a vegetarian, but it's not really what he was known for, I guess is what I'm saying.
So that's, uh, and, and we're in that, that, that form right now where it's just, um, a model just came out and said, Trump groped me, uh, with Epstein and somebody else came out and said, Doug Emhoff hit me. And Elon's on stage just handing out a million dollar oversized check.
And by the way, and I say this with all due respect, the check that he is handing out has picked an in-between. It is not the giant novelty check of the Jerry Lewis telethon, but it is also not the useful check that you might use at a bank.
It is a midsize check. Generally, the person's name is written on the line that you would put the dollar amount.
So really, what are we doing? Can you then put that into the ATM? But the point is, cash rules everything around me.

Dollar, dollar bills, y'all.

To quote, it all really comes down to RZA. It always comes down to the Wu-Tang.
Because Wu-Tang is for the children. And if there's anything that I can impress upon you in this election, it is that.
Wu-Tang is for the children. And to that point, we are going to talk about cash ruling everything around us.
That would not have been a good song. Crew.
Crew? C-R-E-U? No, that's just fucking stupid. That's why I was never allowed in Wu-Tang.
But let's get right to it. We're going to talk money.
Billionaires. Let's do this thing.
All right, ladies and gentlemen. So let's just, we're going to get right to it.
This episode is going to be the Billionaire Boys Club. And we are happy to welcome into our Billionaire Boys Club, Teddy Schleifer, politics reporter for the New York Times.
Ken Vogel, also a reporter for the New York Times. I'm assuming that this counts towards getting me a discount on the subscription.
If I do two New York Times reporters, if I do eight more and I get a sandwich, what is the bonus that I'm going to get? So some equity. You get the bundle.
I think you get the Wordle and the cooking app. I can't even tell you how excited I am that the New York Times just keeps adding more and more bizarre games where now it's just like, draw a line to letters and see if you can spell eight words.
Gentlemen, let's stop the niceties. Are we an oligarchy yet? I'm going to start with you, Ken Vogel.
Is the amount of money, if we're concerned about inflation in this country, inflation in politics, I mean, it makes us look like Argentina and Venezuela combine the amount of money in these races. Are we the oligarchy that we fear? I mean, every cycle we've seen an increase in the amount of money that gets spent on politics.
What we've seen more recently is a change in the type of money, the type of donations, increasingly larger proportions coming from a smaller and smaller group of super rich donors and coming in new ways that in some cases make it more difficult to track and increase concerns about the influence of money in politics and big donors in politics, because you can't even see who's giving the money, makes a lot harder to assess the effect of it on the candidates. Teddy, do we have a sense of what these billionaires expect as a return on investment.
Obviously, the Supreme Court, through certain decisions, has lessened the idea of corruption. It has to be explicitly quid pro quo, and it has to be done prior to the act.
Now the person can do the act, and you can pay them afterwards. Teddy, what is the expectation from all these billionaires? Proving the quid pro quo is really hard.
I mean, if we don't even know the money that's going in, it's even harder to figure out what they're getting out of it. I mean, requires kind of piercing the world of what exactly happened in that Oval Office meeting.
What exactly did that billionaire mega donor say to the politician behind closed doors? I mean, look, there are some donors where the quid pro quo is completely in front of the camera. If you think about a lobbying group or an interest group that is donating, let's say the crypto industry is a big player in 2024.
There's no big scoop about what the crypto industry wants out of their donations to various politicians. They want looser regulations on crypto.
Or no regulations on crypto. Woe if true.
I mean, there is no scandal. I mean, I think that the harder kind of edge cases to

prove, at least as reporters, are the times when a donor could – and let's play the violin for the lowly billionaire here. But some of these mega donors, as partisan and ideological as they may be legitimately think that their giving is capital P philanthropy.

You know, like if you genuinely believe that free markets are the antidote to American poverty and that if only we had more tax cuts, we would lift millions of people out of the poverty system and you believe that? And if it happens to benefit you as well. And you happen to – It kind of happens, right? Sure.
And obviously to liberals, they would never see what Charles and David Koch did as philanthropy. But you talk to some of those donors and as reporters, you do, they genuinely do.

And frankly, on the right, if you are watching a liberal donor give charitable money that just so happens to register black voters in Detroit, Philadelphia, and Milwaukee, a liberal donor might say, hey, I'm just helping people vote.

If you're a Republican, you see that and you're like, that is not philanthropy. That is BS.
Those are the quid pro quo types that are really hard to prove. Right.
Well, it's so accustomed to this idea. If you think about the Illuminati fever dream, that is what people think about money in politics.

And the general, from what I have seen, is this idea that George Soros is the only billionaire in the world who puts money into politics and pulls strings. And then you step back to realize, I mean, for God's sakes, on the right, it's shocking to me how much more Trump's campaign is aligned with billionaire donors.
I mean, he's, from what I can reckon through some of the weave that he does, he's the populist. And Kamala Harris has raised from sort of the lower donors far more money.
But in popular opinion, it's as though right-wing billionaires don't count or aren't doing this or Mellon and Adelson and now Musk, like that's not corrupting the system. Only Soros corrupts the system.
Is that the general tenor of the public? I mean, certainly Republicans have made a great effort over the years to sort of vilify Soros and other liberal donors. And I should say that Democrats have done a pretty effective job at vilifying some of the Republican donors.
Teddy mentioned the Koch brothers, Charles Koch, and his now deceased brother, David Koch. Koch brothers are probably the ones that I know, and I would consider them probably more libertarian even at this point.
Yeah, 100%. And it's also a good example of like, you know, they would say, and there's maybe like a little bit of a discordance or a divergence between how they would characterize their donations and how an outsider looking in or a reporter trying to assess the impact of their donations would see them.
You's right. They would say like, well, we're in favor of small government and lower regulation.
And there is a delta between that and their bottom line interest. You know, that said, I don't doubt having talked to people around them for years that they genuinely do believe that in sort of libertarian, small government, low taxation, low regulation principles.
And Soros believes in, you know, in sort of a more robust social safety net. Soros has been perhaps, you know, Soros and the Koch stand out as like among the more effective donors on either side, as far as like really systematically giving their money to protect, to build particular capabilities on their respective sides to help, uh, to help their sides win both elections and also, you know, policy debates, um, as to, uh, you know, the, the, the, the irony, I guess, of Trump, this populist who claims to, uh, be trying to, uh, you know, uh, disassemble the system, getting all this money from people who benefit from the system.
I guess, of Trump, this populace who claims to be trying to disassemble the system, getting all this money from people who benefit from the system. I mean, it is a great irony.
And initially, when he ran in 2016, most of these folks, the billionaires on the right, the traditional Republican donor class were pretty leery of him and kept their distance from him. And it's not like he's necessarily like, I mean, the thing that he's done that really suited their interests were the tax cuts.
And it's been interesting to watch some of the folks who've had like different justifications for like, okay, I'm not going to give to him, but I'll give to some of the outside groups on the right that support congressional candidates. That's right.
A guy like Ken Griffin that might not, Ken Griffin of Citadel, he might not give directly to Trump, but he'll throw $100 million into these down-ballot rates and things like that. That's a great example.
Or I reported earlier this fall that, for instance, Peter Thiel, who has pledged to not get involved in the presidential election and has pledged to not support – to give to a Trump super PAC, and he has serious misgivings about Trump.eter thiel did manage to donate to a pro-trump legal group that is sort of helping you know justify or helping trump push back against you know what they see as lawfare and and you know you can kind of twist yourself into a pretzel to sort of find find um ways to justify uh being involved because i think one thing from ken and i uh both of our reporting over the years is like there's nothing these's nothing that people hate more than being irrelevant. Right.
Like if you, if you want to be, if you want to be, uh, a Republican, uh, player, like to be clear, like the Republican party is about Donald Trump and like, sure, you can go donate $20 million to help Larry Hogan in Maryland. Do you have to say it like that, Teddy? But no, I just think that, like, you know, I think it's going to be, if Trump is to win, like, I think, you know, a storyline that's always fun is like, who funds the inaugurations? Because all of those contributions are just penance.
It's like, well, I did not help Trump in, you know, and he won anyway. Now it's time to make a tax deductible often donation to some sort of, you know, pro-Trump.
I will give them all the shrimp they can eat for the inauguration. It is true.
You said, you know, the one thing they hate is not to be irrelevant. The other thing that they seem to hate is to be known.
It's sort of this weird dichotomy. I guess they want to be relevant within the circles of the power brokers, but boy, are they allergic to being named and having a light shown on just how much fucking money they're pouring into these races.
Yeah, and I'll say, John, I think you were talking about the way that the left mega donors are different than the right. I do think liberal givers and liberal billionaires have gotten better over the last like four years at hiding their giving.
It's funny because every couple of days now, frankly, there's a federal election commission filings, right? Which show what they're supposed to be the sunlight everyone's waiting for. You can see-

Democracy dies in darkness, Teddy. I don't know if we knew that.
That's not the other paper, yes. But you expect you'll see, oh, here's all the money that comes in.
And for instance, the main democratic super PAC this cycle is called Future Forward. And they spent hundreds of millions of dollars to elect Kamala Harris.
and actually, the biggest donor to Future Forward is not George Soros or Tom Steyer or any other liberal billionaire any listener has heard of. It's actually a nonprofit entity that is also run by Future Forward, which in turn does not disclose its donors.
What? So it's sort of like – and yes, Future Forward's nonprofit has real people that donated money, but you'll never know who those people are. And they could be George Soros.
They could be George Soros, right. To Teddy's point, we'll never know.
And just piggyback on that, Teddy and I, another reporter spent a lot of time trying to pierce this veil. And the fact of the matter is, if you have good lawyers and discrete operatives, there are ways to structure these giving arrangements, these dark money giving arrangements such that we will never be able to find out.
And sometimes some of it leaks out years later. I remember there was a Koch brothers case where one of the key Koch brothers operatives was engaged in a contentious divorce and his wife in the divorce filings ended up disclosing a bunch of stuff that allowed us to piece some things together.
Or years later, we were able to determine that a lot of money was coming into sort of the extra party infrastructure of the left and the Democratic Party from this Swiss billionaire named Hans-Jörg Wies. And it was because a memo showed up in a WikiLeaks leak years ago that allowed us to put some of this together.
But again, without sort of anomalous incidents like that, there's no reason that we would ever know. How incredible in a divorce case would be one of the filings is who gets custody of our democracy, which one of them will get custody over the Senate or something along those lines.
But it's interesting. You guys bring up a point.
We talk about the populism of Trump yet. Billionaires dominate.
Let's talk a little bit about the way that the left, everybody that I've ever spoken with on the left is money is ruining politics. We have to get money out of politics.
And by way of anecdote, I think we had Nancy Pelosi on The Daily Show. This was maybe 10 years ago, 12, 14.
It was a long time ago. And still got to get money out of politics, all that.
And I don't know if she was the speaker at that time or maybe the minority leader or maybe the majority that I don't recall. But in talking about having to get money out of politics, I said, well, that's, you know, it's funny you mentioned that you raised $32 million in the last quarter.
And she said, well, you can't, you know, you got to fight fire with fire. You can't just disarm unilaterally.
And I said, right. But if the point is money corrupts politics, even if you have to play along, how does that corrupt you or the left? And her answer I thought was revealing.
She said, it doesn't. She said, no, it corrupts the right, but we have somehow managed through, I don't know what it is, sheer will perhaps, not to be corrupted by it.
And is that the attitude that you've seen from the left? They decry Citizens United. They decry the McDonald case in Virginia that sort of dumbed down corruption and bribery laws and money in politics.
But there seems to be no will. And the money that they get apparently has no effect.
That's 100% the argument. I would even take it a step further.
They say, we need to participate in this corrupt system so that we can win and then change the system. The fact of the matter is exactly the system has benefited.
Every single person who's in elected office has been able to navigate the system effectively. There's really no incentive for them electorally, just from a crass electoral perspective, to change a system that worked for them.
And in fact, there are impediments to so doing. In some cases, they would anger their donors.
And so short of like a major scandal, which tends to be what prompts these cycles of reform, you're not really going to see the political will for reform. And then you have

to ask yourself the question, well, what is a major scandal, if not like a billion dollars of dark money being spent to influence elections? That should be a scandal in and of itself, but it's just simply not. And if money corrupts, it corrupts you too.
Okay. Got to take a quick break.
We'll be right back. This podcast is supported by Progressive, a leader in RV insurance.
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Teddy, what are your thoughts on that? Yeah, I mean, to be frank, I mean, I think this debate is over. Like, I mean, like there will be super PACs until the day we die.
I mean, or whatever, super, super PAC. I mean, I think the direction here is going – is pretty clear toward greater and greater amount of money.
I mean, obviously, capitalism is continuing its course and fortunes are only going to get bigger. I think some of the more interesting reforms that I think are plausible, I think you could see some reforms around disclosure, like more disclosure or faster disclosure.
But as we see, does that do anything? I mean- No, yeah.

Now that you know their names, what does that do? Yeah. I mean, I think Ken has done a lot of reporting on foreign money specifically.
I mean, I think we could see some reforms around that. But I think the general – the way that the tide is going here is like I think wealthy people are going to have more influence.
I think actually the one possible countervailing force here is sort of is the power of small donors. And that power is not all good, but there's some interesting incentives that have been presented by sort of the digital fundraising and technology boom over the last couple of years that that might be the antidote to the power of big donors is the power of small donors.
Though, frankly, I think there's a good intellectual debate that we can have if we want about which kind of America we would prefer, like a oligarchy run by big donors or sort of a direct democracy where small donors who are well-meaning people but have the same problems as any human beings do, Whether we want that America, because that America has, has, has a box also. Well, if you're looking for a good intellectual debate, Teddy, I'm afraid you're on the wrong podcast.
Crap. So you're going to have to, we're going to have to switch things up, but it does remind me, you know, I remember McCain Feingold.
You remember the days of McCain Feingold, Feing progressive, uh, McCain, the, you know, conservative, classic conservative, and, and they restricted this idea of campaign contributions. And it reminds me of, uh, the days of prohibition.
Like they, the temperance movement came in and they did prohibition. And then people tried that for like a month and we're like, no.
And then it was just the roaring 20s. And we're in the roaring 20s.
So is there an argument to be made that if we're unable to restrict the money, which I think we can't do, especially given unless the Supreme Court decisions are overturned, and we all know how they value precedent. I don't think the Supreme Court would ever go against precedent.
But if you can't do that, what's the only other thing we can restrict? That's time. What if we restrict time and made this more like England, where you get eight weeks, throw everything you can at it, but we can't do that fire hose all the time.
Does that do anything? I don't think that would work. Damn it! Because we've already seen sort of the establishment of like a permanent campaign.
And even when there's not a campaign, an actual campaign being run, there are groups funded by major donors that are spending money to try to lay the groundwork for the next campaign or lay the groundwork for the actual current policy fight. Or influence the legislative session.
Yeah. Exactly.
No, you're probably right, Ken. Teddy, do you think that has any viability? Yeah.
I mean, we kind of saw this this year, right? We saw a snap election where Kamala Harris took over in July of 2024 and, in fact, did unleash more money into the system.

So the other thing that I keep in mind here is so much of the money in politics really comes at the end, like right now. Like if you look at how much super PACs raise in like October, you know, or, or frankly, just campaigns from small donors who are, you know, nervous or anxious or, you know, energized about the election and donate at the very end.
So in fact, like some of the early money in a presidential race is like, is the peanuts. I mean, are the peanuts there? I mean, we, we, we really see a lot of big contributions come at the end so there's always

going to be um there's always going to be a lot of money that's spent at the end and and frankly like to make a you know argument for the billionaires if i'm playing that role here on this podcast please please like you don't have to play it but go ahead elections are important like i mean this is a very basic point here like uh and um the system is what it is and you know frankly I talk with lots of wealthy people or their advisors and they say like,

like why not spend more? I mean, if you believe that abortion access is extraordinarily important and you're 80 years old, you can't die with the money, why not donate a billion dollars to an abortion ballot measure in your home state? Well, everybody loves their billionaire. You know, I think the question is, you know, when they talk about money is speech, the billionaire is tweeting in all caps, whereas, you know, so many other people aren't.
And so it speaks to why is the billionaire? Because there have been a lot of studies that have been done that show that the more access rich people have to the system, the more what they want is what flows through legislative bodies and process. I mean, that's sort of the idea.
But it shows they're getting a return on that investment, which tells me, oh, the system is corrupted. I think in a lot of cases, they are getting a return.
And sometimes it's more concrete and acute. And you do see something specific.
I mean, Trump famously told oil and gas donors that if they gave to him, he'd further deregulate the oil and gas industry. Oftentimes, it's not quite so overt.
But yeah, it affects the system over time. Even if you put in place specific reforms or restrictions that are intended to either reduce the amount of money or reduce the ways in which it can be spent, it's going to have an effect.
And I'm even less bullish than Teddy. I'm more pessimistic that there will be like any kind of move to reform.
I actually see it going more the other way. You see a continued chipping away through court cases, through advisory opinions from the Federal Election Commission that are weakening some of the last rules that we have in place restricting how money can be spent.
On almost everything that we regulate. Yeah.
I mean, not just not just in that, but couldn't you make the case guys and Teddy, I'll ask you this, uh, if you're going to stand in for our billionaires that, you know, the money, the money that came into this system, maybe it's responsible for this turn to supply side economics that we've faced since Reagan that, you know, once a lot of this money came in there, hasn't that influenced the philosophy even at government level? We can talk about individual policies, but on a much broader macro scale, the whole idea of supply-side economics is really kind of a fever dream of the wealthy. Oh, you know where you should really stimulate the economy? To us.
And then we will trickle it down. Keynesian feels like a more populist sentiment.
I feel like the best, I mean, what you're sort of getting at is like, to what extent donors can play the long game and just sort of change the paradigm of kind of that everyone thinks of politics. And that's not showing up in FEC disclosures.
Like, I think the best issue on this is abortion, where over the last, you know, since Roe was made the law, conservative and Christian donors waged a very, very long campaign. It wasn't always kind of, you know, drawn up this way.
But I think in totality and retrospect, we can consider it a campaign to use their money to set up interest groups that would vet and offer pedigrees to conservative judges. And then, you know, that conservative judge could have a, you know, a protege who has a protege who has a protege and suddenly, you know, on the court and suddenly there's, you know, Trump's elected and there's people to overturn Roe.
And like, that's, that's how kind of change happens slowly. And they've got their billionaires.
It's, that's an interesting point, Teddy, because it is, you know, we're talking more broadly about like, Oh, it's these super PACs and they're running these commercials. But each of these issues has in some ways their own patron saints.
You've got Leonard Leo and Harlan Crow, who are billionaires on the right, who are taking judges out to shoot quail in tiny boxes and then getting them on the court. it brings up an interesting point.
What are the ways that billionaires influence

that aren't so obvious to us? The example would be Harlan Crow, Leonard Leo, but also Rupert Murdoch. Donald Trump has said- Or Elon Musk right now.
Sure, sure. What do you see on that realm? The things that billionaires and money do to the system that we don't think about as directly? Yeah.
I mean, I think there's a lot of good examples of this in the world of philanthropy, which I write about also. Having a lot of money and spending a lot of money, even on charitable causes, is a form of kind of soft power.
And a good example of this is let's take Sergey Brin, who's one of the co-founders of Google. Sergey Brin had a family member who had Parkinson's.
So Sergey Brin has spent and I think has become one of the largest individual donors of research to cure Parkinson's, a worthy cause, yada, yada, yada. A critic might say, why is Sergey Brin with his $100 billion fortune getting to decide what disease it's being spent on? Who said Parkinson's? Why not Alzheimer's? Why not skin cancer? Why not breast cancer? And that these kind of public policy questions about how we as a society decide which disease we go after, which is like a public health question, are being decided by private philanthropists.
Let me ask you a question, Teddy, because just to clarify this for myself, but he's not – is he dictating to the government that our tax money goes to Parkinson's or is he himself funding this through his largesse? Because I do think those are two separate questions and one that I would feel very differently about one or the other, I think.

Well, I think it's the latter. It's through his private giving.
But is Sergey Brin out there? I

mean, this is an exact question I'm not going to have the answer to. But is Sergey Brin out there

right now calling for his taxes to be raised because we need to have more federal government

spending against Parkinson's? Or is he kind of fine with him being in charge of Parkinson's

research for the United States government? I'm exaggerating, but only a bit. Like they're kind of, the question is, is the private power that wealthy people have, is that at odds with kind of a strong federal government that, you know, takes care of everybody? And frankly, he's also accountable to voters.
Like no one can unelect Sergey Brin from Parkinson's research. He can do whatever he wants.
Right. Listen, and I think you've brought up a really interesting point.
And in some ways, hasn't that been the dynamic that we fought against for the entirety of our history? And Ken, I'll throw this to you. Think about when the government in I think the 20s was failing and they went to JP Morgan directly.
Like their idea idea, this before FDIC and before a social safety net is in place and you've got, you know, we need money. And so what do they do? They turn to a banker and go, Hey man, you don't have a, like a billion dollars lying around to you.
And so we put in place all these measures of the government so that we're not reliant on this kind of largesse. But are we kidding ourselves? Are we kidding? I mean, we all know of the robber baron era and the excesses and the undemocratic and anti-worker results of that era.
And we put in all these different checkpoints. are we kidding ourselves that it's any different than what it's been since then? I mean, certainly there has been a sort of deregulatory impulse and a deregulatory push, particularly from the right, but also from like major corporations that are very careful to not align themselves with one side or the other, even if some executives might, to sort of break down the regulatory regime surrounding their businesses, whether they be finance or whether they be fossil fuels or whether they be tech.
Tech is the big fight that's happening now. And you see some of the people who are the biggest players in the industries assuming roles, either with a campaign, as an informal advisor, or as a major donor, and sort of inserting themselves into the process in a way that does call into question the government's ability to sort of control, to have the upper hand when it comes to the type of regulation.
There's an example now. There are a number of donors on the left in the tech space.
Teddy's written about some of them. Reid Hoffman is one, the LinkedIn founder, who are like openly supporting Harris to the tune of millions of dollars and are openly calling for her to fire Lena Kahn, the chair of the FTC.
That's right. In some cases, the FTC is investigating some of the firms with which these donors are associated.
And breaking up big tech is sort of the thing. That's why guys on the left, like Cuban, when you talk about Lena Khan are calling for that.
And guys like J.D. Vance are like, she's pretty good.
Yeah. And that's a little bit of a realignment, but it gets to this question that you're raising about whether the government's ability to regulate these industries that have a huge sway over our society is compromised by funding that is coming from individuals in those industries and these individuals taking informal or sometimes formal roles with the candidates and the campaigns, and maybe even with the government.
I mean, you hear Trump talking about making Elon Musk the efficiencies are or whatever

it is.

And that raises a lot of questions because Elon Musk companies have-

Contracts.

You know, hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts with the US government.

And tons of federal investigations.

Turns out his have no waste, fraud, and abuse.

Right, exactly.

And turns out his contract, they're all good.

They're fine.

Okay, got to take a quick break. We'll be right back.
We're back. Teddy, what do you think of that idea? Yeah, sure.
I mean, look, I think there's actually not a ton of attention that's paid on kind of corporate influence. I think we, frankly, we get kind of sucked in by the big names and I'm a part of the problem here as much as anybody.
That's why we called you here today, Teddy. This is an intervention.
To atone. Teddy, cover more corporate giving and less billionaire giving.
Thanks, John. Look, I mean, it's hard.
I said to give myself an out here. It's hard.
Companies are good at this. They're sending a staff member in a personal capacity to a retreat in Jackson Hole and they're giving through a C3.
Yeah. You're not allowed to accept a book or a ticket, but you are allowed to go on a ski trip with 10 of your best friends from Raytheon.
And yeah, I mean, it's crazy. Yeah, it's hard.
Or they're funding think tanks, which are putting out white papers that influence the debate on the issues that affect them most. Or they're paying lobbyists, an army of lobbyists to go in and shop these white papers.

And so that, yeah, the corporations are more careful. They're sort of allergic to controversy.
They don't want to be seen as siding with one side or the other, but they are currying influence in a more systematic, long-term way that gets at some of the stuff that you're talking about, John, about like just shaping the debate gradually over time such that they, in some ways, you know, from an outside perspective, appear to be like dictating the terms of the regulations that affect their industry. And as we tighten down into this election window, you know, the decisions seem to be coming fast and furious from the candidates directly.
Donald Trump, I'm going to ban TikTok, Chinese influence and spies.

And then his big donor is like, I'm investor in TikTok.

It's like, I love TikTok.

I love dancing.

You should see me do the dance with the arms.

I'll put it on TikTok.

Kamala Harris, same thing with crypto.

You know, EVs.

Now Musk is on board and Trump is like, I got to tell you.

Yeah.

You know, the EVs. Now it almost seems

the shame of it is gone. Yeah.
I kind of find it almost,

there's an element of it that I find gratifying or at least, I don't want to say charming, but

affirming of your preconceived narrative. That's always enjoyable.
Where Trump, let's take him at least, he has been remarkably candid, I guess you could say, or explicit about sort of the transactionalism. Ken mentioned that dinner where he offered a gajillion dollars to oil executives if they gave him a gajillion dollars or EVs or Trump on crypto as well, frankly.
Typically, there's this game that's played where you don't appoint somebody to a position because somebody gave you a bunch of money and they have influence. But Trump is just like, no, here it is.
Here's the quid pro quo. And by the way, from the very beginning, when he first ran in 2015 and people were calling out his donations to Democrats as well as Republicans, and he just admitted- Yeah, he would admit it.
I give to them because they do what I want. And so now he's the one who's doing what they want.
And by the way, it was brilliant. When he first came out, I thought it was so interesting is what he did is he exposed the reality of the transactional nature of our government.
The system is rigged against you. I know.
I helped rig it. I benefit from it.
I do that. Not now.
To his discredit, he didn't dismantle that rigged system. He just rigged it more for him.
And this has been really helpful, guys, by the way. And maybe this is the broader question then.
And I think Teddy just referenced it when he was talking about sort of corporate influence.

influence. We think a lot about the structure of our government and its checks and balances.

And the founders in their genius designed a system that would not allow any kind of section of the government to garner more power than another. And that balance would keep the executive,

judicial, and legislative would keep in there. But there's this fourth tent post, this fourth leg of the chair that is corporations and corporate power.
And there is no grand design by the founders over how to check their influence, how to balance their influence. But their influence is vast and it gets us into globalization, which hollows out the infrastructure and manufacturing in the country.
It gets us into a financial disaster in 2008. How do we effectively counter? And all we've really done is just said, okay, they're people and they have, and all their money is a right to free speech.
But what is in the system to balance and check that? And is government maybe the only entity on earth that has the size and power to effectively balance it? I'm pretty pessimistic. I mean, you know, I just think the, I think the only, only, you know, saving grace here is kind of small dollar donors.
And, you know, I mean, there are, look, there are examples, I'll say, especially in like primaries of politicians who are backed by big corporations and the ultra-rich who lose

because they are just fundamentally out of touch with their district. They lose in part because

their opponent has lots of small-dollar donors who can at times, frankly, out-raise candidates

who are backed by wealthy people, even if you include super PACs. But it's an unusual, it generally, it's, that's a pretty unusual, yeah.
It's not happening in a presidential race. You know, I think, you know, the Mike Bloomberg campaign of 2020 is something that people reference all the time on this, right? Where, you know, it was a Democratic primary, to be clear, but, you know, Bloomberg was one of the richest people in the world and spent a billion dollars of his own money and got absolutely screamed.
That's an example of money and corporate power not buying influence. Look, sometimes it's hard to tell.
We're painting a dichotomy here of the populists and the corporate candidates. I don't know, where do you put Joe Biden in 2020 who was supported by some wealthy donors, but not a ton and populist rhetoric, but not entirely.
It's tough to categorize people. But there are examples of money not succeeding.
I mean, there are a lot of examples. I mean, that's the hope.
That's what keeps us employed. Hillary Clinton's campaign was better funded than Trump.
And Bernie Sanders gave her a scare with like small donors So, I mean, that's the ultimate check is the voters and the voters' ability to say, I don't care how much money you're spending. I don't care which billionaire is behind you.
I don't care what your ads say. I'm going to be an informed voter and do the research myself.
I'm not necessarily super optimistic of that either. And I think that part, like polarization has sort of diminished the ability for that to be a check.
And I do think that the small donors are also not necessarily the answer as Teddy sort of hinted at like small donors, they give and they sort of reward the extreme partisans on either side. They're sort of tribal in a way that like maybe big donors in sort of a perverse sense are a little bit of a moderating influence.
Not as nihilistic. Well, it's this proverbial smoky back room that these big donors getting together might actually arrive at a more moderate centrist candidate, if that's your cup of tea, than the small donors getting behind a flamethrower like a Marjorie Taylor Greene on the right or a real populist like an AOC on the left.
And is that what we want? I don't know the answer. I'm just not optimistic that there is a correcting force.
No, I get that. And in some respects, it's the difference between weather and climate.
And we're talking about the weather when it comes to elections and the money and all that. And I guess the larger macro view would be, well, then what's the climate that occurs after that? And is that 50 years of supply side economics or the ability to offshore? You know, all the things that come downstream from the weather, which is the elections, versus that larger picture of all those policies that end up really changing the dynamics of the global economy in profound kinds of ways.
And I think we're seeing it in some ways with AI now. You know, we have all these things that are introduced, globalization and all that.

We see how disruptive they are. And yet AI comes along.
And once again, it's like, no, it'll be fine. We'll be good.
And it's because the people who are running it are these billionaire donors. And what would be an effective check on that? I mean, government tends to move more slowly than the private sector.
It's analog. And so, yeah.
And some of these emerging fields, the combination of the sort of puzzling nature of some of these new fields to government, that they're just not like, I mean, it's the, I forget who, was a Chuck Grassley was one of the Republican senators who famously referred to the internet as like a serial Ted Stevens. You went after this, John, I recall.
It's a series of tubes. A series of tubes.
Right. So they don't understand it.
And, and, and the, the entities that are sort of pushing it, the corporations and the people around it do understand it. And they have a lot of money to spend influencing it.
And they're,. And they sort of try to get out front and say, look, look, we got this.
We're going to self-regulate. We're going to tell you what the proper regulation should look like.
And oftentimes, just by definition, because they're moving faster, they're able to like outpace the government. Of course.
By the time that the government is able to sort of gather itself and figure out like how they're going to approach it, it's kind of already too late. Maybe that's what's happening a little bit with AI.
There was a great, Sam Altman was testifying in front of, and I can't remember if it was a Senator of Congress or a joint session or anything like that. And it was very clear that everybody up there, like they have no fucking idea what he's talking about.
And at the end of it, one of the senators was like, well, Mr. Altman, it's obviously a very challenging time.
And if you could help us with this, we'd really appreciate it. You're just like,

you know, he's running it. I don't, that's kind of not how you want.
I mean, even look, Elon Musk understands this system. He's throwing a million dollars to like, he's doing all these creative things with the money.
And like all the Democrats can do is like, you know, we're going to have to look into this, right? Years from now, we are going to look back on this and say, hey, that wasn't cool. So we really are, you know, how they catch up.
Final thoughts on where you guys kind of see this going and whether or not the red flags are being raised sort of, is this a panic that I'm instigating or is it truly something that we need to address? I mean, money, there's just more and more money is going to be spent on these elections. And as I said, I am not optimistic that there will be any significant meaningful reforms.
In fact, I see the pendulum swinging in the other direction. It's already swinging in the other direction.
We see the rules that are restricting the amount of money that can be spent and what it can be spent on being chipped away at. And we see, I mean, Teddy mentioned disclosure.
Disclosure is great. We love it as journalists.
We want to be able to inform our readers like how this money is flowing and what the donors want. But I actually even see on the right, a move to chip away at disclosure rules.
That's the next front in this. And we see some of the groups in the sort of Leonard Leo type of firmament who are looking at disclosure as the next frontier and chipping away at it.
And Republicans used to say, like, that was Mitch McConnell's thing, was like, you know, as much money should be in the system as possible, as long as it's disclosed. And I think we see a shift away from that now.
And that is going to make it even harder to even make sense of this, let alone staunch the flow. Right.
Teddy? I always wonder here, as we wrap up on election season, I always wonder what we don't know. Here's a fun piece of information for listeners who are hearing this right now.
Any money that's donated after October 15th through election day is undisclosed until after election day. I always wonder what, you know, you always wonder what you don't know, like, is there some entity that's going to be started tomorrow that some billionaire is going to put in $500 million and to start, you know, doing some interesting hijinks in the swing state, and you're never going to know about until after the election, or frankly, maybe someone started to see for a 501c4 dark money organization that will never be public really in any meaningful way until, you know, next year or maybe ever.
And you'll never know about it. And as a reporter, you know, that's like the that's the nightmare scenario.
And to some extent, I think as a democracy, maybe that's the nightmare scenario of just like you never really knowing. And it's just being totally unknowable until someone's, you know, in in a grave and feels gratified they pulled a fast one on everybody else um i mean that's like that's kind of a possibility and um uh yes there are watchdogs and there are good reporters and there's investigators but um it always feels like the the world of the wealthy is like a step ahead here um and it's it's sad to be playing a losing hand but i kind of feel like it's well listen man i maybe inevitable i appreciate though you guys being there and if there are two people uh who are who are out there uh fighting against the tide and and fighting for disclosure and things like that it's you two teddy schleicher politics reporter politics reporter, New York Times, Ken Vogel, also of

the New York Times. Thank you guys very much for the discussion.
Very illuminating, not particularly

comforting. Leaks are welcome for people who are listening to this.
If you work for someone or you

want to know what you can do, you can find my contact information. So that's what LinkedIn is

for. I always wondered.
Thanks very much for joining us us guys. You bet.
It was a pleasure, John. Ah, okay.
We are, we are back. We as always, uh, are with our terrific production team.
And I used to say erstwhile until somebody told me what erstwhile means. And now I'd say great or terrific or fantastic.
Lauren Walker, Brittany Mamedovic, and Jillian Spear. And we were having a discussion with those two New York Times reporters.
And it was very factual, very matter of fact. And then at the end, they sort of dropped a bombshell, like it will never get better, it will get worse, and we will have no idea who's dropping anything.
I was just like, wait, what?

Yeah, I feel great.

I feel totally calm right now.

Did you expect any of that?

No.

It's so unfortunate that as it was presented, money is both the problem and the solution.

When it came out a few days ago that Bill Gates had donated all this money, I saw all

of these pro-Harris accounts really elated, reacting positively and with joy to this news. And I think that's fair because they exist in the context, as it were.
Right. The context being, money in politics is bad unless it's our money.
And then of course, whether you view it as a necessary evil or, hey, it's free speech. It kind of doesn't matter.
It just has to be in the system. Yeah, we've all become so acclimated to it that we're mistaking billionaires acting in their own self-interest for generosity.
Like they're going to save us all. Bars.
Jillian Spear, bars. What's worse is what Teddy was saying, that my small dollar donations are the solution.
I can't help. He was saying it's the problem.
Don't make me fight this fight. Jillian, they were actually blaming you.
We didn't use your name specifically. We were going to.
We were actually going to bring it up. But that's what they were saying is, well, we have to really decide what kind of democracy we want.
Do we want this oligarchy where the billionaires are doing that? Or do you really want the mob to be able to give you $5 out of their wallets and then fucking decide? You don't want them to decide either. The electorate.
Why would we want them to decide? Yeah. They already get a vote.
How much more can you expect them to have? They're getting greedy now. That's what I'm talking about.
What? Jeopardy. Why won't you let Jillian Spear on your show? No response.
Can you believe that? Still. Deafening.
Deafening. Zero response.
Yeah. I check my spam folder.
I call upon Ken Jennings and all that is holy to respond to this woman's audition, for God's sakes. Lauren, being someone who has been in journalism for so long and been around all that, their demeanor was very like people that almost like war correspondents.
Like there was a certain like an inevitability. Well, I think outside of even the topic that they're covering, the world they exist in is also dealing with billionaire buy-ups.
And something that was in the news this morning, or I think yesterday, was that the LA Times owner wasn't going to allow the paper to endorse Kamala Harris. He's a billionaire who bought up the paper.
You know, it's just, journalists are getting it from all ends at this moment. Right, right, right.
And then I think their editor resigned, yes? Based on that? Is that- Oh, yes, over it. Yeah, yeah.
But you're right. It's, it's, uh, it's, it's a vexing problem, but, uh, I'm telling you, man, one or two more podcasts and I think we'll fix it.
Yeah. Something, you know, I think really illuminated things for me, just how much has changed is that Obama brought in 750 million for his 2008 presidential campaign.
Is that total? Yeah. At the time, that was a record amount that exceeded what all the candidates combined collected in private donations in the previous races for the White House.
And then for comparison, this week we learned Paris sets the record for the biggest fundraising quarter ever, raising $1 billion in three months. Three months.
And that's not including all the dark money and all the other shit that's going on. And it is, as we say, we talk about inflation, but man, eggs got nothing on politics.
That's for fucking sure. Can I just say, according to my inbox, Harris has exactly $0.
They are poppers. Yeah, it is.

You are being constantly hit with that.

Like, oh my God, I don't have any money and I need to get home.

Yeah.

Can you send me $2?

Correct.

Well, this has been fabulous.

As always, guys, phenomenal job on the research and on the organization and allowing me to

at least hold a cogent conversation with those experts and all that. What are the listeners got for us this week there? All right.
We've got two questions this week, John. Bring it.
Okay. If you could portrait an ideal candidate for presidency, which three qualities would you list as indispensable? There's nothing ideal in the world, but I'd love to hear your perspective on what matters the most to you.
Humility. Tenacity.
Dick like Arnold Palmer. So three.
There'd be three. Metaphorical.
I'm trying to think of this. I went to the joke one, but, you know, and courage.
I think those are, character is destiny, and I've always felt that way. And I think that you're not always going to get the right outcome with those kinds of qualities, obviously, but more often than not, your, your process will get you a better product.
And, and I'm hoping that, that that means something, but we'll see. That's a good one though.
That's a really, that's a, that's a good question there. What else? What's the next one? I'm a little scared now about the next one.
Me too. Um, for HR purposes, I'd like to clarify that this question is from a listener.
No, this is terrible. Yeah.
Do we even have HR? I don't even know. I think it's you, honestly.
Oh, fair enough. You've been promoted.
Yeah. All right.
Is John aware he is a certified DILF? I'll address that question. First of all, I don't know the board that certifies that and I have not, I have not been contacted by that organization, but I will tell you this, when I spoke earlier about humility, I'm going to have to disagree.
I'm going to have to, I've, I don't even shower naked anymore for that, for that very reason. So it is a much appreciated boost.
But unfortunately, knowing what I know, I vehemently disagree, but, but that's lovely, but keep, keep the damn questions and things coming on and the insights. Brittany, how would they do that? Yeah, we actually got a question.
Somebody said, how do they ask us questions? Oh, great. So they can comment on our YouTube, Instagram posts, tweet.
Spoiler, we read all of your comments. Oh, okay.
Very good. Twitter, we- I'm sorry.
Clearly. Yeah.
Twitter, we are Weekly Show Pod. Instagram threads and TikTok, we are Weekly Show Podcast.
And please like and subscribe our YouTube channel, The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart. Boom.
Thank you guys very much again. Lead producer, Lauren Walker, producer, Brittany Mamedovic.
Video editor and engineer, Sam Reed. Standing in for Rob Vitola, who is on a paternity leave with a new baby.

It was a little deliciously cute.

Audio editor and engineer, Nicole Boyce, researcher and associate producer, Jillian Spear.

Executive producers, Chris McShane, Katie Gray.

Thanks so much.

So we will see you guys next week for our final episode before the election.

And appropriately enough,

it's around Halloween,

which what's scarier than that.

So, all right, guys,

see you next time.

The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart

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