Lina Khan Speaks Out on Illegal Hostile Warner Bros Takeover and Mamdani Transition

0:04I'm so excited to welcome to IHIP News, Lina Khan. She is the former FTC Chair and current Co-Chair of the Zoran Mamdani transition team. Lena, welcome. Let's dive right into it. I want to talk about this Warner Brothers hostile takeover, which now we know involves Jared Kushner, some foreign governments. Can you break this down for us, what it is, and your opinion about this? Yeah, happy to. So last week, we saw an announcement that Netflix would be buying up Warner Brothers cover. Shortly after that, we saw an announcement that instead Paramount will be trying to make a hostile bid. And it's important just to step back and recognize what this type of consolidation would mean.

0:52We've seen an extraordinary amount of consolidation already happen in Hollywood. And this would just mean that people have fewer options, that writers and creators in Hollywood have fewer options in terms of where they can sell their ideas, where they can distribute their ideas. prices would go up. There could be horrible ramifications for just the future of Hollywood generally. And so there are a lot of major, major red flags from a law enforcement perspective. I mean, we have in this country still antitrust, anti-monopoly laws that are supposed to stop this type of extreme consolidation. And on their face, both of these deals look illegal.

1:32What's striking is that in this Trump administration, we've seen that everything is up for sale, potentially, and that even if companies are proposing illegal deals, maybe the administration will be willing to look the other way if they just sweeten the deal in terms of what the president or his family gets, in terms of which hosts they agree to take off the air. And so it's going to be a fluid situation, but there's a lot of legal risk and risk for real people here. So explain to us, Netflix announced it, and then this news broke that I saw David Ellison, who I think is the son of Larry Ellison, on that it was now a hostile takeover.

2:15And then you have Trump basically admitting that he had a phone conversation with Larry Ellison, that if he bought it, he would rework CNN to be less critical of him. And then it's also revealed his son-in-law is involved in this thing with the Ellison family. and foreign entities, foreign governments, and foreign wealth funds. Is there anybody left at the FTC that will monitor this and do anything? What is happening, Lena? I know. It's a great question. I mean, both deals are super problematic, right? I mean, with Paramount, if Paramount was allowed to buy, if the Ellisons were allowed to buy Warner, you'd basically be putting CNN now alongside the owners of CBS, of TikTok, of a whole set of media assets that they've already brought.

3:06We've seen that they've been willing to, you know, do the ideological bidding of what the administration wants. And similarly, if Netflix was allowed to buy up Warner Brothers, you would have, you know, the top streamer combining with the third biggest streamer. So the number one and the number three. And so both of these would just result in a lot of consolidation. You're right that the Paramount deal is pretty shady if you kind of get into the paperwork of who's really financing this. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is involved. Qatar is involved. What is their role going to be? And, you know, we're not just talking about any sort of market.

3:44This is the market for ideas. This is the market for creativity. what this market looks like, it's going to determine what type of ideas, what type of free expression is even able to get out there. And so the democratic stakes of this are huge. I think sometimes people think of antitrust and anti-monopoly as kind of arcane and technocratic, but I think what we've seen is that how much concentration of economic power we allow, whether we put all of the control of Hollywood and media in just a small number of hands of whether we actually have a decentralized competitive market has huge ramifications for the health of our democracy.

4:23And I think that's why there are so many red flags here right now. OK, now I want to segue a little bit. Something I think is so fascinating about you is you were appointed by Joe Biden and very successful at the FTC. In my opinion, you pissed off the right people, you know, preventing them from consolidating too much power. But you have some strange admirers. and one is Steve Bannon. And I think that this kind of speaks to something that there is bipartisanship support for right now. And it is an anti-oligarchy message, an affordability message, which your current boss, Zoran Mamdani, laser focused, ran on and took on oligarchs, took on billionaires.

5:07They spent tens of millions of dollars with xenophobic and Islamophobic attacks against him, lied about him, and he still won because he broke through. And so this message of affordability and keeping wealth from being concentrated to the point, it's not 1%, it's 0.00001%, has a lot of bipartisanship support right now. And what can you speak in terms of that? And what do you think about Steve Bannon being an admirer of yours and having that kind of strange bedfellow, if you will, when you're at kind of the epicenter of excitement of democratic politics right now with Zoran. You're absolutely right.

5:51I mean, I was stunned to see during my time at the FTC, just how much bipartisan support we had for our work. You know, I would travel to Iowa, to, you know, Nevada, to Arizona, and on the ground, people are smart and they know that their lives have been getting more difficult. And one major reason is because corporate power has been unchecked. And so we would hear from people about how their family members are having to ration life-saving medicine, putting their health at risk because big pharma is price gouging. We would hear from farmers about how major manufacturers of tractor equipment have unnecessarily made it difficult to fix your own tractor.

6:37And so they would, you know, have to overpay or sometimes lose entire harvest because they would have to be waiting months. We would hear from workers about how after the last grocery merger, there were tons of layoffs and now there are food deserts in their communities. So this idea of concentrated corporate power and its abuse is not some abstraction, right? For tens of millions of people across this country, they are living it day to day. And I think unfortunately for all too long, people have not seen a government that is willing to fight for them, even when it means standing up to those concentrated interests.

7:15And so there was a lot of excitement and support for the FTC's work, because I think that's what people saw us doing. Okay, so now you're with Mayor-elect Mom Donnie, it's just very exciting. And in the epicenter of like capitalism on steroids. And I think this is something that I think a lot of people were, as Americans were kind of propagandized to capitalism and to worship capitalism. And now we've seen that materialized into one person. And it's like, I'm talking about the president. It's like, Oh God, this, this is not good. How do you navigate business? And this whole idea that America is pro-business, while at the same time advocating for workers in, like I said, Manhattan and all of the boroughs, which is just the epicenter of so much business.

8:12What message do you have for people? Like I come from Oklahoma. I'm in New York now. This is a common thing that's said all over flyover states. I'm fiscally conservative, but I'm socially liberal. What message is there? How do all of these things come together where we are still a society that has business and the ability for people to make money, but we also prevent these predatorial, exploitative, big conglomerates from being parasites off of working class people? How do you see this administration that you're joining via transition right now? Tell the American people and our listeners what that looks like and how that works, because you actually have boots on the ground experience doing this and bipartisanship support.

9:03Even Steve Bannon supported your work at a Joe Biden administration. That's wild. And so I think you have so much insight into this. I mean, I'll say, first of all, the freedom to start your own business, to grow that business, to have that business become successful and generate wealth through it, to pass on that wealth to your kids. I mean, that has long been so central to our country and a key mechanism for people to make it. And having markets that are fair and open and competitive are so important for that entrepreneurship path to still be available for people. Unfortunately, all too often we hear from small businesses, from entrepreneurs, from startups, is that it's the big guys, the giants that have now used their sharp elbows to muscle them out, to use all sorts of unfair monopolistic tactics to really tilt the market and tilt the playing field so that those smaller businesses, those entrepreneurs, many of whom, by the way, are oftentimes creating more jobs and are a key driver of new job creation, that they don't have a fair shot.

10:13And we saw during the campaign, Mayor-elect Mamdani met with hundreds of businesses. New York City is a place where you have a lot of bodegas, you have street cart vendors, you have independent pharmacies. All of them count as businesses too. And I think sometimes when we hear, especially in the media from the business community, it's oftentimes just a very narrow slice of the business community, which is oftentimes the biggest of the big. And they're entitled to share their views too, but we shouldn't let just a very siloed component of who the full business community is just speak for them. And so wanting to make sure that small businesses can get ahead in New York City too, that they're not facing kind of price gouging or price discrimination, that they're not facing excessive licensing or regulations that are further tilting the field.

11:07All of that is stuff that the mayor-elect has talked about and he's very excited about making New York City a place that's great for all businesses. I think that's such a good point because I just moved to New York a couple of months ago. And the stores that I enjoy most are these local owned stores that you can't find anywhere else in America, basically suburban America. It doesn't matter if you're in the suburbs of Atlanta, the suburbs of Oklahoma City, the suburbs of Newark. It's kind of the same setup, strip mall everywhere. And, you know, they have a right to do their business, but it's somewhat soulless to me.

11:44And when you get these small businesses that add so much flavor and spice to the city, it's important to know that somebody is advocating for these businesses to succeed and to keep these cities more interesting and more localized. With Zoran, Mayor-elect Momdani, I should call him now. Are you going to stay on with him after he's sworn in or are you just on the transition or can you say? I can be successful however I can. Right now my focus really is just on the transition. He gets sworn in on January 1st which means that there's just a lot of work to do in terms of hiring the right people, getting them in the right places.

12:29I'm also helping them with policy planning and so figuring out you know outside of his kind of core signature initiatives around freezing the rent, fast and free buses, universal childcare? What are the other tools and legal authorities that he's going to have at his disposal that he can use to ensure that the economy in New York City is one that's fair and competitive and honest, where workers can get ahead, where consumers are getting a fair shake, and where small businesses and businesses are facing a level playing field. So that's the focus right now. And they're getting a lot of talent coming in.

13:05They've gotten 70 ,000 applications already. And so it's a really exciting time and opportunity. I would imagine it's a lot of pressure because it was such a high profile race. And in many ways, he's kind of this canary in the coal mine right now for the Democratic Party. He ran laser focused on affordability. He took on the billionaire class. He's taken on corporations. He has been accused wrongfully of all sorts of things. And people are going to be watching him like a hawk for any misstep, for anything that they can exaggerate, any flaw that comes out of this, to try to dismantle progress for the Democratic Party.

13:49And I feel right now that his candidacy, and once he is in office and once he is governing, I feel like it's so important for this model of Democrats to advance because I think the corporate Democrats, and I used to be one of them, and I've evolved. But I think the corporate Democrats and being beholden to corporations left us here where we, our party started worshiping the same thing that the Republicans worship, which is money. And we abandoned the working class. And so what pressure inside the transition team? Do y 'all, are you acutely aware of the microscope that's going to be on you and how this is going to be blown up on Fox News and any misstep or any failed policy?

14:37Is that something that's ubiquitous in all of the meetings that you have? Because I think it's going to be such a laser critical focused eye on this administration moving forward. You're absolutely right. And everybody is extremely clear eyed about the fact that the level of scrutiny is going to be off the charts. that it's going to be, as you noted, a pretty unforgiving environment. And even, you know, missteps that under other mayor's tenure wouldn't have even been talked about or recognized are going to be blown up. And so it's an enormous amount of pressure. And that's why everybody is just using an enormous amount of care to make sure we're getting the right team in place, that we're really setting him up to be able to govern as successfully as he campaigned.

15:23And, you know, he's somebody who's extraordinarily charismatic, but also extraordinarily thoughtful and substantive. And he really loves getting into the policy weeds and figuring out how is this going to work and how is how do we make sure we don't run into this challenge? And so it's a real honor to get to be part of his team. And you're right. The stakes are sky high for New York City, but but also for the Democratic Party as a whole. And so it's going to be a very important next few months and next few years. OK, I have to ask you one final question. Did you go with him to the White House?

16:00I did not. I did not go to the White House. Did you watch it on TV? I did. I think like rest of America. Were you dying? Were you dying? Or did y 'all think it would go like this? I mean, I was on a plane, Lena, and I'm taking off from New York to Oklahoma City and it's going on. And I'm like refreshing my feed and I am like dying. But then I realized like, if you've ever heard Elon Musk speak or some of these other people speak, just it's fingernails on chalkboard. And I imagine Mr. Riz walks in and it was like a breath of fresh air. And Trump's like, oh my God, this guy's smart, got Riz and he's likable.

16:45But what was your reaction when you saw that play out? Because Republicans and MAGA people were pissed off at Trump about it. Of course, I lapped it up because I like a little political gossip. I just need something. I needed a bone thrown to me. Yeah, of course, that could have gotten a whole set of ways for all of those contingencies. But look, you know, one of the things that the mayor-elect shared with the president was that there were a whole bunch of voters that voted for President Trump and also then ultimately voted for Zoran. And why is that, right? It's a really interesting question, especially in an age where we usually think in such partisan terms.

17:26And I think it gets back to what you were noting earlier, which is that there is this populism that's really surging in America right now, where people want leaders who are going to stand strong up against concentrated power. And there was a lot that we heard from the Trump administration, you know, as they were looking to campaign about how they would do that. Of course, they haven't actually delivered. And actually, most of their policies have been pro-oligarchy and pro-concentrating wealth. But there is a real fight in the Republican Party. And you have parts of the MAGA base that is also really upset right now that some people in the president's orbit are talking about and the president himself are talking about giving, you know, amnesty to big tech through making it difficult or illegal for states to pass their own laws that would be regulating AI.

18:18And so I think there is a whole set of cases where people, including people in the president's party want them to stand up to corporate power, to take on extreme abuses, to take on the high cost of living, to make sure that big tech is not able to just run experiments on kids, roll out all sorts of creepy bots that are abusing kids, exploiting kids. And instead, what we're seeing is the president surrounding himself with those same big tech moguls that had a whole role to themselves at the inauguration. And there's a risk that that's really skewing his policy. And we're going to have to wait and see, like, what does that mean for the MAGA base, right, for the populists that put their faith in this leader?

19:03And at some point, I think there's going to have to be a real reckoning that some people thought he would be a populist, but he's ruling for the oligarchs. And what does that mean? And importantly, what does the Democratic Party have to say about that? And are they looking to instead take that mantle and this opportunity that's being created to really show that contrast. Here's what I think mayor like Mom Donnie did that's so important. And I don't think we can talk about it enough. There are a lot of bad actors right now on the right that are cheerleading the question that was asked during the mayoral debate when they asked each candidate, where will you go?

19:44And it's Israel, Israel, Israel. And mayor like Mom Donnie said, I'm going to stay in New York. I'm the mayor of New York. I'm staying in New York. It was praised by Marjorie Taylor Greene and Steve Bannon. And there is a populist, a bipartisanship populist message on both sides. I think we need to be sounding the alarm bells when you hear this on the right. And here's why. Because their economic populism isn't for everybody. It's only for some. And when you start cherry picking human rights, you leave all other groups vulnerable. And what I loved so much about mayor-elect Momdani is he was accused of being antisemitic over and over and over again.

20:28And he immediately would respond and he would always link universal human rights. He linked antisemitism to racism, to Islamophobia, to homophobia, to transphobia. And so a lot of these people on the right that are using his affordability message, that are using his, you know, he's a New York first message that if you were running national beat America first, they're using that. It's important to listen to who they leave out. And if they don't bring it up, we need to constantly bring it up, that their affordability message is not for everybody. And the fact that he was able to never, ever throw one group under the bus should be the gold standard moving forward because I loved more than anything on the planet when I saw a picture of him at the pride parade.

21:18And he just didn't have a gay pride flag. He had a trans flag. And I have some friends that live in Oklahoma City and they have a trans daughter, a 10-year-old trans daughter. And it is horrific and abusive and traumatizing and chaotic and sleepless nights that they feel trying to raise their daughter in a space where the government is the number one enemy of their family. It's institutionalized and it's kicked in. So to see this man in New York with a trans flag, it meant so much. It meant so much to her. It just, the trans daughter's mom is one of my best friends. It just, it goes just that little gesture.

22:01And so I just, as he is our canary in the coal mine, We have to point out not only the affordability message that he did, but his affordability message is for everybody, for everybody. And I always want to message to people that tend to always vote Republican. Be careful, because one day you might have a gay grandchild or a mixed race child, and these knives will be turned on you. These knives you're directing at some point, they're going to be turned on somebody you love. And I just think it's such an important message, affordability, but also he didn't leave one group out. And that is the most important part of it to me.

22:44Yeah, that was so well put. I mean, he believes deeply in the equality of all people and, you know, doesn't think that we should be throwing certain communities under the bus or kind of using cruelty or bigotry and instead really wants to have universalism and a real sense of equality and wants to make this a city that works for everybody. And so you're absolutely right that that's a key pillar for him and a key set of questions for the Democrats going forward. All right, Lena Khan, I told you this before we started. You're cool. I love the work you did at the FTC. I've never been interested in the FTC before, but when you started popping up, like, well, what's going on over there?

23:21I guess I'll read about her. And so I think it's really amazing what you're doing. And I wish you and the transition team the best of luck. Please know that anytime any of you want to come on, I've had it or I have news, would love to have you. And And thanks again. Thanks so much for having me and for all your terrific work.