Republicans BURY themselves with disastrous vote

28:21Elizabeth Warren:Right. And so then Iran starts developing more nuclear capacity and spinning out nuclear materials and so on. And so Donald Trump tells us, when was it, six months ago, that U.S. bombers had completely obliterated Iran's capacity to develop a nuclear weapon. OK, so Trump puts back in motion their ability to develop a nuclear weapon. Then he says they completely obliterated it. And now that's the excuse for having bombed in Iran starting 46 days ago, is that somehow Iran was on the threshold of developing a nuclear weapon. look brian in a sense you're dignifying these ideas that they keep throwing out oh this is the reason well if that didn't work maybe this is a reason well how about this other thing is a reason this is not only pretextual it's just totally upside down in terms of how it fits

29:26Brian Tyler Cohen:with reality yeah well also i mean this has been this has been a long-standing pattern where you know, you have these neocon warmongers who conjure up some, you know, some some counterfactual that's impossible to prove otherwise. And they say, well, if we don't do this thing that I've decided I want to do, you know, and this goes back to the the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. I mean, if you don't do this, then we're going to be in imminent danger. And of course, it's impossible to disprove because, you know, you there's no way because because because it's just a threat, a promise from these people.

30:01Brian Tyler Cohen:And there's always going to be some rationale like that, where, you know, if you listen to these neocon warmongers, there's always going to be some impending risk. And, and, you know, again, that they can say they can kind of put you in the bucket of, okay, if you don't agree blind blindly with heaping money on to some military interventionism or adventurism in the Middle East, then you're going to be responsible if and when everybody dies as the result of our inaction. Yep.

30:30Elizabeth Warren:You know, the Republicans have been able to do two things in this century. And this is when Bush is president and when Trump is president. And that is they cut taxes for rich people and they start wars in the Middle East. And that doesn't make America better off. It doesn't make the world better off.

30:47Brian Tyler Cohen:So on that point of this not making America better off, you had mentioned that this is costing a billion dollars per day. I'm curious from the folks that you've spoken with, your Republican colleagues in the Senate. I mean, these people are not ignorant to what's happening in the political zeitgeist right now. They're not ignorant to how unpopular this war is. They're not ignorant to how much everything costs. They're not ignorant to the fact that this administration's failure to deliver on its America first promises is kind of wreaking havoc at the ballot box on all of their colleagues and all of their Republican candidates.

31:22Brian Tyler Cohen:Is there no, I mean, I'm not asking you to get in the heads of these people because that would be, you know, I think increasingly difficult. But but is there no ability for these people to reconcile watching what's happening to these Republican candidates who hug Trump and the increasingly unpopular MAGA agenda while also enabling that very agenda by virtue of votes like these?

31:45Elizabeth Warren:Yeah. You know, you put your finger on it, but it's the question we've been asking for a year and four months now. Is there no place that these Republicans in Congress will draw the line? You know, Brian, the whole U.S. Constitution is set up. We all talk about the separation of powers, but there's an unspoken part to it. And that is that the president will protect the powers of the administration. The courts will protect the powers of the courts and Congress will jealously guard the powers of Congress. And the moment we find ourselves in now is that the Republicans in Congress know exactly one action, and that is bow down to Donald Trump.

32:30Elizabeth Warren:No matter what Donald Trump says, no matter how counterfactual it is, no matter how much damage it is doing to the people of the United States, no matter how much it's driving up costs, no matter how much it breaks the law, no matter, no matter, no matter. If Donald Trump says it, the Republicans in the Senate and the House bow down and say, yes, master.

32:57Brian Tyler Cohen:What could we do domestically? And I feel like I'm going to ask you a question that Donald Trump himself in 2024 could have best answered here. But what could we be doing with the more than a billion dollars per day that Republicans are currently spending dropping bombs in the Middle East?

33:14Elizabeth Warren:Well, for openers, we could make sure that all the people who got pushed off their health care because of that one big, beautiful bill. You remember you and I talked about that big tax cuts for the billionaires and pushed 15 million people off their health insurance. We could actually make sure people have health care and health insurance that they can actually afford. We could be making those investments right now here at home. We could be making the investments in child care. So mamas and daddies can go to work and know that their kids are in safe, bright, cheerful places and their child care workers are being paid a fair wage.

33:58Elizabeth Warren:We could be making investments in helping people deal with student loan debt. We could be making investments in making college and technical training after high school more affordable for people. We could be making investments in us, in the people of the United States, and instead literally blowing that money up a billion dollars a day halfway around the world. Wow. That is not America first.

34:30Brian Tyler Cohen:I want to talk to you about a different topic, and that is the new Live Nation Ticketmaster ruling. So can you give an update on what that ruling just was and what you expect to see now moving forward?

34:43Elizabeth Warren:That ruling was watching a little street justice in action. You know, this is the case. Remember, Life Nation, there's the whole Ticketmaster. I assume many of the folks here have had experiences with Ticketmaster. And the big problem is how this company has just grown bigger and bigger and bigger and musclier and musclier and how they've used that position to drive up prices, to drive down services and not to innovate. And it appears, this came out during the trial, the antitrust trial here, it appears that their business model was rob your customers blind. I mean, this literally came out in their emails back and forth.

35:34Elizabeth Warren:And so the Trump administration, Justice Department, they settled out, little slap on the wrist and said, you boys go ahead and do whatever you want to do. But I want to give a big shout out to some of the state attorneys general. They were also in the lawsuit and everybody thought they just caved in. Instead, they stepped up in short order and said, we'll continue this trial. So it ended up in the hands of a jury. And by golly, that jury listened to the facts and said, yep, that one is a monopoly and they're using their monopoly power in a way to take advantage of American consumers. So this is a big deal.

36:18Elizabeth Warren:I mean, this is like, boom, right? But the best part is what comes next. And that is, what's the remedy going to be? Because what I'm looking for here is in antitrust law, it's not just like make them pay money. It's you can actually break these companies up. Yeah. And you could make 10 companies where there used to be one. You could make three companies where there used to be one. And the importance of that is then there's competition. So, you know, they're competing to be the one that sell you the tickets. They're competing to be the ones that book the acts and the venues and where it all goes.

36:58Elizabeth Warren:And that is supposed to be the magic of our economic system is you get competition and that's how you get lower prices and a lot more innovation and a lot more focus on the consumer and making the consumer happy. So, you know, this is a good day on the antitrust front.

37:21Brian Tyler Cohen:You know, we have we have so few instances of good news on the antitrust front. And and admittedly, it's it's not the sexiest topic in the world. I think, you know, people's eyes tend to glaze over when you talk about antitrust. But it's something that impacts people probably more than anything. I mean, as you have fewer and fewer companies that are delivering goods and services as the Amazons of the world and the apples of the world and, you know, whatever it may be, continue to consolidate. That's why we're contending with higher prices, which is the principal issue in all of these campaigns that we're seeing right now from 2024 right up to today.

37:58Brian Tyler Cohen:And so I guess the question is, did even the Biden administration go far enough in their pursuit of enforcing antitrust law? And what do you hope to see in the next Democratic administration as far as enforcing antitrust law is concerned?

38:13Elizabeth Warren:So I love the question, because with the Biden administration, we always have to put this in context. For basically 40 years before that, there was almost no enforcement of antitrust law, not zero, but pretty damn close. And the consequence is the big just got bigger and bigger and bigger. And Lena Kahn came in as the head of the FTC. Jonathan Cantor headed up the antitrust division over at the Department of Justice. And they took the United States basically from zero enforcement to 50. And God bless, because, boy, that is the hard part. They got the rock rolling, right? Trump administration comes in.

38:55Elizabeth Warren:And whoa, if you're friends of the Trump administration, now it's headed back down. But here's the thing. The genie is out of the bottle. And on many of these antitrust laws, people have begun to discover, wait a minute, the state attorneys general also have the legal right to intervene and be part of this. That's what's happened just now in the Live Nation case. So now you've got more enforcers. You've got enforcers. Rob Bonta out in California, go. You know, you've got enforcers around the country, including there have been a couple of Republicans jump in on this. So now you're starting to see more.

39:34Elizabeth Warren:Plus, I'm just a little bit private enforcement. If you're one of the competitors or potential competitors who got knocked down, you're one of the customers who got cheated. You also have a right under some of these laws to be able to come in and to push on them. So I think of this as a moment that the fire kind of blazed up during the Biden administration. We got it started zero to 50. Now we need to get to 100. It's gone back down at the federal level. But boy, there's more out there, more talk about it. You talk about it. I talk about it. I like to remind everybody the things that really make you grind your teeth when you're left on hold forever when Live Nation, when they charge you a fee for this and then a fee for that, and then while you're checking out, you have a fee for checking out for the fee, right?

40:29Elizabeth Warren:All of those kinds of things, when your cable bill just keeps going up and up, almost always lift up the curtain and look just a little bit. And what you see behind it is usually a violation of antitrust laws. It's one or two big companies that own the whole thing. And I think we're in that moment now, maybe a little like the Wizard of Oz. The curtain is starting to come back. More people are engaging on this issue and not willing to just say whatever some giant company wants to do, whatever Amazon wants to do. Thank you, Amazon. But instead to say, what the hell? And start getting some pushback.

41:09Elizabeth Warren:So this is a moment, as you say, we don't get a lot of good news. It's good news today. But overall, I'm feeling better about how things are looking in this area.

41:19Brian Tyler Cohen:Right. And I think to your point that you made before, I mean, this isn't even necessarily a right versus left issue. This is a top versus bottom issue. And that's going to be especially important in building up a coalition to fight against this stuff. So with that said, Senator Warren, thank you so much, as always, for staying on top of these issues and for taking the time today.

41:35Elizabeth Warren:Thank you for staying in this fight.

41:39Brian Tyler Cohen:No Lie is brought to you by Incogni. Ever wonder how random companies get your cell number? It's not a coincidence. It is data brokers selling your life behind your back. It's invasive, exhausting, and frankly, a total nightmare to manage alone. You have the right to opt out, but they make the process just a bureaucratic maze. That's why I use Incogni. They act as your personal privacy advocate, automatically handling the takedown requests so that you don't have to. The best part? They don't just do it once. Incogni continuously monitors those sites to keep your info off the market. For the ultimate protection, their custom data removals feature in the unlimited plan allows you to flag specific links for their team to manually remove.

42:17Brian Tyler Cohen:Especially for those of us who comment online about politics, it has never been more important to keep information as private as possible. That's why I started using Incogni the moment I heard about it, and it's why I will continue to do so. Take your personal data back with Incogni. It's even independently verified by Deloitte, so you know they're the real deal. Go to incogni.com slash BTC and use code BTC to get 60 % off an annual plan. That's code BTC at incogni.com slash BTC for 60 % off. Plus, try it risk-free for 30 days with their money-back guarantee. I'm joined now by the Democratic nominee for governor of Iowa, Rob Sand.

42:53Brian Tyler Cohen:Rob, thanks for joining me. Yeah, thanks for having me, Brian. Appreciate it. So we have some really big news in an unlikely state, the state of Iowa, And that is a major ratings change just took place by the Cook Political Report. Can you explain a little bit about what that update was? Yeah, they moved it from lean Republican to a toss up, which is the second time they moved it in this race. They actually had it ranked as solid Republican. And the day that I announced that I was running for governor, they moved it through likely Republican all the way to lean, which is a pretty unusual move on their part.

43:25But, you know, I've already been elected twice statewide as state auditor. Prior to that, chief public corruption prosecutor in the state, I uncovered the largest lottery rigging scheme in American history. So when I got into the race, I was already bringing, you know, a body of work that a lot of Iowans knew and had seen and were familiar with and were supportive of. And the truth is that I feel like they're kind of late to the game and moving it to a toss up. Can I say that? I just did. But I think most people in Iowa are looking at this race and saying that we've got all the momentum. And I think that that's right.

44:01We absolutely have a winnable race here.

44:03Brian Tyler Cohen:So, Rob, what do you attribute that move from? I mean, again, to go from solid Republican all the way to a true toss up in a state that Democrats have been chasing for quite a long time. If I'm not mistaken, was Obama the last one to win Iowa in 2008? He won it in 12. So he won it twice. OK, yeah. So it's been but it's been a minute. So what do you attribute this this trajectory to? So a few different things. Like I said, it helps to have already won statewide twice. So I'm the state auditor, chief public corruption prosecutor prior to that. I think that makes a big difference that a lot of people don't necessarily appreciate.

44:38But I have been going to all 100 county seats in Iowa every year. I tell people before I come to town that I'm actually going to show up. And so if they want to, you know, throw a tomato at me, they get a chance to do it. Whatever it is, I give them an opportunity. And I think that matters for a lot of people. I think the other thing that a lot of folks don't appreciate is how much is happening in Iowa right now, where the leadership, the same people have been in charge for so long that they have totally lost touch with what Iowans want to be focused on. The easiest way to understand that is we are, over the last three years, 48th for personal income growth.

45:16We are number one for cancer growth, and they're spending their time in the Capitol building figuring out how to make it harder for the state auditor to find misspent tax money. We uncovered a record amount of tax money misspent in my first year or my first term. And they changed the law after that to make it harder for us to do it. They now, state agencies can hide misspent money and hide documents from the auditor's office. This is wrong. And the average Iowan, you can like see their face twist and disgust when they talk about it. They're upset by that. They're upset by a school vouchers program that has no accountability.

45:52They're upset by the idea of the use of eminent domain for a carbon capture pipeline. There's just a lot of stuff where, you know, people feel oftentimes, I think in both parties, voters feel trapped into voting for one party that they're not particularly excited about. And they've been ticking them off enough up there by doing things that don't help ordinary Iowans that I think they've had enough. And then they look across the aisle at me and they're like, he seems reasonable. Yeah.

46:18Brian Tyler Cohen:Well, it's worth asking here, you know, while we're on the topic of policies that don't work for Iowans. Can you talk about how the Iran war and especially the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has kind of hit your state particularly hard? Yeah, absolutely. It's been brutal. I mean, we're in planting season right now. Farmers need fertilizer and a huge chunk of the world's fertilizer goes through the strait. And so the fact that it's all tied up in knots there means that they're not getting access to it. It means that prices have skyrocketed and prices were bad to begin with. There's really only there's less than a handful of sellers of fertilizer.

46:59It's a heavily concentrated near monopoly market. And that's already bad enough for growers and producers in the state of Iowa. And I think the big difference is, you know, I think a lot of these folks, they're sick of having somebody piss on their leg and someone else tell them it's raining. They know that these tariffs are terrible for Iowa, but Republican elected officials are so blinded by their party allegiance that they're not willing to say the obvious truth of what's happening to Iowans. And what they do instead is they try to pitch Iowans on the idea that, oh, there's this golden age right around the corner.

47:32When we are seeing, Brian, a raise in bankruptcies and suicides among farmers, it's kind of offensive, honestly, the unwillingness of elected officials who were supposed to represent this state instead just doing anything that their party leader tells them to.

47:49Brian Tyler Cohen:Well, I mean, that's the elected officials. Is there a recognition by voters and citizens in Iowa who, you know, despite the fact that these elected officials are going to blindly defer to Trump and the administration and, you know, take his side on all of this, are the voters recognizing the reality of what's happening? Yeah, yeah, they are. I mean, we actually just had an announcement that an additional 15 ,000 jobs had been lost in Iowa. We just put out a release on that today. And I think that Iowans across the board are hurting. You know, we've got an affordability crisis in this country, but it's worse in states where personal income growth has been so slow.

48:30And that's where Iowa is. At the end of the day, affordability is a two-part equation. It's number one, you know, how much money they have. And number two, what's it cost? And if you don't have a lot of money because your personal income growth is one of the laggards in America, then it's worse here. And I think Iowans see that and they know that. And when people try to tell them something else and try to tell them it's a sunny day out there, then they know two things. Number one, it doesn't change what they're going through financially. Number two, someone's lying to them about it too. Right.

49:00Brian Tyler Cohen:Well, you know, look, running in a state like Iowa, as is the case with where Democrats are trying to be competitive in other red states, is going to require support from independents and Republicans. And so on that front, how has it been for you? How has it been on the donor front? How has it been, you know, anecdotally speaking with voters who may have cast their ballot three times for Trump or Joni Ernst or any of these other Republican officials statewide? I can give you anecdotes and I can give you a number, too. I'll start with a number. This blows my mind and I'm genuinely curious if this has ever happened anywhere before.

49:36We have more registered Republican donors to our campaign than any of the five Republicans have who are running for governor on the other side of this race. Yeah. Like that. Yeah. We didn't and we didn't we we never set out like we weren't targeting them. It just happened. And I think that that's an indicator of just how frustrated people are. But honestly, Brian, like a big piece of this campaign is is is also it's acknowledging. I think what we all know, which is that our democracy is run by two private clubs, neither of which are particularly good at solving our problems. And the fact that we say that out loud, I think a lot of people can find themselves a home right there where they're sick of Democrats and Republicans.

50:19But when you acknowledge, as I do as a candidate, that I don't know why we only have two options. I think that resonates for a lot of people. But another really fun story is I met a guy recently who he had some tough stories to tell about his parents' political views. And when I had a chance to meet him after that, you know, I was like, oh, I'm running for governor in Iowa. And I'd be curious to hear, you know, if they're familiar with our campaign at all. Because we tend to get a lot of supporters from across the aisle. Because our message inherently is, well, shoot. I mean, our campaign slogan is not redder or bluer, but better and truer.

50:59And the guy's like, there's no way. Like, they never support you. You got a D behind your name. I'm sure you're dead to them.

51:07Brian Tyler Cohen:Yeah. And I get a text message from him, like maybe two days later, I talked to my dad. He knew who you were. He even donated to your campaign last year. Yeah. So we're bringing people together. You know, we're making Thanksgiving fun again. That's another slogan that we like to throw around. Rob, you had mentioned something at the top that kind of caught my attention. And that was that you were responsible for taking down the lotto rigging scheme, the largest lotto rigging scheme that we'd seen in this country. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah. In fact, if you are sitting underneath my laptop, one of the books is actually the book that I wrote about it, The Winning Ticket.

51:47If you like true crime stories, I'd recommend reading it. I know you would expect me to say that you should read it. But the Washington Independent Review of Books actually said it was a favorite read of the year, the year it came out, which is 2022. So, I mean, bottom line on this thing is this was something that happened. I was an assistant attorney general as a prosecutor. There was kind of this mystery of this unclaimed lottery ticket for 16 million bucks. And then it kind of got claimed at the last minute. They didn't pay it out. And lots of questions about who was connected to it and why.

52:19And my boss retired. And one of the last things he did was hand me the case as he walked out the door, which I was not happy about. But he said, like, well, you're the youngest one in the office. So, you know, So all the unpleasant stuff goes to the people with the least experience.

52:35Brian Tyler Cohen:You get saddled with the lottery. Exactly. Exactly. But, you know, look, I did my job. I worked at it. I had some great helpers in the form of some law enforcement officials, Don Smith and Matt Anderson. And we ended up uncovering this case. We had a trial in the Polk County Courthouse when we only knew about the Iowa ticket. national media the day that we picked a jury said that they thought that the defendant would get acquitted because they didn't think i had the goods we got two guilty verdicts and the case grew from there so oh and my goodness i have to mention there are bigfoot hunters involved in the case like people who go out into the woods to look for bigfoot so yeah if you're not a true crime fan maybe that'll make you want to yeah i was gonna say that's got like all the all the all the all words you need for like for a very 2020, you know, post 2020 story.

53:28Brian Tyler Cohen:You know, I think I think this is resonant because, you know, in large part, this Republican Party came into power on on this pretense that they would be the ones focusing on, you know, fraud or waste or abuse. And in fact, we've we've seen the opposite. I mean, we've you know, there there are these announcements every day where somebody gets rich because they've bought, you know, positions five minutes before those announcements come out. I mean, this is just a recurring theme, the rampant corruption that we're seeing right now to the point where it almost feels like crime is legal. And so have you heard from folks that you've spoken with in Iowa where there is a disillusionment over that point in particular?

54:10Brian Tyler Cohen:And I mean, that's a role that you can fill in a way that nobody else can given your past. Yeah, yeah. I think that's a good point to make. And I do think that that's right? I haven't heard many people other than Democrats make the point that you made, but I think it's out there in the ether. And I think the thing that we all need to keep in mind is that right now we are at a point where people are so divided that sticking your neck out to suggest that there might be something wrong with someone that you voted for is just going to get your head chopped off. It's either going to be by the people who voted for that same person and call you a traitor, or it's going to be by the other people who say, well, you voted for this because there's so much scorn in our politics right now.

54:54It's really hard for people to do that because we haven't been willing to give each other any grace, which it's there in the ether. And that's part of the reason that one of the first things that we've done, our first plank actually for our platform that we just rolled out last week is accountability for all. And it has to do with doing things like banning stock trading for elected officials, mandatory prison time for people who steal from taxpayers. Yes, age limits. Yes, cognitive tests. People who are in positions of trust and power, we should be making sure that they deserve that trust and power.

55:28But there's a couple things that we're doing that are bigger than that too. And I think, Brian, these are some of the reasons why our campaign is on fire. We are actually creating opportunities for people to feel welcome to have a real political conversation. At 100 public town halls last year, we had people actually applaud for the attendees of the opposite political party. After we acknowledged that we disagreed, the people in the room, together we sang the first verse of America the Beautiful. And then this year we've been doing events that we're calling Democracy Revivals, where we sort of pre-select.

56:05We have people sign up in advance, and so we try to make sure we have an even distribution of Democrats, Independents, and Republicans. so that we can have balanced conversations. And it's not me in the room being a candidate, but it's the attendees leading conversations where part of what you're going to be asked to do is you introduce yourself to some people who are in the opposite political party and you're going to have to say something that you like about their party or something that frustrates you about your own. And by doing that, we give people just this little bit of space where they can meet in the middle and say, all right, maybe the problem isn't my neighbors.

56:39Maybe it's this two-choice political system that wants us to hate each other because then we're easier to control.

56:45Brian Tyler Cohen:Rob, I want to finish off with this. You know, there are going to be people who take a look here and recognize, okay, we've got limited resources. We got to focus our attention on where we have the highest likelihood of winning. And the reality is that in Iowa, there are more registered Republicans than Democrats. And so what do you say to those people who write off any hope or desire to win Iowa as just wish casting and kind of cast aside the ratings changes or polls or whatever it may be? Yeah. I mean, number one, like, yes, the Republicans are the larger political party in Iowa. But when you combine independents and Democrats, the Republicans are dwarfed.

57:30And so there's a lot of people in this state who haven't affiliated with either political party who are ready for change. The other thing is that I think that there's a lot of people in this state who are registered either as Democrats or as Republicans who want to participate in primaries because we have closed primaries. We tell independent voters in the state wrongly that they are less equal, that their vote doesn't count, right? And so you'll find people who are signed up with a party who that doesn't mean that they live and die by that party. They've done it because they want to be enfranchised.

58:01But the other piece of this that I think I just, because you do hear this in Iowa, and I really want to push back in this way, your party affiliation is not your destiny. And the idea that you can't vote across party lines is just bizarre, right? Laura Kelly was elected and reelected as the governor of Kansas when Kansas went for President Trump by substantially larger margins than Iowa did. Andy Beshear was elected and reelected as the governor of Kentucky when Kentucky went for President Trump by sometimes three times the amount that Iowa did. And there's a tremendous number of people in this state who are frustrated with the status quo and who are ready for change.

58:46And when they find someone who genuinely wants to bring people together and look past disagreement to places where we can't agree, they're willing to cross the aisle to do that.

58:56Brian Tyler Cohen:Rob, for folks who are watching and listening right now, how can they help your campaign? Ah, yes. Thank you. robshand.com. R-O-B-S-A-N-D.com. Awesome. I'm going to put that link right here on the screen and also in the post description for folks who are listening on the podcast. I'm going to put it in the show notes. Rob, your campaign has been stellar. It's super exciting to watch. I'm really grateful for you taking the time today and best of luck on the campaign trail. Thanks, Brian. Thanks again to Raphael Warnock, Elizabeth Warren, and Rob Sand. That's it for this episode. Talk to you on Sunday.

59:29Brian Tyler Cohen:You've been listening to No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen, produced by Sam Graber, music by Wellesley, and interviews edited for YouTube by Nicholas Nicotera. If you want to support the show, please subscribe on your preferred podcast app and leave a five-star rating and a review. And as always, you can find me at BrianTaylorCohen on all of my other channels, or you can go to BrianTaylorCohen.com to learn more.