00:45 David Sirota I actually think at one level, like obviously Donald Trump statement by statement is a pathological liar. 00:51 I mean, he has no regard for the truth at all. 00:53 But I actually think at the vibe level, at the kind of brand level, that Donald Trump is actually painfully honest about the fact that he sees government as a transactional endeavor. 01:05 And I guess he wouldn't call it corruption. 01:07 He just calls it like government. 01:09 But I think my point here is, is that 01:11 In some ways, that does a little bit of a favor in the sense that no one can deny it anymore. 01:21 Chris Hayes Hello and welcome to Why Is This Happening with me, your host, Chris Hayes. 01:29 I saw an item in the news today that I found kind of amusing. 01:32 It's about the FBI director, Kash Patel. 01:34 And he's dating a woman who's like a country music performer who lives in Nashville, Tennessee. 01:39 And she gave a performance at State College, Pennsylvania, which of course is where Penn State is. 01:45 And there's public flight records of all the flights. 01:48 And someone very smartly noted that a plane that was... 01:51 registered to the FBI, was in state college, and then flew to Nashville after the performance. 01:58 And it was like, oh, that's Kash Patel's girlfriend. 02:01 And he's flying her back to Nashville after her concert on a government plane. 02:06 And this was in the same day that there was this news that multiple Trump administration officials have taken over the houses of military officers that are usually used for military officers since they can live in them. 02:17 And at some level, it's like, we were talking about this today on my editorial call. 02:21 Somehow the plane is like this crystalline example of corruption that just feels like an easier story to tell than just the avalanche of corruption, unlike anything we've ever seen of the last few years, where I feel overwhelmed by the story. 02:35 It can be hard to conceptualize. 02:38 It's happening at many different levels. 02:39 It's happening at such a level of abstraction. 02:41 It's also happening at such a high dollar level that it doesn't seem real, like, oh, $3 billion in crypto here and 02:48 They're going to sell the UAE these chips that they say they wouldn't because the UAE apparently got into bed with them on crypto. 02:56 But it's also, I think, I've been wrestling with why I feel like it hasn't broken through more because it feels like it hasn't. 03:02 And I think I've come to the conclusion that people have come to the conclusion that, like, America is so corrupt, that the system is so corrupt. 03:09 They can no longer see these distinctions, even though I will say, having covered a country that does have a lot of corruption, particularly in the structural way that our elections are funded and the system works, we really are in like completely different territory now. 03:24 But I think the inability to see that territory, like it's all kind of coming together, these various threads in this moment, like Trump's personal corruption, a multi-decade generational effort to 03:35 Make different forms of corruption legal as a sort of political legal movement. 03:40 The Supreme Court's jurisprudence on corruption, which it has essentially in case after case removed inhibitions on corruption, the enforcement of it, the prosecution of it. 03:52 And so I thought it'd be great to talk to my old buddy, David Sirota, who's got a new book out called Master Plan, The Hidden Plot to Legalize Corruption in America. 04:00 That's co-authored along with Jared King Mayer. 04:03 He's also the founder, right? 04:05 Editor of The Lever, which is a great site you should check out. 04:07 So David, welcome to the program. 04:09 Thank you. 04:09 Thanks for having me. 04:15 Let's start on this 04:36 And all that's bad and been there and gotten worse. 04:39 And then there's like what we're seeing now, which also seems like both a continuation and a difference in kind from what we've seen before. 04:46 Like as someone who's thought about this so much, where do you see it? 04:49 David Sirota The way you started this is about self-enriching corruption. 04:54 And I think that has been part of the American story. 04:57 Frankly, that's been part of human history forever. 04:59 Totally. 05:00 Political leaders who skim off the top, who use the powers of the state for luxury stuff, for self-enrichment schemes. 05:08 And I think what we have to understand is there's that... 05:12 next to the structural corruption of, for instance, money going into the political system to elect politicians who will do the bidding of industries and make our lives worse. 05:26 And I think what's going on here is that the American public has gotten inured 05:32 Right. 05:53 Like the real corruption, I think, that really bothers people is the kind of corruption that they also know exists and has been normalized, which is health insurance companies give a lot of money to politicians to elect the Congress they want to create a health care system that then screws me over. 06:09 And that is the kind of corruption that I think people are aware of and angry about, but I do also think feel helpless to deal with. 06:18 And what our book traces is how the structural corruption was normalized and legalized. 06:26 And where that story starts in the modern sense is after Watergate. 06:30 And we can get into some of the details, but I think what happened in 06:33 Watergate was the first in the modern era dark money scandal. 06:36 We're talking about suitcases of cash from major brand name Fortune 500 companies literally being flown into Washington to the president's campaign. 06:46 I mean, that like literally happened, right? 06:48 And out of that, 06:50 came a series of reforms, the modern campaign finance reforms, that tamped down on the really kind of grimy corruption, like the cash in the envelope corruption, the graft, the self-enriching gross corruption. 07:04 And there was kind of a crackdown on that. 07:06 But what also came out of Watergate was the normalization of the structural corruption, 07:12 No longer do you have to fly in suitcases of cash. 07:15 You can actually write a nice big check from the company with the company's logo on it and deposit it in a bank account or in a super PAC at unlimited levels. 07:26 And that's the kind of corruption that actually affects the policies that we all live under. 07:33 And the process of normalizing and legalizing that is what our book is about. 07:38 And what I think people think, you know, a hidden plot, 07:40 The thing is, is that I think people know there's corruption, but I think they don't know how deliberate the plot was to make all of that kind of systemic corruption legal, acceptable and normal, because that's the kind of corruption that people with lots of money that they really want because it gets them the policies that keep them rich and powerful. 08:02 Chris Hayes And there's innovation on that score too. 08:04 Like one of the things that Trump has come up with is new ways to replace, like even under an incredibly deregulated system, he's come up with new ways to replace the suitcase of cash, which is like, I'm going to sue you and we can settle. 08:16 And now you're paying me $20 million. 08:19 I've never seen a politician do that before, but it's like, yeah, Disney paid him however much or, you know, the ballroom, right? 08:24 Like coming up with new ways again to sidestep what is even at this point a truly minimally regulated system. 08:31 Yep. 08:32 to get back to like the absolute pure pay-for-play, old-fashioned, like industrial built-in-age system where powerful interests give you money and they get favors in return. 08:45 David Sirota Yeah, I actually think at one level, like obviously Donald Trump statement by statement is a pathological liar. 08:51 I mean, he has no regard for the truth at all. 08:53 But I actually think at the vibe level, 08:56 at the kind of brand level, that Donald Trump is actually painfully honest about the fact that he sees government as a transactional endeavor. 09:05 And I guess he wouldn't call it corruption. 09:07 He just calls it like government. 09:10 But I think my point here is, is that in some ways that does a little bit of a favor in the sense that no one can deny it anymore. 09:16 Like there's no denying like you and I were old enough to have lived through like the 90s and the 2000s where it was like both sides were sort of like money buys access, but that's not really corruption. 09:26 And like this sort of this soft corruption and this pretense that it's not corruption. 09:29 I think Trump like rips that veneer completely off. 09:32 And I don't think anybody would say that what's going on isn't pay to play, influence, buying, et cetera, et cetera. 09:37 Like, so in a sense, that kind of advances the way we can at least talk about this. 09:42 Yeah. 09:42 in saying, okay, I don't have to convince you it's happening. 09:45 Now let's talk about whether it's preventable, it's bad, or if it's something we just want to accept. 09:50 Chris Hayes Well, I think that gets to something I think it's worth kind of wrestling with is like what we mean by corruption and how we deal with the actions of different institutions and entities in a democratic society. 10:00 And just to like briefly kind of take the other side of the Citizens United argument, which we can talk about in a little bit, is like there is some level at which, whether it's a small nonprofit or it's a block association or it's individuals or it's individuals banded together, 10:12 every institution, every entity in a democratic society does have the right to petition their government, right? 10:17 That's guaranteed by the Constitution. 10:20 And the car dealers are going to band together. 10:22 And they're definitely going to spend money to go lobby the Hill for regulations favorable to car dealers. 10:28 And that's 10:29 At some level, like that is democracy, right? 10:31 A liberal democracy has to deal with different interests competing. 10:34 And you kind of got to let them do that. 10:36 So the question of like, when does that pitch over from that's an irreducible part of democracy, different interests fighting, sometimes very powerful interests and something that's corrupt. 10:45 How do you understand that line? 10:47 David Sirota Well, first, we can go to the Supreme Court itself. 10:50 It is the Roberts Court. 10:51 It doesn't treat its precedents seriously, but let's just treat its precedents seriously. 10:55 Even after Citizens United, the basic idea is that money directly to a politician can be corrupting. 11:02 That's why. 11:02 at least for now, and there's a case that's led by J.D. 11:05 Vance to try to destroy this, but even in the post-Citizens United era, the idea of there can be limits on direct campaign contributions because money going directly to a politician or their campaign can be corrupting, whether into their personal bank account or their campaign. 11:20 Now, if that is the case, then when we see lots of money going to politicians, I think that is a corrupting force. 11:28 Now, politicians will say, well, that may buy access, but it's not corrupting unless there's a direct quid pro quo. 11:36 That's sort of politicians' arguments. 11:38 But of course, the Supreme Court 11:39 has joined into that argument on a sort of separate track from the campaign finance track, which is on the anti-bribery laws. 11:46 You know, there's this string of cases from overturning the conviction of Bob McDonald to overturning the Chris Christie AIDS convictions to overturning the Andrew Cuomo AIDS convictions to the mayoral in Indiana, that one that happened last year where a mayor gave a government contract to a contractor, got a payment. 12:02 And because of the sequence of it, the court said, that's not a bribe, that's a gratuity. 12:06 So, I mean, it's unbelievable. 12:07 It's truly unbelievable. 12:08 The gratuity finding is so good. 12:10 Chris Hayes It's incredible. 12:11 Basically, it's that he got the contribution after he made the decision to favor them. 12:16 So it's a tip. 12:17 So it's not a bribe. 12:18 If you give the money and then you get the contract, it's a bribe. 12:20 But if you get the contract and afterwards, it's like you throw your bucks at him. 12:24 David Sirota I mean, it sounds like we're making this up. 12:26 Like, no, that's the actual finding. 12:28 Literally what happened. 12:29 Like literally the court intervened to overturn the conviction to be like, not a bribe. 12:33 It's a gratuity. 12:34 And that's fine. 12:35 Right. 12:35 I mean, that's where we are. 12:37 Right. 12:37 So I would argue that at minimum money directly into a politician's campaign or their personal bank account in exchange for an official act. 12:46 Again, the Supreme Court narrowing what an official act is determined. 12:50 But we all know it when we see it. 12:51 That is corrupting. 12:52 So at one level. 12:54 The legal campaign contributions to candidates in large sums, et cetera, et cetera, is corrupting. 13:01 And I do think explains why we don't have policies that a lot of the public wants. 13:06 Now, in addition to that, where the Citizens United really made this so much worse was the idea that an independent candidate 13:14 I'm putting independent in quotes. 13:17 A super PAC that's helping elect a certain senator can't be corrupting of the senator because it's independent. 13:25 Now, I put independent in quotes because oftentimes a super PAC is run by the senator's old colleagues or members of their party, right? 13:32 So the Supreme Court and Citizens United said that kind of money can't be regulated because it's independent and therefore it can't be corrupting. 13:41 That's the part that's insane. 13:42 Chris Hayes Right, so it doesn't have this nexus, right? 13:45 So we have to defer to the speech interest here. 13:47 If someone wants to come along and say, I have a speech interest in getting this person elected and I'm not actually the campaign. 13:54 Now, what's happened, of course, is there was a lower court opinion that kind of created the structure for super PACs after that. 13:59 Yes. 14:00 And I don't think that's ever been challenged. 14:02 It's sort of the law of the land. 14:03 It's all been operating. 14:04 David Sirota It's being challenged right now. 14:05 Chris Hayes Yeah, take me through that one. 14:06 David Sirota Yeah, so what's happening right now, there's two sets of cases that people need to know about. 14:11 One, there's a case being spearheaded by J.D. 14:14 Vance to say that coordinated spending from parties to candidates should not be able to be regulated. 14:22 That was one of the last remaining things campaign finance law is standing after Citizens United. 14:27 The idea being, if you get rid of that, 14:29 then the parties just become a pass-through for almost unlimited money. 14:32 So J.D. 14:33 Chris Hayes Vance- Which is kind of what they were before McCain-Feingold or had grown to be before McCain-Feingold. 14:38 David Sirota Right. 14:38 So J.D. 14:39 Vance, they're trying to knock down everything. 14:41 Now, separately, there is a case spearheaded by Larry Lessig, a ballot initiative that passed in Maine, which would say, okay, we're going to take the Supreme Court's own precedence here and saying that money directly to candidates is corrupting. 14:56 And they're challenging the idea that Maine passed a ballot measure saying you can limit the amount of money that goes into super PACs. 15:04 Ostensibly independent. 15:05 Ostensibly independent, right. 15:07 And saying that these are not really operating independently at all. 15:12 And if we can establish that, 15:15 then we can establish that those super PACs cannot raise unlimited amounts of money. 15:20 And remember, they're raising unlimited amounts of money, oftentimes dark money. 15:24 Like we don't even know where it's coming from. 15:26 Because what they list on their donors is like, maybe a billionaire like Elon Musk will let his name be listed. 15:30 But then there's like Americans for Americans gave, you know, the 501c4 gave $10 million. 15:36 And we have no idea who put that into the super PAC. 15:38 So there is a chance that the Supreme Court, using its own precedence, could say, okay, super PACs are 15:45 Chris Hayes are regulatable. 15:46 So I want to talk about some of the arguments people make about money in politics, which has gotten very complex, I think, in our current regime. 15:52 I mean, one thing that's clear is post-Citizens United sort of all bets are off and you've got the richest man in the world can write a hundred million dollar check. 16:00 He can write a billion dollar check. 16:01 Like that just didn't happen before. 16:02 It was the kind of thing that did happen quite famously during the Gilded Age. 16:05 Right. 16:06 But the post-Watergate reforms and then McCain-Feingold, you know, however they had normalized a certain amount of soft corruption, that specific ability of just pure, 16:16 billionaire writes a check for $100 million, you just could not do. 16:20 That is now on the table and has totally changed things. 16:23 There's sort of two arguments I hear people make. 16:25 One is that at the highest levels, at least, money doesn't matter as much, right? 16:30 Trump got outspent. 16:31 He still won. 16:32 When you're dealing with a national election where people are so saturated that it's not like an extra few hundred million dollars, where I'm speaking to you in New York on the eve of this 16:41 election, which has a very strong public financing mechanism. 16:44 But even with that public financing mechanism, they can't get rid of super PACs because the court has said that's a constitutional right, essentially. 16:50 How do you think about how money works at this point? 16:53 And does it matter what level we're talking about, starting like presidential down to state rep? 17:01 David Sirota It's a great question. 17:02 I think money, arguably in the final stages of either a presidential campaign or 17:09 Or perhaps a few, what you'd call top tier, high profile races matters somewhat less because of things that you've written about, which is the attention economy. 17:20 There is so much inherent media attention on, you know, a couple handful of Senate races. 17:25 The New York mayor's race sort of sticks out as a special case. 17:28 It's the media capital of the world and the presidential race. 17:31 But I also think even in those races where money really does matter is before you get to that final stage. 17:39 Who are the candidates who are taken seriously? 17:42 Who are the candidates who flame out? 17:44 So I think at that level, who is able to raise or has access to, in the case of billionaire self-funding candidates, who's able to have the money is who's able to even be in the conversation. 17:56 Now, I think you go one level down. 17:59 Just let's go to the U.S. House governors. 18:02 And then you get down to the state legislative level, the local level. 18:05 I think money determines most of what happens there. 18:09 I say that because those races do not have access to something that can arguably compete with money, which is attention. 18:18 If you are running for state legislature, and I'm talking to you, you know, I don't think my wife will get mad at me. 18:24 Chris Hayes I live in a household. 18:25 David Sirota Yeah, right. 18:25 Your spouse is a state legislator. 18:27 Is a state legislator. 18:28 I think my wife is a great state legislator. 18:30 She does really great work. 18:32 She's focused on the state budget here in Colorado. 18:34 Maybe she could ban me for saying this, but like her job is not to nationalize her race. 18:38 Chris Hayes No, it's not. 18:39 It's not to like. 18:40 And she's not like going to go viral. 18:42 And she's not like, it's like. 18:43 Exactly. 18:43 That doesn't. 18:45 And you've got local journalism has been hollowed out. 18:47 So the. 18:47 If you said there was anyone covering these races before, there's fewer and fewer. 18:51 Exactly. 18:51 David Sirota So candidates like that, they have a choice. 18:54 They can, I guess, try to go viral by, but like that's not, and there's no local media. 18:59 So it's not really a realistic path or they can try to scrape grassroots money together. 19:05 But there's always the threat of like the local or frankly, national oligarch just diving in, writing a, you know, a $300,000 check, which is nothing to a billionaire. 19:15 Crosstalk Nothing. 19:15 David Sirota and just buying a bunch of seats. 19:17 So I think at that level, and one other thing to say about that, those are the levels that then become the potential future Senate candidates and presidential candidates. 19:26 So the bottom part of the ladder is like so much about 19:32 And so that's where the corruption, I think, really happens. 19:38 And to be clear, it's not just like the money goes in and a favor is bought, right? 19:43 It's like if you're only talking to donors on the phone, right? 19:47 your view of what's possible, what's not possible, your view of what's happening in the world, what's not happening in the world, is skewed because you're chasing after people who can write relatively big checks. 19:59 I mean, and we're talking $1,000. 20:01 I mean, most people cannot write a $1,000 check. 20:04 There's a certain segment of the population that can. 20:08 Chris Hayes Very, very small percentage of the population that writes $1,000 checks. 20:12 By the way, in politics, that's not even a big check. 20:14 No, that's a small check. 20:15 It's a small check. 20:15 Yeah. 20:16 David Sirota Yeah, right. 20:16 And then on top of that, there's another form of corruption that I think doesn't get talked about a lot that I think is really important for people to understand, which is the corruption where the money doesn't even change hands. 20:27 So I think a lot about the crypto industry in Congress. 20:31 Chris Hayes This is the clearest one to me right now. 20:33 Yes. 20:33 Crypto is the clearest one because it's almost old school. 20:37 Right. 20:37 It's like when the banks got together on the credit card bill. 20:40 They've got an agenda. 20:40 Right. 20:41 They have no ideological commitments. 20:43 Right. 20:43 They'll give money to whoever. 20:45 No one cares really that much one way or the other. 20:47 It's not like a mass issue. 20:48 David Sirota That's right. 20:49 When I mean money doesn't necessarily change hands, in the 2024 election, they spent a lot of money to defeat a few of what they identified as their big critics. 21:01 Katie Porter in the Senate race, Sherrod Brown in the Ohio Senate race. 21:05 And they did that, in my view, not just to take out their perceived critics. 21:10 But they did do that. 21:12 But to send a message to everybody else in politics that if you cross us, you could be next. 21:19 I had a senator explain it to me this way. 21:21 He said, you know, if I come up with a bill that antagonizes a very powerful industry, 21:27 Not only am I risking myself getting spent into the ground, but let's say I'm willing to take that risk. 21:32 I feel like I'm okay with taking that risk. 21:34 The problem is that industry, all they have to do is walk around the Senate and wave their wallet around to other senators to keep them off my bill, to keep them voting against my bill, to keep them stalling it in committee. 21:46 So in that sense, the deregulated campaign finance system that was created by this master plan 21:52 That is the outgrowth of it where the corruption is like baked in and half of the corruption, the money isn't even changing hands. 22:01 Chris Hayes It's just the threat of the money. 22:02 I think in the 2024 primaries, the two biggest outside group spending in Democratic primaries were APAC and crypto interest, basically. 22:11 And these were just, you know, very targeted. 22:13 It was like, here's a person that is on the wrong side of our issues. 22:16 in these primaries, and we're just going to dump, in some cases, tens of millions of dollars on them. 22:22 David Sirota And the thing is, whether those critics won or lost, that was the other thing that I thought. 22:27 Like, whether the crypto critics, Sherrod Brown, Katie Porter, whoever else, won or lost, it was the spectacle of the spending itself that was the point, is to say to every other senator, listen, you got a re-election in the next two years, four years? 22:41 You don't want us coming into your state. 22:43 And by the way, I didn't tell the end of the story of the crypto story. 22:45 Soon after the 2024 election, you saw 18 Democrats join with Republicans in 2025 in the Senate to vote through the crypto industry's big bill. 22:57 Like, that is a direct relationship there. 22:59 Chris Hayes Like, those senators saw that and responded. 23:02 And the other thing that I got a little texture to this, which I think you'll agree with, you know, having spent a lot of time around these folks and talked to them, 23:09 All of these industries have a lot of smart, persuasive people working for them who actually do make arguments to you, right? 23:17 So like, it's not just that they say, because people do have some self-respect, right? 23:23 And they do have some integrity. 23:24 So it's not just like they come in and they say, it's not just a mob thing. 23:28 be with us or else. 23:29 It's like, here, we've got this great white paper. 23:31 This guy's a Nobel economist or this, we're bringing this guy to talk to you about why this is actually good policy. 23:37 And they have access to you, spend a lot of time. 23:40 And these are, I gotta be, I've been on the other side. 23:42 They're genuinely persuasive people. 23:43 They're not idiots. 23:44 David Sirota Like, they know what they're doing. 23:46 Most politicians, 23:48 do not want to look in the mirror and be like, I sold out my constituents, right? 23:52 It's not like, I think of the scene in The Untouchables where that like city councilman walks in to try to, with literally an envelope of cash to try to like bribe Elliot Ness and Elliot Ness is like, get out of my office, right? 24:02 Like, it's because like, no politician wants to think they were bribed, but it's like, there's like a, here's the money. 24:09 Oh, and you can feel good about being with us, not just because you're helping yourself, you're helping your constituents. 24:16 It's sort of like an issue capture 24:18 I mean, I wrote about this in my first book that I ever wrote, which is called Hostile Takeover, which is the theory of the book was if you make sure that the choices in American politics, if you're an industry, are a set of choices, any of the choices that you like, you don't really have to be buying everybody all the time. 24:34 You just have to immerse them in your stuff. 24:40 Chris Hayes More of our conversation after this quick break. 25:24 You know, one of the things that's always interesting to me, like any case that gets up to the Supreme Court, if you read the briefs, they're both pretty persuasive. 25:31 Yes. 25:31 A lot of times there's like genuinely complex issues with incredibly smart, prepared people who are good at persuasive writing, making good cases. 25:38 So in all these places, there's some plausible case. 25:42 Right. 25:42 That you're being presented with. 25:43 So you've got the combination of like, if I cross them, I'm dead. 25:46 I've gotten a bunch of these briefings. 25:48 I got these white papers. 25:49 Also, they want to support me like all this kind of wraps around in this way that is very seamless. 25:55 David Sirota Yes. 25:55 I will say about the Supreme Court, I think the arguments are becoming you have to read them closely. 26:01 to really see where we're going. 26:03 I mean, you know, the metaphor of the frog in the boiling water, right, where the frog is sitting there, the water's getting hotter, it doesn't jump out even when it's boiling. 26:09 I mean, there's this case, an appeal at the Supreme Court to go back to this line of rulings about limiting corruption, where there was a corruption conviction in Ohio. 26:18 And actually, it's a Democrat who was pardoned by Donald Trump. 26:22 This is the first case where somebody who was pardoned 26:24 convicted on corruption, pardoned, is still appealing the conviction. 26:28 And what was fascinating in the briefing papers, and this is a case being represented by Trump's former solicitor general. 26:35 So there's a conservative movement around this case to try to elicit a ruling. 26:39 And the argument, I'm not making this up. 26:42 You reported on it on your TV show, the story of Donald Trump reportedly saying to the fossil fuel industry, give me a billion dollars and I will give you policy favors. 26:52 Right. 26:52 And the brief cites that not as proof that corruption laws need to be strengthened, but as proof that an aggressive prosecutor could end up prosecuting that kind of thing as quid pro quo and that we shouldn't allow that to happen because that would be out of control prosecution. 27:12 In other words, citing... 27:14 The system that you just described, citing I want a billion dollars, I'll give you policy favors, citing that as proof that corruption is so pervasive and normalized, it should no longer be seen by the high court as even prosecutable. 27:29 That's where we are. 27:31 And I cite that to say that's where we are. 27:34 But we don't have to be there. 27:36 And we haven't been there in most of our at least modern history. 27:41 So as normal as that may seem, as much as the water only seems to be warm and not boiling, like that's unprecedented. 27:49 Chris Hayes That's not where we have been in the past. 27:51 No. 27:51 And in fact, I'm old enough that I've watched this happen. 27:55 Right. 27:55 I mean, I like the concerns of the structural effect of money and politics now seem quainter and quainter. 28:02 Partly, I think there's something interesting about the shift from industries to billionaires. 28:07 Good point. 28:07 And that's not to say one is better than the other, but there's a kind of volatility and a true kind of 28:14 terminal stage feeling when it's just like six dudes are going to just make all the decisions. 28:21 Because at some level, to go back to the point I was making before, it's like it has always been in every country. 28:25 Like you read history and it's like, yeah, this industry is working their politicians about X. 28:30 Like that has been true. 28:31 And there's different ways to regulate that. 28:32 So you're limiting improper influence, right? 28:35 But allowing for proper influence. 28:37 But like the Musk spectacle to me felt like the kind of terminal endpoint of this. 28:42 David Sirota Yeah. 28:42 It's like when I think of the Gilded Age metaphor, the Gilded Age is like literally J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, and John Rockefeller, like three dudes who are like, if they wake up in the morning and they decide they want something, you know, something giant, like to change the whole country, they can essentially do that. 29:00 And like, we had a whole 20th century that was like, okay, that's not a great idea. 29:04 Crosstalk That's bad. 29:05 Yeah. 29:05 David Sirota So it's like one thing you have, like the banking industry or the, you know, the construction industry. 29:12 In theory, like there can be a lot of corruption there that's not good. 29:15 You're right. 29:15 It's like more it's more stable, predictable. 29:18 Chris Hayes Exactly. 29:18 It's more. 29:19 Yes, exactly. 29:19 It's more stable, predictable. 29:21 And it's closer to something that's genuinely democratic than just a few dudes. 29:26 Yes. 29:26 With their, you know, unlimited amounts of. 29:28 David Sirota Yeah, and the other thing is, I would argue that the height of the New Deal, the way that that era came about was there was countervailing forces. 29:36 There was industry, there was labor, right? 29:39 It wasn't just like a couple billionaires would wake up in the morning and be like, I want to just change the whole country. 29:43 And then like, I'll use this, right? 29:45 Like the countervailing power theory of an economy, of a society kind of breaks down 29:51 When the society has, you know, six or seven dudes twisting their mustaches, waking up on a given day and deciding to do whatever they want and using a deregulated campaign finance system to do that. 30:00 Chris Hayes I want to talk about the countervailing power because there's this kind of discourse that's emerged. 30:05 I'm really curious to hear your thoughts on it. 30:07 That's about small dollar donors. 30:09 Right. 30:10 Which is, you know, again, everyone needs money at this point. 30:12 So like no one's no one's like no one can really just step out of the system. 30:16 Right. 30:16 You got to raise money, right? 30:17 So you're going to have some big super PAC with big checks. 30:20 You're going to have big hard money checks of the kind of people that can write two, $3,000 checks. 30:24 And you can go to law firms and you can go. 30:25 And there's some power centers for Democrats, right? 30:29 That industries and power centers are some law firms you can go through and some people in Hollywood and other places. 30:34 And then there's some industries, right, which you will give to both sides. 30:38 There's also small dollar donors and small dollar donors have been in many ways kind of an amazing countervailing force, right? 30:44 Because, you know, AOC doesn't have to really worry about, you know, and she's rare. 30:51 She's, you know, she's kind of one-on-one in terms of her ability to raise that money. 30:54 But there's an argument on the other side, right? 30:56 Which is that in the same way that like donor dependence is distorting, if you're getting it from crypto, that it can be distorting for small dollar donors, right? 31:04 That, you know, at one level, the things you have to do, which is like, and you see this on the right a lot, right? 31:09 Like staged moments of controversy, right? 31:12 So that you can go raise money, but also that small dollar donors to the point you made about like, there's not that people who can write a thousand dollar check, right? 31:20 Like even the kinds of person that writes a $50 check are somewhat unrepresentative, right? 31:25 Of the electorate. 31:26 Like it is a different kind. 31:27 They're more tuned in. 31:28 They have stronger ideological commitments. 31:30 And then that has a distorting effect itself. 31:33 David Sirota Look, it's the phenomenon that's known, for instance, in media as audience capture. 31:38 Exactly, exactly. 31:39 Audience capture being that 31:41 If you are supported by hundreds, thousands of ideologically motivated grassroots donors, you are incentivized to constantly take a maximalist position on that particular set of ideas, regardless of whether the facts change, regardless of whether you need to make a compromise in a city council or a state legislature to get something done. 32:02 And yes, I think that is a tough thing to navigate. 32:07 I certainly wouldn't argue that small dollar donations are more 32:11 or distortive or worse than large because you can be audience captured by big donors. 32:16 Chris Hayes No, if you have to choose between the two. 32:17 David Sirota For sure. 32:18 Chris Hayes Right, yeah. 32:18 Right. 32:19 David Sirota And I look to what they have built in New York City. 32:22 And I say, if you're looking for something, if you're worried about endemic corruption and you're looking for a takeaway from the New York City mayor's race, and there's been a lot of, you know, is it his charisma? 32:33 Is it his slick ads? 32:34 Was it his message? 32:36 I think all those factors were important. 32:38 But the only, in my mind, 32:39 The only way there's been a competitive Zoran Mamdani campaign for mayor is because New York, after a corruption scandal in the late 1980s, created a public financing system of campaigns that now has been expanded to match every one small dollar donation, one dollar of a small dollar donation with eight dollars of public money up to a certain point. 33:00 which has allowed a candidate like Mamdani to not outspend his opponents, but at least run a competitive campaign with all of that oligarch money coming at him. 33:11 Running Zoran Mamdani's campaign against the oligarchy in that city, against billionaires, without a public financing system, I don't think there is a campaign. 33:20 Yeah, I think it's much, much harder. 33:22 Like, you're not going to be able, where are you going to raise the money? 33:24 Chris Hayes Yeah. 33:25 Where are you going to get the attention? 33:26 How are you going to even get people to hear your message? 33:28 And one of the things that's interesting, too, about the New York City system, right, which has increased that matching, you know, year after year, is that because, like, where there's a will, there's a way, corruption will always find a way, right? 33:39 We've also had this series of, like, minor scandals of straw donations, right? 33:43 So there's been a bunch of people who get fake donors, basically, so they can get the matching funds. 33:48 But the reason I bring this up is there's no foolproof system. 33:51 Right. 33:51 But also, those have been caught and prosecuted. 33:54 Yes. 33:55 Which gets us back to the- It worked. 33:56 Right. 33:57 Well, this gets us back to the craziness of what the court is doing. 34:00 Because the point is, if any system you set up is going to have holes, any system is going to have load poles, there is going to be efforts to find ways around it. 34:09 There's going to be people who are pushing the envelope. 34:11 They're in the gray area. 34:12 They're coming very close to quid pro quo. 34:14 They're not. 34:14 They're coming up with straw donors to kind of manipulate what I think is a good system of public financing. 34:19 There's got to be some enforcement at some point, right? 34:22 There's got to be like someone bringing cases saying like that is over the line. 34:27 And one of the craziest things that's happening in the court is just case after case after case saying you can't do that. 34:34 That's not criminal. 34:35 That's not criminal. 34:36 No matter how far the envelope is pushed, if you don't have some kind of enforcement mechanism, it doesn't even matter what the system is, right? 34:42 Like you're essentially in just the Wild West. 34:45 And I think we have to ask the question, who wants that? 34:48 David Sirota Who does want that? 34:49 And I think there's an answer to that. 34:51 And I go back to, again, let me go back to the 1970s. 34:55 I'll put people in the moment. 34:57 1971, you've got Ralph Nader is like winning big things in Congress, consumer safety, the auto companies, food safety, et cetera, et cetera. 35:06 He's profiled in Fortune magazine, and it really, really pisses off 35:12 this tobacco lawyer, Lewis Powell. 35:14 And Lewis Powell writes this now famous or infamous, depending on- The Powell Memo. 35:18 Yeah, the Powell Memo, which basically urges corporate America oligarchs to invest seriously in politics and media because Ralph Nader and the Naderites represent a threat to free market capitalism. 35:30 And what we unearth in our book is sort of some of the most powerful people in the country get together, create a secret Powell memo task force at the Chamber of Commerce to begin implementing this in all sorts of ways. 35:42 And Powell, I should mention, soon after gets on the Supreme Court and is in a position to execute on his master plan, helping engineer first a radical court ruling that says money in politics is not corruption or influence. 35:53 Money in politics is constitutionally protected speech. 35:56 Then Powell works behind the scenes on a relatively obscure case from Massachusetts saying corporations now have access to those same constitutional rights to buy elections. 36:06 Powell is then succeeded by Anthony Kennedy, who writes Citizens United. 36:10 And so it goes. 36:10 But the reason I bring this up is because who wants... 36:14 corruption to be legal is the big question. 36:17 And I think when you take it all together, what you see is this is actually the democracy crisis, meaning in a functioning one person, one vote democracy, corporate America and the oligarchy realized the government was going to do things that reduce the wealth and concentrated power of corporate America and oligarchs. 36:39 And they didn't like that. 36:41 And they realized that 36:42 they needed a way to short circuit that democratic, small d democratic process. 36:49 And so that's why one of their top agenda items was deregulating the campaign finance system and narrowing the anti-bribery laws because that allows a kind of $1 one vote situation. 37:02 That allows them to short circuit that link between what the public wants and what the government does. 37:09 Chris Hayes One of the things I think is interesting is the trajectory of the Powell movement, to call it that, right, or plan. 37:16 It had a bunch of different channels, you know, and you and I have over the years reported on this and looked at this, right? 37:21 There was all this money that started to flow to think tanks and it flowed into conservative publications and it flowed into, you know, making the case, you know, for not just like the thing I was saying before about the crypto people, right? 37:32 They're not just giving money, they're making a case. 37:34 One of the things that's so interesting to me is how bankrupt that entire intellectual project feels right now, even as it's winning... 37:43 like its biggest victories. 37:45 You know what I mean? 37:45 Like it's really notable to me how little, I mean, Trump never talks about free markets or like all of the kind of language that exists in the Powell memo, which is both a reflection of a set of material interests and a sincere ideological commitment that fit together, right? 38:02 Like they both believe in it and it benefits them, right? 38:05 And a whole generation of people that were capable on the right, particularly or at the US Chamber of Commerce, of a language, Reagan, right, of making arguments to the public about why, like, minimal regulation is better than a lot of it. 38:18 It's so wild to me how Trump doesn't do that. 38:22 Right. 38:22 And how and how and how contemporary Republicans have kind of just given up and how the public doesn't really believe in free markets anymore. 38:30 Like all of that stuff that was there, even in a Romney campaign in 2012 or a Ryan, you know, Paul Ryan, it's just absent now. 38:38 It feels like it's just pure power politics, pure transactionalism, pure pay to play. 38:46 And no one's like convinced one way or the other the way that it used to feel like people were right. 38:50 Like it really used to feel like we were having a debate about because it's true, like some regulations can be bad. 38:55 And, you know, there are two sides to all these questions. 38:57 And it used to feel like you were debating it. 38:59 Do you feel that way? 39:00 Like, it's so striking me how there's nothing being debated anymore. 39:03 David Sirota Nothing's being argued really on the merits at all. 39:06 Chris Hayes Nothing's being argued. 39:08 Like I covered Washington for a living. 39:10 No one's making arguments. 39:11 David Sirota No, no one's making arguments. 39:12 But here's the thing. 39:13 I mean, maybe I'm an eternal optimist and I'm crazy, but I actually think, assuming there is something beyond a sort of Trump MAGA era, 39:22 or arguably even inside of a Trump MAGA era, it opens up the possibility of a new set of arguments. 39:30 In other words, if that side has stopped making an argument- They have stopped. 39:35 Which they have. 39:36 Yes. 39:36 And they've actually opened up inadvertently a space for different arguments about whether the market should be regulated, how it should be regulated, whether we should care about sort of Reaganist free market rhetoric and ideology. 39:49 It means there's an opening- 39:50 for a different kind of argument. 39:52 So all that is to say is I do think in the political realm that there's a case to be made that in Donald Trump's behavior and MAGA's behavior and corruption being so explicit, it creates the potential for a kind of reaction that is far stronger than just a kind of, you know, antebellum, if you will, like move back to the old normal reaction. 40:17 Right. 40:17 I guess what I'm saying is, it's like, I'll use AOC as a proxy. 40:20 Like, does Donald Trump actually create a more realistic path for the politics of Bernie and AOC to actually be realized at the national level rather than just a politics that moves back to sort of the normal center of the Democratic? 40:36 I think it does. 40:41 Chris Hayes More of our conversation after this quick break. 41:26 Well, I mean, I think to go back to the Watergate example where we started, I mean, we need more than post-Watergate reforms. 41:32 But in that case, you know, there really was a lot of stuff that happened. 41:35 Yes. 41:35 And across a range, right? 41:36 Because a whole bunch of stuff got blown up. 41:38 Like, at the same time, like, all of the, like, COINTELPRO and J. Edgar Hoover stuff and the CIA and, you know, and we had the church committee and we had... 41:46 I mean, enormous amount of reform legislation, the Foreign Intelligence Service Surveillance Act, like all this stuff is getting passed sort of in response to what's being revealed. 41:54 You know, we obviously need some era of profound reform if we come out the other side with like something that looks like an intact democracy. 42:03 And I do think everyone's on the same page about that broadly. 42:06 I mean, the other thing I think to your point about the space that's opened up, like I think that neoliberalism and 42:13 The intellectual project, to the extent there was an intellectual aspect of the Powell memo and Milton Friedman and Reaganism and Thatcher, is a dead project intellectually right now. 42:23 And rhetorically, just in the discourse of American life. 42:26 Like, no one talks about it. 42:28 Like, no one's defending it. 42:29 Donald Trump doesn't even pretend to defend it. 42:32 I mean, the guy's slapping tariffs on every night and day. 42:36 David Sirota Well, I do think the next era, I think one question is whether one of the reactions to Trumpism— 42:42 is a kind of, frankly, it could come from Democrats, it could come from Republicans. 42:46 It could be like an attempt to make the reaction a kind of return to Reaganism. 42:52 It wouldn't be called that. 42:53 But I think some of the Democratic response, as an example, to the tariffs. 42:57 Now, I want to be clear. 42:58 Trump's, the way he's using tariffs is super destructive, not well thought out, not constructive, et cetera, et cetera. 43:05 But I think some of the reaction, the initial reaction to the Trump tariffs from the Democrats was they sort of floated a kind of like free trade, like let's go back to NAFTA. 43:16 And I think that will be trial ballooned. 43:18 But I don't think that's really the way forward. 43:20 Chris Hayes I agree with you. 43:21 Although it's funny because I have found myself, right? 43:24 Like I went back and was looking at the parts of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, which, by the way, is a very misunderstood book, which is like. 43:29 Yes, it is. 43:30 a much more politically sophisticated book than its sort of reductivist idea. 43:34 But, you know, one of the things he's talking about, it's a critique of mercantilism, is that mercantilism is corrupt. 43:39 Like, the idea that the king or whoever unilaterally slaps tariff on, you know, the industries that are on the wrong or right side of it come to him, and you're seeing, like, the nexus of that. 43:51 Like, 43:51 David Sirota I mean, there was that study. 43:52 Do you see that? 43:52 There was that study of the first term in the Trump administration with his tariffs, where the companies that gave the Republicans money, they were the ones that got more of the tariff relief. 44:02 It's a tool of corruption. 44:03 So I agree with you that the neoliberal project, as we understand it, is a dead end. 44:08 The question of what comes next, I think that's the big question. 44:11 And I wrote a piece for The Bulwark about how I really do think 44:16 that a kind of McCain lane, as I called it, is a possible lane for somebody in the Democratic Party in specific right now. 44:25 And by that, I mean. 44:26 Chris Hayes Particularly for centrists, I think. 44:28 Honestly, like. 44:28 I agree. 44:29 I think the McCain lane, like, because there's all this conversation right now. 44:32 And I think, you know, this conversation. 44:33 Yeah, we're talking about an anti-corruption lane, to be clear. 44:35 And anti-corruption lane, and the reason I say for Central, what I mean by that and what I think is important is there's all this discussion right now about Democrats and big tent and moving the center. 44:44 And one of the things I think everyone agrees on, right? 44:47 Everyone who's got any sense is like, you're not going to run Zora Mamdani for the Senate race in Iowa. 44:53 We all get that. 44:54 Everyone understands, right? 44:55 Right. 44:56 Of course. 44:56 You got to try to win Iowa. 44:57 Like, what's a Democrat in Iowa going to sound and look like? 45:00 They're going to be different than AOC. 45:02 And we all get that. 45:03 Now, the rubber hits the road in, like, real substantive stuff, right? 45:06 Like, what are they going to say about Iowa trans kids in sports? 45:11 It's not an easy question, right? 45:12 The polling's one way. 45:13 Like, those are difficult things. 45:15 But what can they do to distinguish themselves from 45:19 In an electorate that is a plus five or six R electorate, from the kinds of caricatures of Democrats that the voters they need to win don't like, that also isn't just beating up on 16-year-old trans kids that want to play sports and immigrants. 45:34 David Sirota That's right. 45:34 Chris Hayes Someone's got to come up with something. 45:36 Right. 45:36 David Sirota And like, I mean, it's not going to like, I mean, they try, you know, is it John Kerry with the rifle on the duck hunt? 45:42 Like that didn't really work. 45:43 Right. 45:44 Like, so I would argue that, again, you and I are old enough to remember this. 45:48 In 1999, 2000, John McCain runs for president as Mr. Anti-Corruption. 45:54 And it's important to understand that John McCain was singed by a massive corruption scandal. 45:59 Yes. 46:00 Although it's a corruption scandal, unfortunately, that now seems quaint. 46:03 Chris Hayes Unbelievably quite. 46:04 I actually was. 46:04 It's like cute, right? 46:05 It's like the Keating Five scandal is like cute. 46:07 He like met with some people who gave him donations. 46:12 David Sirota Right. 46:12 It was like a donor came to him and was like, hey, this regulators, you know, up in my face. 46:16 Can you help you and my and the people I've donated to push this regulator away? 46:19 They had like one or two meetings. 46:21 Huge corruption scandal. 46:23 John McCain comes to the anti-corruption cause with the zeal of a convert. 46:28 Maybe you could argue he did it to sort of politically protect himself. 46:30 That doesn't really matter. 46:31 I mean, politicians are opportunists. 46:33 He comes to this anti-corruption cause and he runs for president. 46:37 And for a brief moment, it was like he might actually win the Republican nomination against Mr. Big Money, George W. Bush. 46:44 His campaign is so popular and successful that George W. Bush, after being elected, has to reluctantly sign the McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill. 46:54 I bring this up to say that that was a time where sort of soft money corruption was endemic. 47:01 I mean, it was actually arguably on corruption, like explicit corruption. 47:05 It was actually a little bit of a better time. 47:07 Like people weren't as flagrant as Donald Trump is being. 47:09 And yet- 47:10 I say that because McCain was able to elevate that to a really national cause and a national level. 47:17 And the key is that he was able to do it because he talked about the whole system. 47:21 He wasn't just talking about, you know, Clinton in the Lincoln bedroom. 47:24 He made it a sort of systemic my party, the other party critique, which gave him authenticity. 47:30 And I really genuinely believe there's a lane for a Democrat to speak honestly about this. 47:35 This is why in the piece I wrote, you know, I was really struck by John Ossoff. 47:40 the Georgia senator. 47:41 He was on Pod Save America. 47:43 And look, I don't agree with everything that John Ossoff has done. 47:45 And, you know, he was one of the senators who voted for crypto. 47:48 But what was striking to me was he was on Pod Save America. 47:50 He's talking to a liberal audience that's used to hearing that every problem is Donald Trump. 47:55 And I'm paraphrasing here, but Ossoff basically said, look, the problem is billionaire and corporate money. 48:00 And that's going to continue to be the problem with or without Trump being here. 48:06 And it was slightly discordant in the sense of the Democrats are constantly saying it's Trump, it's Trump, it's Trump. 48:11 And look, it is Trump. 48:12 But Ossoff is actually making, he was making a much more systemic argument. 48:18 And he was also, by the way, making clear, here's how corruption hurts you, right? 48:22 Like the corruption is why your healthcare bills are higher. 48:25 That to me is a very, very active lane in 2026 and 2028. 48:31 Chris Hayes Yeah, I go back and forth on this because one of the things I've, I think you're, there's a weird, when you say, you use the word discordant, like there's a strange thing right now I find with corruption, which is like, there's a ubiquity to people's perception of it that itself has inured, in your words, people to it, right? 48:46 And so the flagrant way that Trump is going about it, like Palantir gave me money for my golden ballroom. 48:55 Like my son is on the board of a drone company that just got a Pentagon contract. 49:00 It's like, what are you talking about? 49:03 Like, it's like we're living in a political cartoon. 49:05 I mean, it really is. 49:05 We're like inside the cartoon. 49:07 And so that doesn't seem to cut through. 49:10 But these broader messages do. 49:12 If you pull like the Stock Act is a great example, which again, like at some level, I mean, it's a good piece of legislation I would vote for. 49:19 It doesn't quite get at the issue. 49:21 But for some reason, it's not. 49:22 The Stock Act bans personal stock trading by members of Congress, which, by the way, like I don't trade individual stocks as a journalist because I think it's not ethical. 49:30 It's like crazy to me. 49:32 I mean, I don't trade individual stocks because it's like it's like a casino unless you got inside information. 49:36 Yeah. 49:37 What am I doing? 49:37 Right. 49:37 Yes. 49:38 Right. 49:39 But but I also don't make like in our own finding, like there's a there's a basket of things. 49:44 That sits there. 49:45 I don't touch it. 49:45 And there are times where, like, I know something because I'm not even, like, private information. 49:50 Just, like, I'm really read in on this. 49:52 Like, you could, you know, or you could go into the betting markets on an election and, you know, buy Mamdani at 40 cents when he was, you know, when he was, like, that would be crazy for me to do. 50:02 That would be wildly unethical. 50:03 So people really like the Stock Act to ban congressional stock trading. 50:07 It pulls at, like, 75%. 50:09 AOC and a bunch of Republicans and Democrats are like on it. 50:12 I don't think that's the real corruption issue. 50:15 No. 50:16 But the reason I'm saying all this is at the same time that people say in order to Trump, that polls higher than almost anything in Congress, making your point that like there's some space for that message. 50:28 That is also a space that is a little orthogonal to the normal left-right access. 50:34 Crosstalk Yes. 50:35 Chris Hayes That is extremely important for a Democratic Party that does need to break out of that access to expand its appeal in places where it's been having a hard time winning. 50:45 David Sirota And the thing is, we're talking right now at a moment, and this is going to blow people's minds. 50:49 We're talking at a moment where the most recent Reuters poll shows that the Republicans have a, I think it was a six or seven point lead on who do you trust in 51:00 to combat corruption. 51:02 Chris Hayes I saw that. 51:03 Okay. 51:03 That was one of those polls that really made me feel like giving up. 51:07 I was just like, what am I even doing? 51:10 David Sirota Same thing, man. 51:11 I'm like, wait, we're putting out a book called The Master Plan that I didn't plot to legalize corruption. 51:15 And like Donald Trump's party is winning this debate. 51:17 And just to make it really bad, the last poll before the 2016 election, the Democrats were winning on basically every issue except for one. 51:25 Except for corruption. 51:26 Corruption. 51:26 Yep. 51:27 Now, you can argue, OK, well, people define corruption differently. 51:29 And what does it mean? 51:30 Like George Soros, is that like the Republicans are taught that George Soros is corruption? 51:34 Yeah. 51:34 But clearly it's about like money has power and the public thinks that's, you know, disproportionate power and public thinks that's bad. 51:42 And they trust Republicans more than Democrats. 51:44 OK, so that so. 51:45 I would argue not only is there a lane, there's a necessity if you don't want to see the continuation of the MAGA movement. 51:53 I agree with you. 51:54 Part of the problem with the sort of, I don't want to call it small board because the Stock Act is important, right? 52:00 The make dark money more transparent is definitely- It is, yeah. 52:03 They're all important. 52:04 But it's kind of like you've got to actually go to what is affecting human beings today. 52:12 in their daily life now. 52:14 That's why I go back to, Ossoff gave a separate speech where he was like, corruption is the reason your healthcare bill is high. 52:21 Corruption is the reason your rent is high and that when you call your landlord, you know, you can't get them to fix your gas stove or whatever. 52:29 It's the reason Congress doesn't, not only doesn't do anything about this, but that Congress is often on the side of the industries and the billionaires who are harming you directly. 52:42 And additionally, it's corruption on all sides, both sides. 52:46 We are all players in this corrupt game. 52:50 I think that argument, that is where 52:53 there can be salience. 52:55 The reason why the stock act or make dark money transparent has less salience, although they're important is because it's like, I feel like the average person's like, I'm struggling to get by. 53:06 Like the politicians are there, they're like messing around and they're, they're corrupt over there. 53:10 But like, I'm really worried about paying my bills. 53:12 And like that stuff over there is like, fine, they're getting rich and I hate that. 53:15 But like, what's really making me mad is like, I can't pay my bills. 53:18 Yeah. 53:18 now, oh, wait a minute, I can't pay my bills because some industry or billionaire gave my congressman, my senator, or the president lots of money, and that's literally why I'm being fleeced? 53:29 Yeah. 53:29 Chris Hayes Like, that's a different argument. 53:31 Yeah, and I think Ossoff, again, independent of what one thinks of his politics or voting record, like, 53:36 It's a guy who won a hard contest in like people that have won those kinds of races to me have like a real elevated level of credibility on the like what Dems should do question as opposed to like me or someone random person on Twitter. 53:50 David Sirota I want to be clear because I'm going to get a bunch of emails being like you're saying John Ossoff is like the president. 53:54 I'm not saying that. 53:55 No, no. 53:55 But you're right. 53:56 No, no. 53:56 The point is that like, it's really hard. 53:59 Chris Hayes Like, I go to like, there are certain people where I'm like, hey, I'm willing to like, listen to what you think about how this all works because you've had to do it. 54:06 I haven't. 54:07 And I do think there's really something to that. 54:09 The McCain example, particularly, I mean, to add one more detail to what you were saying. 54:13 he had the highest favorability rating of any politician in America for years. 54:17 Years. 54:17 I mean, you know, he lost that 08 race because I think it was sort of after the war and that had changed a lot. 54:23 But in that period, 99, 2000, like, he was the most popular politician in America. 54:29 David Sirota And I think... 54:29 the sort of the structural nature of the Republican primaries. 54:32 Once he hit South Carolina, it was basically over. 54:34 But if you remember, he was winning the states that had the open primaries. 54:38 So the independent vote was like huge for him. 54:42 And I just think like you look at that model and you say, 54:46 That is where the Democrats need to go. 54:48 And by the way, Chris Murphy, the senator from Connecticut, he had said something recently. 54:52 He had said something to the effect of, you know, the Democrats, we used to talk all the time about systemic corruption, campaign finance reform. 54:58 And we just sort of stopped talking about that for the last 10 years. 55:01 Chris Hayes Well, let me say one last thing before we go, because I think, is there anything you can do with this court, right? 55:08 I mean, part of the reason I think they stopped talking about it is like, 55:10 The court is unilaterally dismantling everything. 55:13 They find some new constitutional right to be corrupt. 55:15 So like you could spend a lot of time passing some new McCain-Feingold. 55:19 So I do think that's a big part of the reason, right? 55:21 What can you do with this court? 55:23 That's a great question. 55:24 David Sirota Okay, so I think there's a lot you can do. 55:26 One, in the Citizens United ruling itself, 55:29 It talks a lot about how disclosure is good. 55:32 So absolute minimum, what you can do is what the state of Arizona did at its ballot. 55:37 70 plus percent of people voted to force and require dark money disclosure of spending by anonymous donors to be disclosed. 55:45 Now that's being argued in state court right now. 55:48 Of course. 55:48 Yeah. 55:49 And it'll be challenged. 55:50 But the Supreme Court really was like crazy clear about that. 55:54 Now, I say all of this stipulating the fact that the Supreme Court has not had much respect for its own precedents. 56:00 So I just want to overlay all this with the idea that, yes, it's possible that the Supreme Court can wake up. 56:05 Yeah. 56:05 in the future and dismantle everything that the Supreme Court has already said. 56:09 But I don't think that should preclude action here in the present for future theories. 56:15 The second thing that can be done is what's happening in Montana. 56:19 So in Montana, luminaries of both parties are pushing a ballot measure, which basically stipulates that the Supreme Court's ruling on most of this stuff is predicated on state laws that treat corporations as people. 56:34 Now, without going into the whole history of it, state laws didn't always used to do that. 56:40 There was a long race to the bottom about 100 years ago where states were competing for corporations. 56:45 And they basically said, okay, fine. 56:47 The ultimate bottom is corporations are humans. 56:49 But the Supreme Court has consistently upheld the idea that states grant powers to corporations. 56:55 Corporations are artificial entities created by the states. 56:59 And if states are treating corporations as people, then we will rule on these issues as if corporations are people. 57:06 But again, it's all balanced on the idea that states are the ones treating corporations as people. 57:11 So in Montana, what they are proposing, and they're 57:15 The idea that the state will grant its corporations all the powers to do all the business that they do except for one power. 57:21 They cannot spend in elections. 57:23 And here's the beauty of this idea. 57:25 It's not just for the corporations headquartered in Montana. 57:29 It's for corporations also operating in Montana. 57:32 So it's not going to solve the problem in California or all the other states. 57:37 But it arguably helps start solving the problem of corporate spending and elections inside of Montana. 57:45 Other states, blue states, for instance, can start passing this in their legislatures. 57:50 And the thing is, what's really interesting about this is if it gets to the Supreme Court, if it passes, gets to the Supreme Court, 57:56 The Supreme Court would have to kind of dismantle all of this corporate law that it really doesn't want to dismantle. 58:04 It's really interesting. 58:05 To deal with this, right? 58:07 So that's another thing that can be done. 58:09 And then again, I go back to New York. 58:12 If you're listening to this and you think that corruption is endemic in your state, in your city, in your town, New York has a public financing system. 58:19 14 states, 26 localities have some versions of public campaign financing systems. 58:25 They can be expanded. 58:26 They can be built upon. 58:27 They can be created in places that they aren't created yet. 58:31 California. 58:32 has a ballot measure on its ballot, just referred by Gavin Newsom's past in the legislature, to end the ban. 58:38 I mean, it's kind of shocking that there is a ban. 58:40 A ban on localities in California doing public financing. 58:44 So, look, that's a long road. 58:45 Yeah. 58:46 I get it. 58:46 But that's a lot of stuff. 58:47 But that's a real thing. 58:48 Yeah. 58:49 And I just want to add, you asked about the court. 58:51 The Supreme Court 58:52 has consistently said that public financing of campaigns is fine. 58:56 Now, it limited one piece of Arizona's public financing system, the part that was going to give matching funds if a millionaire or billionaire went over the limits. 59:04 But even in that ruling, it was like public campaign financing systems were not questioning whether they can exist or not. 59:10 So those are like three areas that, again, I just want to reiterate this. 59:15 Yes, in some future, the Roberts court or the Donald Trump Jr. court or whatever might just say, nothing that we've said ever matters. 59:24 But that can't be a rationale to not do things here in the present. 59:28 Chris Hayes David Sirota is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Lever. 59:30 He has been in this game for more than a minute. 59:34 I've known him since I was, what, 25, 26? 59:36 He's an author of The Master Plan, The Hidden Plot to Legalize Corruption, and America's co-author is Jared Jakang Mayer. 59:43 David, it was great to have you on. 59:44 Thank you. 59:45 Thanks so much for having me, Chris. 59:50 You can get in touch with us by emailing withpod at gmail.com. 59:54 Why Is This Happening? 59:55 is produced by Donnie Holloway and Brendan Omelia. 59:58 Engineered by Greg Devins and Hazik bin Ahmad Farad. 60:01 Katie Lau is our Senior Manager for Audio Production. 60:04 Joanne Kong is our Associate Producer for Video. 60:07 Our Coordinating Producer is Frannie Kelly. 60:09 Aisha Turner is the Executive Producer for MSNOW Audio. 60:12 New episodes come out every Tuesday. 60:14 You can watch us on YouTube by going to ms.now slash withpod.