At SXSW, Warren Joins Kara Swisher to Discuss “Fighting Like Hell” Against Trump, Musk & Big Tech Billionaires
Podcast Episode (Apple Podcasts)
Austin, Texas – U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) joined journalist Kara Swisher for an episode of podcast On with Kara Swisher at the 2025 South by Southwest Conference. Senator Warren discussed her take on the first six weeks of the second Trump presidency, Donald Trump’s and Elon Musk's plans to shutter the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the tax fight in Congress, and more.
Their conversation is available here and a transcript is available below.
Transcript: On with Kara Swisher
SXSW, Live with Kara Swisher
March 8, 2025
Kara Swisher, On with Kara Swisher: Hi, everyone from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is On with Kara Swisher and I'm Kara Swisher. My guest today is the senior senator from Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren.
Warren is a former law professor and one of the progressive warriors of the Democratic Party, known especially for fighting for consumer protections and holding big tech accountable. I've interviewed her a couple of times back in 2015 at Code with Walt Mossberg, where she swore she wasn't gonna run for president, which she did, of course, in 2020. And in 2022 on Sway when she talked about that bid and her next steps.
I spoke to Warren last Saturday at the Vox Media Podcast Stage at South by Southwest, presented by Smartsheet. She's widely credited with the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, an independent agency that has basically been shuttered by President Trump and Elon Musk's DOGE. She's also currently the top Democrat on the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.
So I wanted to get her take on what's happening at the CFPB, on the rollback of litigation against FinTech and Trump's latest executive order, putting in place a new crypto reserve. And of course, on the billionaires she's been battling for ages, who are now bending the knee and getting a lot in return. As one of the party leaders who keeps telling Americans that Democrats are going to fight like hell, I wanted to hear more about when we should expect that fight to start and what tools Democrats have left.
It was a great and lively conversation. Have a listen.
KS: Senator Warren, thanks for joining us for this conversation on the Vox Media Podcast Stage at South by Southwest, presented by Smartsheet and for the live episode of On with Kara Swisher. So we last sat down in 2022, and before that, you appeared at a Code Conference many years before. It's a very different time right now, and we're gonna get into it, but all I remember thinking is, we talked about a lot of stuff in 2022, but in the first appearance you came to Code, I have never seen tech people respond to someone like they responded to you, and not in a good way.
When I was in the room, I could feel – it was mostly men, as you know – you could feel their balls doing this, the noise, there was a noise. And I tried to figure out why they didn't like you, and I was trying to figure it out for lots of reasons, and I finally, they were giving me all kinds of theories, and my theory was, you were a professor of theirs in college who gave them a D they completely deserved.
Senator Elizabeth Warren: Actually, I think it might have been grade inflation, but I'll go with that.
KS: Yeah, right, right, it was an F, but it was a D. Right now, though, the tech people have shifted rather dramatically towards Donald Trump, and while I think they disagreed with you, they fear Trump, most of them, in many ways. Either they suck up to Trump and like it, or else they fear him.
I'd like you to sort of give a sense of what's happening right now. Many of the programs you've championed, including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the CHIPS Act, antitrust are under scrutiny, under attack. I want first your 30,000-foot view with this idea of these tech people being with them, and at the same time, we'll drill down to the others, but where are we right at this moment?
EW: So here's how I think of the world. The world is tilted, it's rigged, and it is rigged in favor of really rich people, and pretty much against everybody else. And that is a problem, partly if you're everybody else, and trying to put something together, trying to launch your own business, or trying to work and put together a budget, make it going forward.
And that the real struggle that's going on, and I mean it a big way right now, is which way is our country going to go? And this is what co-presidents Elon Musk and Donald Trump have really put on the table. And that is, are we really going to be a country that just hands it all over to the billionaires, a handful of people with power, and says, you guys run this country however you want, and the rest of us will just pick up whatever you leave behind, and we'll try to make something out of it?
Or, are we actually going to say, “No, we're going to fight this thing back again,” and we're going to say “There's just a core set of rules here, in this country, that are about leveling the playing field.” That doesn't mean you're necessarily going to make it. It doesn't mean that you can't make some dumb decisions and bet on bad businesses.
But the real point is, you've got a fighting chance because the playing field is fundamentally open and level.
KS: This is something you and I have been talking about for years and years. This is not a new, fresh thing. But what has changed now?
I mean, it may be out of whack, but is it more out of whack?
EW: It has now just gone into hyperspace, because the co-presidents have just decided there is no power down at the level of the people. There is no power. Look at the Constitution.
Can we do Constitutional Law 101? I promise just for a half a minute.
KS: OK.
EW: OK. But look at the Constitution. It says Congress writes the laws, passes them into law, those are the statutes.
The administration actually administers those laws, and the courts let anybody know if they get out of line and tells the administration either that they can't do certain things or they must do certain things. That's just the deal. That's the basic setup.
And what's happened now is that Donald Trump and Elon Musk together have come in and said, “The Constitution is so yesterday. Statutory law, not worried about that. We will get rid of agencies that we don't care about.”
So what they've done is they've put us into crisis. And here's where the trick comes in. It's not just they're saying out in front in big words, “Yeah, we want to give everything to the billionaires. We want to do tax cuts for giant billionaires. And then take it out of the hides of everybody else in this country.” It's that they're not saying that out loud.
They're driving in that direction while they create a sandstorm over renaming the Gulf of Mexico and buying Greenland and annexing Canada and playing red light, green light with tariffs with Mexico and Canada. So all of these, but lots and lots and lots of noise, Elon prancing around with a chainsaw, that all of that is a way to say if you can create enough sand, then maybe one of two things will happen: People will just get focused on one little part, or people will just shut down and curl into a little ball, and just you guys go do what you want to do.
They will execute on the handover of our nation to just a few billionaires, and we could lose the whole thing.
KS: Let's start with President Trump's address to Congress on Tuesday. The camera panned to you several times during the speech. I don't know if you noticed.
You were often furiously typing on your phone by the way.
EW: Yes, I was.
KS: I'm curious, what were you typing?
EW: Just making notes.
KS: What were you doing? What were you typing?
EW: Actually, I was. Occasionally, people that I work with, sometimes a few other senators, say things like, “What an amazing point,” or “Those are not the facts I'd heard.”
So we were doing a little bit of that.
KS: A little bit of that. So he complained at the beginning of this speech that Democrats wouldn't clap for anything he said. But you clapped quite loudly when he was talking about the funding of war in Ukraine.
And you kept going when he singled you out with his derogatory nickname for you, which is Pocahontas, which is bad. You reacted, I thought, pretty well to that.
EW: Yeah.
KS: And Elon calls you Karen, correct?
EW: Yes.
KS: I call him Space Karen, but go ahead.
EW: You know, I think that the idea of the United States withdrawing its support from Ukraine is obscene.
The Ukrainians are on the front lines, fighting for the survival of their nation. They are fighting for democracy. They're fighting for democracy for their country.
They're fighting for the survival of Western Europe. Frankly, they're fighting for our own ability to defend against Putin, against an aggressor. It's just very straightforward from my point of view.
I've been to Ukraine, I've visited. I visited personally with President Zelensky multiple times. These are people who have taken on an heroic fight, and they have fought it with a diligence and a persistence and a determination that is an inspiration to the world.
I listened to Donald Trump. I really did. I listened to every word, and I was perfectly willing to applaud.
When he said, “The United States has given–” I forgot the exact words, but great support to Ukraine, you bet I applauded. And I kept right on applauding, because I believed it is the right thing to do. He doesn't like that.
He wants to turn around. You know, he's like all small, soft men. He thinks that if he calls you a name, boy, has he shown you.
And for me, that's just not what this is about. If I have the opportunity to say once and twice and three times over that the United States should stand with Ukraine against Vladimir Putin, I'll do it and he can call me whatever he wants.
KS: Would you like a new nickname?
EW: You know, the bottom line is, I just don't care. Come on. Did anyone ever meet a bully back in seventh grade?
That's who these guys are and I think the thing that scares these guys the most, most of all, is not whether or not you're the most clever or the most whatever. It's whether or not you'll bend the knee. They want everyone to bend the knee.
They want everybody in this country to bend the knee. They want the billionaires to come and bend the knee.
KS: They've done that.
EW: Yeah, they have. They want the leaders all around the world to come and bend the knee. And if you're somebody who's not going to bend the knee, that's actually a real threat to a bully.
Here's the best part. I just did a rally over in, on the state capitol grounds here in Austin, Texas, woohoo! And I asked them if they were ready to bend the knee and not a one said they were going to bend the knee.
They are in this fight all the way. And I think that matters.
KS: So when you think about the different things he's doing, let's talk about some of them. Trump talked about new tariffs against Canada and Mexico, which he keeps turning off and on, as you said.
EW: Red light, green light.
KS: Now, you said tariffs can be a valuable tool to protect certain industries.
And President Biden kept some of the Trump tariffs against Chinese products. Talk about where they could be useful. And what's your main critique of tariffs right now or the way he's applying them?
Some companies said they've already planned to raise prices in response. The stock market took a plunge. What is the use of them and what economic outcome are you anticipating right now?
EW: So, tariffs are a part of the economic toolbox available to our country. And so, for example, if you're trying to get a little growing industry, trying to get it up and going, you might need a tariff to protect it from giant competitors overseas. If you're trying to onshore a supply chain that is entirely located overseas, in order to get people to make that investment and to get that up and running, you might need a tariff for protection.
That's what it means in order to give something. You might do it sometimes to protect some jobs, some critical skills here at home. It's targeted.
It has a specific goal, and you're aiming it in places where it makes sense to aim it. A tariff on maple syrup kind of feels to me like you just sprayed the whole thing, and all you're doing is not just driving up the cost of pancakes, or a pancake breakfast. What you're really doing is you're opening the door to say to every corporation, now's the time to start raising prices again.
And when consumers push back, just say, “Oh, it's the tariffs. And that starts pushing prices up against consumers.” You know, and I'll say on this one, Kara, it's particularly important because remember, this was actually Donald Trump's message when he ran.
He said on day one that he would lower prices, said it repeatedly. His words, not mine. And here we are, seven weeks in, he has done nothing to lower prices for families. Instead, what he's doing is he's out there trying to put things in place that would actually increase prices for consumers.
KS: So how does he get away with that then from you? Because he seems to say he's going to do one thing and then does an opposite thing.
EW: Well, I go back to bend the knee. As long as everyone says the emperor's cape is beautiful, he can do whatever he wants. And I think this is the importance.
Look, we're fighting as I see it. It's a three-front war right now. Part of it is back to those constitutional parts, we're calling on the courts to say, “Courts, do your part. Donald Trump, Elon Musk break the law, you’ve got to hold them accountable.”
KS: There's about a hundred and some lawsuits, right?
EW: Exactly. You got to stay on it. Then the second part is we're fighting right now in Congress.
And the big fight is exactly how I described it. It's the tax fight. The Republicans want to give, with Donald Trump, $4.6 trillion in tax breaks to billionaires and giant corporations.
And then they want to pay for it on the backs of old people in nursing homes and little kids with disabilities not being able to get their aides. I mean, it's just horrible stuff that they want to move forward. So that's the fight we're having there and the one we're going to make public.
The third one, though, is the rally in Austin today. It's the energy from people all across this country. And it's doing the individual part that lets the grassroots catch fire.
So for example, instead of just say the words federal employee, which might rhyme with waste fraud and abuse, say, I'm talking about my next door neighbor who actually does cancer research, or my friend who tests water to make sure that it's safe for my kids to drink, or the guy down the block who makes sure that when airplanes fly in the sky, they don't run into each other. And I don't want those people fired. I want those people doing their jobs.
Don't bend the knee to Donald Trump. And so I think this is how it's all three parts we push back.
KS: We'll be back in a minute.
KS: Let's talk about one thing you've been fighting for, the Consumer Financial Protection Board. It was created after the 2008 financial crisis. It was your brainchild.
Elon Musk posted “CFPB RIP” on X in February, and DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, which I like to call doggy, basically-
EW: Oh, he loves that.
KS: Yeah, no, he doesn't. Basically, he hung an “out of business" sign on the door. So officially, it was the CFPB's acting director, Roosevelt, who ordered employees to stop work there. Why do you think it is under fire so clearly?
Is it about you? Is it about what it does?
EW: No, it's about the CFPB, and it's about how good it is at what it's – oh, I'm sorry. It's about how efficient it is.
That is the nature of the problem with the CFPB. So let me back up just a little bit and do the 10,000 foot view here. Okay.
So you may remember back around the late 90s, the early 2000s, we had a whole bunch of consumer financial protection laws. Problem was, they're scattered among seven different agencies and they're nobody's first job. They're every agency's third or tenth or fifty-fourth job.
As a result, nobody enforces those laws. What happens? Well, a bunch of guys get out there and get pretty damn lawless.
They build up these mortgage scams. The mortgage scams get fed into the banking system and they blow up our whole economy. Coming out of that, the idea behind the CFPB is not a bunch of new laws, it's to gather up the laws that already exist, take them away from those agencies, put them all with one agency and then say to that agency, “You are responsible for enforcing the laws.”
So that agency now, it’s been in place roughly about a dozen years up and operational. It has found more than $21 billion in scams against the American people. I'm not just talking fly-by-night.
Wells Fargo, I'm looking at you. Citibank. You can just do one after another. So the point is, what this agency did, is they've said with each one of these scams, it's not just that we found it and we're going to find you, you have to return the money directly to the people that you scammed.
So that's $21 billion that has gone directly back into the hands of consumers who got cheated.
KS: Right, so now the CFPB dropped a lawsuit filed by former director Rohit Chopra against three of the nation's largest banks over lack of safeguards on Zelle payments that allegedly resulted in $800 million in fraud. The agency also abandoned a lawsuit against Capital One, over $2 billion in interest payments the agency alleged are owed to consumers. It has canceled or about to cancel nearly 200 contracts with vendors, people who train examiners to supervise banks, handle cybersecurity, experts with this litigation.
Why are they targeting this from your point of view?
EW: Okay, so since Elon and his little band of hackers have taken over the CFPB– they really have. They've tried to shut it down. And here's the deal on what's happening.
First, let's do the generic. And that is, there's nobody out there enforcing these consumer protection laws. So there's part one to the answer.
And that is, it's a heyday right now for the scammers. Literally, the cops have been moved off the beat. That's part one.
But now there's a special part for Elon in this. The Republicans in Congress are looking at this and saying, you know, and Elon, saying, “You know, sidelining these guys may not work forever. So how about if we ram through a rule that says that if the CFPB comes back online, that is, if the courts do their job, you're not going to be able to regulate these payment platforms.”
Why would these two matter to Elon? Many of you remember, he buys Twitter, he loses buckets of money. He decides his plan going forward is not X, it's X Money.
He wants to unite those two things, and then what he wants to be able to do is to scam you in any way possible without a financial cop looking over his shoulder. So that's part two of what he's doing. You want to do part three?
KS: Okay.
EW: In this, where he's headed next? Because this is-
KS: Gotham City, it feels like, but go ahead.
EW: Okay. So here's where he's going next: and that is, we're about to mark up in the banking committee something called the Stablecoin bill.
And the problem right now with the stable- there are a lot of problems. It doesn't have good consumer protection. It doesn't have good, any money laundering, to make sure it's not being used by terrorists and drug traffickers. Okay, those are fights we can have. But here's the specific little piece.
The question is, we've always had in banking and financial instruments, you've got to keep money separate from commerce. You don't get to own both at the same time and tangle them up in terms of what you build going forward. What Elon, I think, would like to do, at least all the evidence points in this direction, and right now this bill says, is that X money or Amazon or Google can issue their own stablecoin, united with the other information they have about you, so that they've got your purchasing, your social media, your financial transactions and your actual money as you start using money on their platforms and on the platforms they start buying up, not just here in the United States, but all around the world.
That is Elon's three-part play, and it's really about taking over every part of your life by one guy.
KS: So he has X Money, obviously, and the other tech companies have the same thing. They're also moving into crypto reserves. This is, there's an executive order.
Trump is basically legislating by executive order, running a country by executive order.
EW: Which, by the way, is not legal. Yes, but okay, keep going.
KS: But he's doing it. He's doing it, it's happening.
EW: He's issuing executive orders.
KS: Right, okay. So he was going to create a crypto reserve.
You've written a letter to David Sachs, who is the AI guru, whatever he happens to be.
What can you do to stop this? Now, the Biden administration was seen as too slow or too onerous on regulating the crypto industry. They struck back rather hard, attacked Sherrod Brown, put money into it, spent a lot of money on the Trump campaign.
EW: So here's one.
KS: He initially thought crypto was a scam. Trump did.
EW: So here's what I think is interesting. This one scrambles the table a little bit. There are a lot of folks who really want to see crypto be an alternative payment system, an alternative way to invest or speculate.
I get that. But they are not happy, some of them, about this crypto reserve as well. And what's the reason for that?
Because this is like the scam of all scams. Only it's right out here and open. This is like the United States of America, under Donald Trump's executive order, saying, you know what, my friend Elon bought X, and damn, the stock is just in the toilet.
There are a lot of investors who are not happy.
KS: So there's no stock, but go ahead.
EW: Right, so what the United States is going to do is we're going to create an X reserve. Now, that's fabulous for whoever currently owns those shares of X stock, and frankly, it sucks for everybody else, everybody else who wants to get in the business, everybody else who wants to play. That is the ultimate in tilting the playing field to the rich guy and saying, we're going to shovel money into you.
This crypto reserve of saying, “Okay, here are the winners, who wants to beg, we're going to take you, you, you, you, and you, and it is your lucky day, and everybody else in this room, in this city, in this state, and in this country will pay to make you richer.” That's all that this reserve is about. You are actually making it harder for Americans who would like to build a crypto system that is meaningful.
KS: Was the Biden administration too slow to do this or too onerous on these companies?
EW: You know, I think of this a little differently. I think it was a breakdown much more at the congressional level, where on both sides, you had such a long string of crypto folks and legislative folks who said “We want everything, we want no regulation, but all the benefits of getting the seal of approval from the United States government,” all the way down the line to “No, want to shut this down, can't do this at all.” And when you've got people on both sides that aren't figuring out their own coherent, how to bring this together and actually make something happen.
I've been saying for a long time– Look, I get it. You got a new product out here. You want to advance that product. You have now grown to the point that that product needs some kind of regulatory structure around it. We just got to do three things if it's going to be a financial product.
One is, it's got to have basic consumer protection. This isn't fancy. This is the same consumer protection we do, for example, in the stock market.
Because right now, it's the 1920s equivalent. You know, rug pulls and pump and dumps, they even use the same names they were using 100 years ago for this in the stock market. You build something stronger by saying there's some basic consumer protection, and you drive out the cheaters, and that kind of makes the system work.
Second one is anti-money laundering. You got to put some curbs in place. They're not going to be perfect, but you put curbs in place that make it tougher for terrorists and drug traffickers and human traffickers and ransomware fraudsters to be able to use that as an alternative way to move money around.
Again, nothing fancy. This is the same thing right now that every bank, every credit union, every credit card company, every stockbroker, every gold trader–
KS: Again, answer my question, why was the Biden administration unable to do this? Because I think it had repercussions.
EW: Well, what I'm trying to say is the Biden administration was partly unable to do this because Congress was unable to do it and the industry itself was unable to do it. It's that the fracture was everywhere in this one. The Treasury drew up, gosh, two years ago what they call a punch list that just says, OK, here's what it takes to make sure, just the standard curbs, to make sure that terrorists won't say, “Yay, crypto, what a great way to be able to move our money back and forth with no one being able to detect what's going on.”
Treasury did that two years earlier, and many in the industry and many in Congress said, “Nope, don't want to do that. We're off in this totally other space. And if you're in that other space, you can't build something.”
KS: You called for Trump to fire Elon and address his conflicts of interest. He's been one of the largest beneficiaries of taxpayer dollars. He's got government contracts, billions and billions in government contracts.
He's been targeting agencies that hurt his businesses. Some are alleging that he's using his position in government to pressure advertisers to advertise on X. The Journal just wrote about that.
There are reports now that Trump is putting a leash on him now. Okay?
EW: Yeah, I'll believe it when I see it.
KS: An actual leash?
EW: Yeah.
KS: Why do you say that?
I agree with you. I think it's nonsense. I know that Marco Rubio allegedly pushed back against him in the meeting.
EW: Look, one of the things Donald Trump has learned to do so effectively is just to say, up, down, 7, 21, 19, random, and people hear what they want to hear and say, “Oh, good.” Right?
Oh, okay. I don't have to worry about that. He's actually– Are you kidding me? I don't want to hear Donald Trump's words.
I want to see Elon sent out of the room. I want to see Elon told, not only do you not get to do any more of this, everybody who got supposedly fired by Elon Musk has not only got their job back, they've got their job back with an apology from Elon Musk. Then I’ll believe it.
KS: Is that going to happen?
EW: I don't know.
KS: Do you think he is worried about the repercussions?
EW: Look, the one thing we know is that the bullies can't stay on the pushback. You know how I know that? Watch the tariffs again.
So, what happens? Donald Trump, big man, going to put giant tariffs on Canada and Mexico, right?
KS: Yeah.
EW: And then what happens? The stock market says, yick. And all of a sudden, whoop, tariffs are gone.
So then he jerks it around again. What happens? Now we're going to do tariffs, he says.
Stock market goes down. And what happened to the tariffs? Whoop, the tariffs are all gone.
So the pushback, he wants to be popular. He wants to preside over an economy that works for billionaires. He makes clear every day what he wants.
It is up to the rest of us to stop going along with the game the way he structures it and start recognizing: He wants our approval. Well, damn it, don't give it to him.
Right?
KS: Well, he certainly gets enough approval in certain places he's doing well. Others, the polling is unusual. A lot of it is anti-Elon, which I think he's using him as a heat shield, and I think that's an effective heat shield.
EW: You know, I don't see it that way. I see it the other way around, and that is that Elon is beginning to pose a real threat to Trump, and Elon sits next to him, stands next to him. Hey, listen, those pictures are burned in our brains.
Where Elon stands in the Oval Office and presides while Donald Trump looks up to see the guy who's really in charge. My own prediction about this is that the things that are bad, Elon is both out there doing them, giving a face, letting people all across this country not have to address what I thought Donald Trump told me during the campaign, and why I voted for him, and what I thought he was–You don't have to address that yet.
What you have to address is what's happening in Washington, and how bad it is, and starting to fight back against that. And Elon is the easy way in, because Elon is now the face of the cancer research that doesn't go forward. He is now the face of your neighbor, the veteran who can't get his veteran benefits, your mom who's been moved out of her nursing home, your auntie who can't get anybody on the line at the Social Security office after they screwed up her check.
He is now the face of it, but he is the face on behalf of Donald Trump. So I think this is a way we wedge in here.
KS: So you believe what he was saying, that the cabinet secretaries should be in charge, and not Elon, although he followed it by, “And if you don't, Elon will make the cuts,” which feels very mobby.
EW: Yes, exactly. In fact, the quote I saw that I loved the best is as soon as it all came out, what had happened. Donald Trump's quote was, “No, there was no disagreement in the room.”
So we're back to this game again of, I will say, yes, no, maybe, up and seven. I mean, just random words all at once, and people will, he thinks, will hear what they want to hear. I'm tired of hearing the words.
Let me see what you do. And right now, they're still trying to fire people, and they're still trying to hurt people, and they're still waging the fight in Congress to give those tax benefits to billionaires and to make elderly people, kids, veterans pay for it.
KS: All right, let's talk more about the broader swath of billionaires, because there's plenty. I just interviewed Mark Cuban, and he told me that all the tech billionaires are kissing Donald Trump's ring in order to get a lead in the race for AI dominance. And I know from talking to some of them, some of them are very big proponents of what Trump is doing, but others are scared.
They want to be part of this, and they don't want to lose out. Some are more performative, like a Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos.
Others are like, “I had to go to lunch, Kara. I didn't have a choice.” One of them texted me, “I hate myself more than you hate me.” And I wrote back, I wrote back, “I doubt it.”
What are your thoughts on this? Because this is the race for AI, and he can buy, I think he can determine winners and losers, just as he can into crypto. He certainly can in AI.
EW: So, I actually think of this problem a little bit differently, and it goes back again to this question about how you tilt the playing field. So, yes, our AI dominant players have told us how you develop AI, and that is bazillions of dollars spent in silos, and then they will develop this product. And then we look over at DeepSeek, and we say, oh, turns out maybe there's another way.
You steal some technology, I get that part. That's always very efficient. But you steal some technology and you have a bunch of businesses trying it, and they try it in a way that says, how could you do it cheap? How could you do it fast? How could you do it 90% right instead of 99% right? How could you do it in a way that lets another business model work?
That's very different from, “U.S. taxpayers will you put in money? So, we're just going to build this one or three giant golden silos.” So I, in this sense, reject the whole premise of the question. What I want to see here is I want to see competition. I want to see a world in which we have rules, we enforce our antitrust laws, so all the players get a chance. So somebody who's got a big idea, a great idea, a funny idea, a quirky idea, actually has a chance to get access to a database where they can run it without having signed their lives away for the next 50 years and every idea they will ever come up with to be owned by one of three giants. We want to have an innovative economy here in the United States? Then we got to go back to the idea that we need competition and we need a government that will enforce the rules of competition.
KS: You and Senator Hawley from Missouri have been calling for tougher chip export controls as a result. You blame Big Tech Lobbying for this because NVIDIA sold chips to the Chinese. Why do you think tougher export controls are important, including for national security? And is Hawley an outlier or do you think you can get bipartisan support for this? Now, the Biden administration tried, but the Chinese did get a hold of these chips.
EW: Sure, they did. So, think of export controls, just like you did when you're talking about tariffs. It's another tool in the toolbox. Can we keep China from stealing our technology forever? No. But can we slow them down? Yeah. But here's the trick. This is always the trick in Washington with these rules. So, we put in place some export controls that say, you can't sell this stuff with the fancy chips that are going to help develop AI. We put that in place. That's what the law said.
Who do they then hear from? They hear from the company that's going to make money from selling those chips and letting the Chinese ultimately steal. There's a company that's going to make money from that. So, that company comes in, and boy, do they tell a song and dance about how fabulous it's going to be, and these are just little itsy bitsy chips. They're not going to do anything. They're not very helpful. We just had them lying around. They tell whatever they need to tell to try to get the regulators to just help out, just a little hole in the wall. Maybe a little bit bigger. Oh, a little bit bigger hole in the wall. Who they never hear from is you. They never hear from the people who actually benefit from those export controls to slow down the theft and to keep some of that technology that you, the U.S. taxpayer, paid for.
KS: Do you expect to get bipartisan support for this?
EW: Oh, I've already got bipartisan support for this. I've already got Josh Hawley. And the thing is, there's an increasing number.
I don't want to overstate, but there's an increasing number of Republicans and Democrats. Because let's be clear, it's not that all Democrats are in the right place on this. An increasing number of Republicans and Democrats who are saying, “We understand the importance of competition, and we understand the importance of when you put a rule in place, like a tariff or like an export control, you cannot let a friend of the president, a friend of Elon, the company that hires a billion dollars worth of lobbyists, come in and get an exception.” Because every time you do that, it means the wall holds back everybody else in this country except you.
Let's just be blunt. When those things happen, when they get those exceptions, that is corruption, pure and simple, and we got to call it out for what it is.
KS: Trump is reportedly meeting some top tech leaders from HP, and other hardware companies to discuss tariffs and export controls. Not that he's listening to you, but what would you want to tell him?
EW: I would want to tell him: we have a lot of tools in the box here. We need to use those tools in targeted ways that we understand what we're trying to develop here at home.
The CHIPS and Science bill, evidently, Donald Trump hates it because Joe Biden liked it. It's like this is the test now. We said we're going to help make investments here in order to develop chips at home. Because here's the thing about our country overall. Look at where we are. Right now, on chips, what was it? Back around 2000, we made more than 90% of all the chips that were in production.
Now, we're in a place where we make 12% of the chips, and for the really fancy high-end chips that you're going to need for AI and really fancy things, right now, we are making just a tiny fraction of those chips. If you think of chips as the basic building block for many of the things you want to do going forward, you should be alarmed.
Let me do a second one around it. If you go to have a prescription filled right now, the odds are nine out of ten that the drug you take was manufactured in Asia, and most likely with ingredients that came from China. Gee, what could possibly go wrong? We get into it, back and forth with China in a really bad way? Good luck on whether or not your antibiotic is still available.
And do one more really quickly, and that is manufacturing, right? Our manufacturing capacity in the United States. Back in the year 2000, we had three times the manufacturing capacity of China. That meant we had lots of factories and lots of things and lots of train things that went up to be able to move those goods and services today. China has three times the manufacturing capacity of the United States of America.
So, understand this, we want to have a strong economy going forward? We want to let our people have an opportunity to innovate and to build great things and to build strong economic futures for themselves? You’ve got to have good ideas. You’ve got to have good things we invest in here at home. But you've got to think about this international competition and be willing to use your tools smartly so that we are building more of what we need to create a future right here in the United States.
KS: So is Trump too acquiescent to China?
EW: Who can tell? Early in the morning, yes, late in the afternoon, no. After a cheeseburger, he’s back to maybe.
But that is the point. And understand, we can laugh about it, but the reality is money doesn't have to come here, including U.S. money.
Who builds a factory on the hope that what he said in the morning is the part that's still going to stick late in the afternoon? There is a real cost to the chaos that's going on right now. In seven weeks, the damage that Donald Trump and Elon Musk have done to investment in the United States is something that this nation will be paying for for years and years.
KS: So, one of the things you've been pushing out are the tax cuts that are coming. And for many years, you tried to get a billionaires tax.
EW: Yeah.
KS: You did not get very much traction on that.
EW: No, but at least people are thinking about it.
KS: Yeah. OK. They seem to be doing pretty well right now. Apparently, Musk recently falsely accused you of having $67 million.
EW: Whoa, I wish.
KS: Yeah. Talk about that idolatry. You don't have $67 million. No, you have eight or nine, though you're rich. You have some money. You have some dough. Your house has done very well.
EW: Yeah, it has. It has. We bought it 25 years ago.
KS: Yeah. But your bumper sticker was “Billionaires win, families lose.”
EW: You bet.
KS: Why have you not gotten traction on this from your perspective? This is a message you've had for a very long time, and they've never been more powerful than ever.
EW: Yeah. So, look, money talks. I get that. Elon Musk has now shown the way. The game was already afoot, but Elon Musk bought a President of the United States for a little over a quarter of a billion dollars, and now he's collecting his return on investment. And that return on investment for him will be lower taxes so he gets to keep more and pay forward on the backs of the rest of America, and less regulations, so that his businesses, when they break the law, as many of them evidently have already done, there's no regulator to stop him. So, he becomes unstoppable. And then part three, next week, he gets to issue his own money and just take it off internationally.
So here's the thing. You asked me a fundamental question about how democracy works. You don't run for office if you're not an optimist. At least that's how I see it.
I was at the Iowa State Fair. I ran for president. Spoiler alert, I did not win. But I ran for office and I pitched. It's not just the billionaire tax, it was a two-cent wealth tax. It was just to say, for your money above $50 million, pitch in two cents for—your first 50 million free and clear—after that, could you just put in two cents for the dollars above that?
And it is staggering what that kind of infusion of cash would give us in terms of universal child care, in terms of universal pre-K, better funding for all of our public schools, free college education, canceling out student loan debt, health care. You can just do the whole thing. It would be astonishing what it would be.
So, part of the reason I ran for president, I knew the odds were not my favor, and I got it. But I figured if I run for president, I could up and talk about that every single day for as long as I'm in that race.
So, I've been doing that, and I go to the Iowa State Fair, and the Iowa State Fair, talk about a jam, I literally in the crowds, and there's security around and so on. I would get lifted off my feet at various—really kind of scary, a lot of people.
So anyway, they put you up on this thing where you can see all the way down three different directions. I'm saying, blah, blah, here's what I am doing. And I look out and you can sense a disturbance, and there's a disturbance, and I'm kind of like peering forward, and it starts to roll. And the disturbance is people chanting, “Two cents, two cents, two cents, two cents,” until the whole Iowa fairgrounds, it looks like to me, was stomping, clapping and saying, “two cents.” Now, like I said, I didn't win. I get that. Donald Trump is riding high right now.
KS: Billionaires are everywhere.
EW: Billionaires, boy, I saw them up on stage. I was sitting in the cheap seats, you know, the United States Senate, during the Trump swearing in. But I sat there and thought about, there are a whole lot of people around this country. I mean, a whole lot of people. You give them a chance, and they're ready to say, “two cents” and I think that's a fight worth it.
KS: All right. So are you running for president again?
EW: No.
KS: No? Absolutely not? Okay. We'll be back in a minute.
KS: Let's talk about the Democrats. We'll finish up and then I have a couple of questions from the audience.
EW: Okay.
KS: You've said many times we'll win if only we fight back. That's sort of what you say.
EW: I’ll believe that.
KS: But let's talk about that. During Trump's speech, there was an unfortunate visual protesting. That's how Scott and I saw it.
Some of the members of Congress boycotted, but you couldn't really tell they were missing. Congressman Al Green heckled and was escorted out of the chamber. Some Congress women wore pink. People held up signs that said, “Save Medicaid,” “Musk Steals,” “False.” There was some stony silence that seemed to annoy Trump. I felt it was not an effective protest. Many did not agree. You may or may not agree. But is this a problem? It feels like you're bringing a knife to a gunfight. And I'm sorry to use that visual, but that's an old metaphor.
EW: So look, I'm just not here to criticize people who are trying to find their way to fight back against Donald Trump. Shoot, that's my whole point, is we all got to find our way to fight back. Do I want to see us coordinate and do I want to see us be effective? Of course I do.
KS: Did you think that was effective?
EW: Look, I did what I thought was the right response. I listened to every word and when he said something I agreed with, which is funding Ukraine, I clapped and I clapped loudly and evidently got under his skin. Good night's work.
KS: You're being very polite here. You don't think it was a disaster?
EW: So, I think of this differently. Did you see what happened last weekend? How many Republicans had town halls? That's the whole hallmark of our democracy. I don't know any Democrats who are having to run away down the halls and have pictures of them as they disappear while their own constituents are yelling at them saying, “Come back here and explain why you're letting Elon Musk cut the VA in our town.” I think the Republicans right now are on their back foot.
And I'm just going to make the same point again, and that is it's a fight in the court, where more than 100 lawsuits, it's a fight in Congress over this tax bill, billionaires versus everybody else. And it's a fight right out in public. It is a fight at every town hall, at every rally.
We've got to have grassroots power back in this. And I think that's part of what's starting to happen now.
KS: So, many people still do feel the Democrats are having an identity crisis. Maybe you don't think that. Some factions are calling it–
EW: I know who I am.
KS: I'm sorry?
EW: Well, identity crisis. I know who I am and I know what I'm fighting for.
KS: As a group.
EW: No, I actually disagree with you on that, Kara. I think we know damned well what we are fighting for. We are fighting for an America that we do not hand over to Elon Musk and a few billionaires.
We are fighting for an America where everybody gets a chance. Every single Democrat. So, that's for me what this is all about.
KS: Is it a unified party? Because there's some that think there should be less focus on identity politics, more on the economy, to speak to voters swayed by Trump. There are some calling for more progressive ideas to mount an aggressive resistance. Do you think there's an overall strategy? The Republicans are very good at their, whether it's heinous or not, they're very united.
EW: I— listen, Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line. But the way I see it right now is it's it's Republicans who are in disarray. The conversations right now are not, “Elon, keep it up, man, we got your back.” Did you just hear, you said, what happened in the cabinet meeting?
KS: Well, behind the scenes. In front of the scenes, he says— Does everybody like him? And he says—
EW: Yes, it's all behind the scenes, but it's behind the scenes because people are chasing those Republicans down the halls. It is behind the scenes because people are making those phone calls. They are feeling the heat.
And as they feel the heat, they call the White House. And I get it. Everybody on the Republican side wants to stand up because it's what they always do. And they all say, “We totally agree with each other. You bet we do. Yay.” Just what they want is to see their local VA closed. Are you kidding me? They are sweating bullets over what has already happened. And if Elon keeps this up, the bite is going to get harder and harder and harder.
And yeah, we are Democrats. We do this in lots of ways. It's a noisy way to go about it. But the reality is, never forget, we know what our values are, and we are out there fighting for our values. We are not handing this country over to billionaires. We are fighting for a level playing field for American families.
KS: All right. Let's get some questions from the audience. I asked on Blue Sky and Threads. I'm not on X these days. Just so you know.
EW: Good for you.
KS: I left behind a lot of followers, but I don't like being called a cunt every day. Just my little thing. A lot of them are, “Why is the Democrat Party so feckless now? We need strong leaders and fighters, not hand-wringing sign holders.”
What do you say to people who are criticizing Democrats for not acting in the face of crisis?
Another one is, “Why the hell did she vote to confirm Rubio?” It's along those lines. Are the Democrats going to help us here? Are they strong enough to mount a unified force?
EW: We are in this fight. We are in this fight. Understand, this fight is at the local level. This is where it gets fought. We are here in Austin, Texas. Remind me, what party do your two senators belong to? How many reps do you have who are Republicans? They have not spoken up. You want to come turn the heat on Democrats? Fine. I'm good. I'm ready for that. I love a good fight. But here's the deal. It's the Republicans who are right now empowering Donald Trump and they need to answer for it. It is the Republicans who are empowering Elon Musk. It is the Republicans who are evidently going along with a president or two co-presidents who are not following the law, not following the Constitution, and going out of their ways to hurt the most vulnerable people in this country. Republicans need to be called out, and Democrats are increasingly doing that. Are we doing it enough? No. Are we doing it loudly enough? No. Have we done it as effectively as we need to? No. But we are not through. We are in this fight all the way, because we understand the stakes of this fight.
KS: So would you mind answering that question? Why did you vote to confirm Rubio?
EW: Yeah, because the Marco Rubio that I voted for is not the Marco Rubio of six weeks later. I'm just going to be blunt. I've worked with Marco Rubio. I've seen what Marco Rubio stood up for. Look, he was not my fave, but I figure Republican Secretary of State, you could do a lot worse. I was wrong. Because what happened is he's gotten in, and the work that Marco Rubio did for years with USAID, this is money for, so little kids have access to medicine. This is money to stop AIDS. This is money to try to help starving people in the middle of a crisis. Marco Rubio used to be strong for that, used to stand up for that sort of thing. This is someone who thought that the United States should play on an international stage and beat back the autocrats.
KS: So why is he behaving like…
EW: You have to have Marco Rubio here.
KS: All right, we have three or four more. We're going to go over just a little bit. My deepest worry is that DOGE Brothers attacked the federal government. Is the damage done to its computer system as in deleting and amending records, creating backdoors for future hacking? Are you worried about that?
EW: Yes, I am deeply worried. I'm worried about, I will do it at both levels. I am worried about what they do to the system. I'm worried that even if they don't touch the system, I'm worried about what they copy out of the system and then either take it somewhere else for their own uses or somebody else can hack into it. So I am worried in every direction, deeply worried.
KS: I would ask if she thinks Trump will use troops against people if there are large scale protests like you were just talking about.
EW: I don't know. It's the question I've asked in the Armed Services. I sit on the Armed Services Committee. We've asked this repeatedly. The Democrats have. Would you follow an illegal order? Would you fire on civilians? And right now, the Trump nominees are giving the, you know, dance around answer and not giving an answer here, which is deeply disturbing. And we all vote no. And the Republicans all vote to push them in.
KS: So what is the Democratic plan of Trump defies court orders, as the Federal Society article recently suggested they do?
EW: Yeah. Well, look, I used to think that a constitutional crisis would be like a light switch. You know, everything's working, at least like it should. I may not like the policies, but constitutionally speaking, it's all working like it should. I think, though it's actually a slope, and this is just one more place on the slope. And I think that the answer here is how much can we rev up the other three tools we've got. We've got the tool of the courts. We've got the tool in Congress of just putting the stink on every Republican that goes along with this. And we've got the tool of grassroots just saying, no, this country belongs to the people, not to someone who wants to destroy our constitution.
KS: Two more quick questions. What counter is possible for Trump trying to privatize the US Post Office, Amtrak, things like that?
EW: You know, this one I actually really push in Congress is the number one place to hit this. He cannot do these things legally without Congress. And if the Republicans want to go down that path, I get it. There are more Republicans in the Senate or Republicans in the House than there are Democrats, but we ain't giving it away for free. And so if they want to do stuff that really stinks, then the answer is, we're going to make sure that stink rubs off on every Republican that helped Donald Trump and Elon Musk along.
KS: OK. Last question from someone. Are you yourself scared of personal retribution? I mean, it's all fun and games with your name and stuff like that, but do you yourself, you just answered a question about troops attacking Americans. Are you yourself fearful of your safety? I know a lot of Republicans have expressed that privately.
EW: Do you know the hardest part about the question you just asked? Is I don't want to publicly answer that question. That is the first question I've had. I just don't want to talk about.
KS: Well?
EW: I don't want to talk about it.
KS: All right. Well, we will leave it at that. Senator Elizabeth Warren. Thank you, everybody.
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