Lina Khan Stays Remarkably on Message on ‘The Adam Friedland Show’

Former Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan says she doesn’t have any desire to run for elected office, but she sure knows how to stay on message like a politician. During her appearance on “The Adam Friedland Show,” hosted by comedian and top candidate for “Joe Rogan of the Left” Adam Friedland, she was repeatedly tested to keep the thread of her anti-monopoly, anti-corruption ideology by silly asides and a series of dick jokes. She emerged unshaken.

Early in the interview, Friedland observes that Khan, who is back in the news thanks to her role on incoming Mayor of New York Zohran Mamdani’s transition team, has a hard time lying. Shortly after, she gave a pretty perfect example of her honesty. When Friedland asked if she was a popular girl in high school, Khan said, “No, I was a newspaper editor.” Relatable.

Throughout the conversation, Khan kept an incredibly even keel. While she’d laugh at Friedland’s jokes, she’d almost immediately jump back on topic. That’s not to say she pulled her punches, though. For instance, she gave a pretty clear-eyed view of how we’re living in an era where, while history may not be directly repeating itself, it certainly seems to rhyme.

“There were a lot of factors that facilitated the rise of Nazism. The US, after World War II, actually commissioned various studies to be like ‘What just happened and what factors contributed to it?’, including trying to figure out what was happening in the economy. They did actually find that growing consolidation across the German economy had basically facilitated the rise of Nazism,” she said. “You had more monopolization in certain types of rubber and steel, and generally speaking, there’s long been a recognition that concentrated economic power can go hand-in-hand with concentrated political power. I think that’s an insight that has been lost more recently, but we’re kind of being forced to reckon with again.”

Friedland followed that exchange up by asking if, when Paramount completes its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, Bari Weiss will become the modern-day Joseph Goebbels, the propaganda minister of Nazi Germany. Khan laughed but didn’t respond, because she’s a pro.

Friedland did manage to get a handful of insights out of Khan that probably wouldn’t have come out in any other venue. For instance, Khan revealed that she does not have an Amazon Prime account and prefers to pick up her goods in person. He also got her to name a favorite Supreme Court justice, picking Louis Brandeis, best known for establishing the concept of the “right to privacy” and being an architect of what would become the Federal Trade Commission.

Friedland also set Khan up for some extended answers on the work that she was doing at the FTC and hopes to continue doing outside of the agency. Asked what her biggest “dub” was while serving as FTC chair, Khan answered, “We were very focused on healthcare markets because people depend on healthcare, and one of the initiatives we did was really try to figure out why are drug prices so high. One reason they’re so high is because pharma companies use all sorts of patent tricks. So we called out those pharma tricks and three of the four big manufacturers of asthma inhalers dropped the price from hundreds of dollars to just $35. So there are thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people who rely on inhalers who are paying less today.”

While Khan has a reputation as being the cop on the block for Big Tech, she really hammered the healthcare industry over the course of the interview. Asked what industry “fucks people the most,” Khan responded, “Healthcare.” When Friendland followed up by asking, “They have the most blood on their hand?” she said, “Yes.” Later, she stated plainly, “There are people who have died because they can’t afford their medicines in this country.”

She also drew a stark contrast between her approach to addressing corruption and the Trump administration’s take on it. “If you were breaking the law, but you were in a C-Suite, the government would go light on you. … I thought that was really problematic,” she said. “We were very clear that we were going to enforce the law in an even-handed way, no matter, kind of, what your political connections were. We just had to look at ‘Are you breaking the law or not?’ And I think that approach to enforcing the law upset some people.”

Meanwhile, she said the Trump administration has seen “a real backsliding” when it comes to enforcement. “They’ve also shifted gears. They allowed this big merger to go through between these two ad agencies, and one of the conditions of that was basically that they had to buy ads from Elon Musk, more or less, on his platforms under the purview that they couldn’t discriminate on political grounds,” she said. “It does seem like they are more eager to use the law to advance their political grievances.”

Friedland brought some ideas to Khan for future methods to identify corruption and collusion, should she ever end up back in the agency. For instance, he pitched her on a plan to show up to Burning Man and question executives while they’re rolling on Molly. “We didn’t have that good idea,” she said.

While Khan maintained a professional demeanor throughout the interview, she also spoke pretty plainly about what she sees happening in America today. “I think people are realizing that a lot of things that are bad in their lives are driven by corporations that are breaking the law.” Asked if those corporations are buying influence in politics, she responded, “Perhaps,” with a smile. She also said, “Taking on corporate power when they are breaking the law is very popular,” which sure seems like she’s making an observation on what might appeal to the public when it comes to these issues.

Despite that, Khan showed no real interest when asked if she had any ambitions for political office. She dismissed the idea of running for the Senate and said the Presidency was out because she wasn’t born in the US, leading Friedland to pitch her on becoming Queen of England and overseer of a flock of corgis. Still, she has ideas for how the government should operate, stating, “We do need a New Deal-style level of ambition” to address our current age of corruption.