Katie Porter: Taking Big Business to Task While Running for Dianne Feinstein’s Seat
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On September 28th, the Global Citizen Festival will gather thousands of people who took action to end extreme poverty. Join Post Malone, Doja Cat, Lisa, Jelly Roll, and Raul Alejandro as they take the stage with world leaders and activists to defeat poverty, defend the planet, and demand equity. Download the Global Citizen app today and earn your spot at the festival. Learn more at globalcitizen.org slash bots. It's on! It's on!

Hi, everyone from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is the Tic Tac Hearing with 77% mintier breath than the average member of Congress. Just kidding. This is On with Kara Swisher and I'm Kara Swisher. And I'm Naima Raza. Now, I wish I was surprised that at least three Congress members call TikTok Tic Tac.

during Sho's shoes testimony to the House Energy and Commerce Committee. They're very old. Nobody eats Tic Tacs anymore, I don't think. What did you make of the hearing? Because obviously we had Vy Papas, TikTok COO, on the show last fall. At the time, it seemed like TikTok would be able to fly under the national security radar with Project Texas, this Oracle partnership that would silo U.S. user data on stateside servers.

You've been talking about TikTok and obviously covered this for a very long time. And so I guess two questions. Why hasn't the deal held up, you think, or what's behind the political momentum right now? And two, how did you think Congress did in the hearing? Terribly. Let me start with the last one. I know Xiuchu had a very difficult time, and I thought he answered well, although he didn't accomplish what he needed to do, which is say that China has no influence.

He was kind of dancing around it. And he also, there was no actual winning. He tried his best. But I thought Congress was terrible because it was a show pony kind of thing. He kept saying, you have no evidence. And they have no evidence. Now, they may have evidence, by the way. And it may be hidden in some vault that we're not allowed to see. And maybe the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., which I trust more, will put that out or at least say, make that determination and have to keep things under wraps.

for national security. But at this point, they don't have any evidence except for a couple of reporters that have been tracked by TikTok employees. Yeah, which they said were just employees, not the company, not China. Right. They said they were rogue employees. But I think the only thing that the problem with that argument, of course, is that it means someone can spy on you. Yeah. And if the Chinese government, which I'm...

You know, I think they probably do. And I think they probably do shade it. We need more evidence if they want to do this ban. This is the United States of America. There's a thing called the First Amendment. And so they have to adhere to that, even though China appallingly doesn't let U.S. tech companies in there or any social media communications companies.

That's true, too. And that's a problem. But we're a different country. And so that's one issue. It didn't work for the Trump administration. It's not going to work for this administration. The judges are going to stop it. What do you think is the impact of Beijing's commerce ministry coming out and saying they firmly oppose a sale, adding in that forcing a divestiture would, quote, seriously undermine the confidence of investors from various countries, including China, to invest in the U.S.? Well,

Well, one would agree and they're one of our biggest investors, right? Yeah. And they have to approve the sale because it's the Chinese company, they own technology, right? It's a lot of show and not a lot of tell. Right. And the second part that I thought was really irritating is all this energy and all this speech-making, bipartisan speech-making, by the way,

They have yet to pass any significant legislation related to tech. No privacy bills, no antitrust bills, no algorithmic transparency bills. So where's all the energy when it comes to that? It's a bigger issue than just China. But this becomes a very politically expedient issue because of the kind of China of it all, where Xi is in the world right now, the Putin relationship, Saudi relationship, and then also the fact that parents hate TikTok. So it's expedient with voters in a way. Yeah, that's why they're doing it.

It's not about doing the right thing. It's about it may be the right thing to ban them, by the way. It's just I would like them to do it correctly because this is the United States of America. We're not China. I think that China is kind of geniusly putting Biden between a rock and a hard place. If they say we won't endorse the sale, like go ahead.

ban it, then all of a sudden the same thing that the whole hearing started with, Cathy Morris Rogers saying that TikTok will never embrace American values. And it's like, well, what are the American values? Open markets and free expression. And if Biden administration

TikTok that is going against both of those things. Well, unless they can prove a national security issue, and then it's a lot easier, and Congress apparently has to pass a law. Exactly. And if they spin it off, are you protected? The way espionage happens and the way surveillance happens doesn't need to be through ownership. I think that was one thing Shoshu was right about.

If the employees are already within TikTok, if there are already Chinese agents within other social media companies. Well, there are. There's not just Chinese. Of course, there is. They've been. That was a big thing with Saudi ones at Twitter. There was, you know, in Facebook. They all, there's not one tech company I know where someone hasn't said, you know, there's a lot of spies running around here. Of course, there's a lot of spies. And by the way, guess who was the biggest spire on tech companies?

U.S.? U.S. Edward Snowden. That's the thing. So unless you're going to say there should be a national security clearance for all employees who are accessing U.S. user data, which, by the way, could be something that could consider. That's insane. It's insane, but that's the reality of the power of the data and like the reality of this industry you've been covering for so long. Yep. You know, they say bank robbers rob...

because that's where the money is. This is where the information is. And so there's always going to be surveillance. I do think that I still use a burner phone with TikTok when I use it 100%. China benefits more from something that is going to be generationally and culturally divisive if they ban TikTok. No, I don't think kids care. They'll move on to the next social network. They will. Sorry, they will. A lot of grandstanding during the hearing. It was a step up from 2018 when the Mark Zuckerberg House hearings where members of Congress basically like leapt into his lap and asked for autographs for their grandkids.

But I want to ask you a question. You asked Sam Altman last week. Who do you think is the savviest member of Congress?

Oh, I can't pick one. But on these topics, you know, Amy Klobuchar has obviously distinguished herself. Mark Warner, I thought Ken Buck has some really thoughtful things to say. What about our guest today, California Democrat Katie Porter? She was not on the committee grilling TikTok and tech is not her kind of her main playing ground. But she is quite the three-point dunker. Yes, she is. She's really great. She's a very interesting member of Congress. And she uses props to be a really good member of Congress, her whiteboard, which...

It doesn't really endear her to tech people, but she's good at pointing out discrepancies in financial inequity. I think she's good at pointing out sort of overpay by different people in different industries, CEOs, etc. Yes. She articulates very complex issues in a very simple way. She was a professor at

And she is a lawyer and she's very good at talking. You're mentioning her whiteboard. She's very famous for this. If for anyone who has missed her whiteboard moments, let's hear a clip of Representative Porter while she grills JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon.

Well, I appreciate your desire to be helpful, but what I'd like you to do is provide a way for families to make ends meet so that little kids who are six years old living in a one-bedroom apartment with their mother aren't going hungry at night because they're $567 short from feeding themselves, clothing them. We allow no money for clothing. We allow no money for school lunches. We allow no money for field trips, no money for medical, no money for prescription drugs, nothing. And she's short $567 already.

Mr. Dimon, you know how to spend $31 million a year in salary, and you can't figure out how to make up a $567 a month shortfall. This is a budget problem you cannot solve. Well, that's kind of cooked, but she did a good job. Whatever.

I like to use the Kara Swisher, Katie Porter tag team, Jamie Dimon. I don't think he's going to make it out alive. I think she didn't let him. What do you think? I didn't. You know, okay, what's he going to say? I think she was making a good point. I think she was bowling right over him. But whatever, that's her job. That's good performative behavior, in my opinion. Performative like her reading The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck while wearing a matching shirt during the Kevin McCarthy speaker vote? Exactly. I like her performative nature. You spoke to her last week.

The episode was recorded live at Manny's and it was taped kind of fresh off of the Silicon Valley bank bust. Uh,

and Porter and Warren have been the vociferous supporters of more regulation. And of course, she's got this 2024 Senate bid for the seat that Dianne Feinstein will be vacating. Why do you want to talk to her right now? Because California is one of the most important states, and she could be the next senator, a very important job. And as you said, tag-teaming with Elizabeth Warren, it creates a really strong progressive front in the Senate. And so I thought it was interesting to see where she is on a number of issues. And if she would surprise us, you have a great

quote around people see Elizabeth Warren as the professor. She's the professor that you had in college who gave you a D that you absolutely deserved. So if that's who Elizabeth Warren is, who's Katie Porter? She's the professor who gets those great reviews. Even if you don't agree with her, I think a lot of people like listening to her. Yes. All right, let's take a quick break and we'll be back with the interview. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Shopify.

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I want to focus on what's next in the campaign, but I first do have to ask about the news of Silicon Valley Bank and the banking turmoil and some news. You tweeted that the Silicon Valley collapse was totally avoidable. Tell me what that means to you. Well, banking failures are bad. Let's just start there. And I think it's important to actually say that because once you get to a banking failure, there are only bad options.

And so it's really, really important that you try to avoid them. And we know how to do this. We actually, as a country, have a really good history of avoiding banking failures. We've had whole years, year after year, in which we've had none. But the answer here is to have good, what we call prudential regulation, making sure that banks...

Not just telling them, making sure that banks are planning for liquidity events. That is a run on the bank. Making sure that banks are thinking about taking appropriate risks with their depositors' money. And after the financial crisis, we passed Dodd-Frank.

And the Dodd-Frank Act put higher capital holding requirements, greater liquidity requirements, stress tests on banks, including Silicon Valley Bank. Along comes Trump and the House Republicans, 2017, 2018, and they get 17 Democrats in the Senate.

and 33 Democrats in the House to join with them to gut those banking regulations, essentially saying these good rules, they were such a good idea, but, you know, never mind. Never mind. Banking failures don't happen, do they?

And they gutted those rules for banks of the exact size of Silicon Valley Bank. So Elizabeth Warren and I have a bill. It's called, very clever, I'm very proud because I got to name it, Secure Viable Banking. Get it? Get it? SVB, the Secure Viable Banking Act. And what it would do is simply reverse the

the crappy provisions. There's no other word for it. I'm going to interject. There's no actual proof that the regulatory rulebook is what the cause of it is. It's a pretty basic cause of what happened. They were investing in very safe treasuries. They sort of broke the basic banking law of borrow short and lend long. And they were stuck in these treasuries and had to sell them off very quickly when the run on the bank was started by nervous venture capitalists. But Fed

Federal regulators were in there warning them of their problems several different times. Not loudly enough. Okay. I mean, the job of the federal regulators is not to say, you know, there might be a problem here if you drive that airplane off the end of the runway. It is to put rules in place so that it doesn't happen. So for the Fed to now say, yeah, we knew, I think just begs the question, well, what did you do with that knowledge? Right.

because the job of the Fed is not to say later on, we told you so. That's the job of politicians.

The job of the regulators was to do something about it. If that was in place, because a lot of Republicans are talking about the fiscal policy and the interest rates hikes that put these banks, and several of them, not just this one, in a bind when they were investing in things that are considered relatively safe. Well, but let's talk about what the Dodd-Frank rules did. I mean, one of the things that, you're right, that the fundamental problem here is that

SVB Bank forgot the most basic rule of finance, which is that interest rates do two things. They go up.

and they go down and and they didn't plan for that and they made they invested in these safe but long-term securities and they had a mismatch when people wanted their money today right and so one of the things that stress tests do for banks is imagine scenarios like that what if the interest rates went up faster what if there was a rapid rise in increase

Would you still have enough liquidity? Because it's a known fact that when interest rates go up, the price of bonds go down. This is a known fact. It's repeated in every Wall Street Journal article in which millions of Americans say, I don't know what that means, but they just keep reading. So this was a known thing, and we could have stress tested them under that kind of scenario. Capital holding requirements mean that if you make a mistake...

And you guess wrong on the risk. You have a little more cushion to cover your ass. And this law removed that. The lack of regulation here didn't cause the run. The lack of regulation is the cause of the failure.

Sure, but this run was unusual. $42 billion in a single day. In this particular case, the concentration of the bank in the technology sector, which was also declining, there were layoffs, the startup money's less, everything was happening at the same time. And this was a group of people that moved very quickly compared to

Most people don't move that quickly and they're using online banking in that way and they weren't directed as a group. Talk about the impact of the venture capitalists, some of them doing that. So others said, no, leave it in there. Calm the fuck down.

They weren't the loudest ones, and in fact, they weren't loud at all on places like Twitter. Talk about what happened there from your perspective. So I think the first point that you made, I just want to echo, because I think it's really the big policy puzzle coming out of this that we don't have the answer to, is what do you do when you have an analog banking law in a digital world, right? That part of this was something we haven't seen before.

Every minute that our regulators, and these are dedicated government employees who are trying to find a buyer and stabilize this bank, that was falling out from underneath them because of the ability of folks to communicate, to bank online, the social networking even of the depositors, both in this sort of online social way, but actually they're all friends too. So yes, I think that was a big contributor here. I don't think it's limited to this community

community, but this is a, you know, by definition, this is an online community. I do think that the folks who said, stay calm, keep your money there. It's going to be okay. We have confidence in the bank because this was a banking failure where the loans were pretty good.

And the assets were U.S. treasuries, right? The problem here was the mismatch on that, which does make me a little surprised, frankly. I was a little surprised they couldn't find a buyer. They couldn't. Well, they're still looking for one. They're still looking. Right. I mean, are you buying it? No, not me. It might be Elon Musk. He needs a bank, apparently. Yeah.

He has said that, which made me like, huh, that's interesting. So, but when you look at what's happening, you're saying there's not something bad here, but there's certainly a DOJ and SEC inquiry into potential insider trading, stock sales of key leaders, possible organized bank run. They have to be looking at that too, right? That may be...

Somebody's been on my bank run kind of thing. I mean, look, the technical term for this is counterparty risk, right? I mean, there are counterparties here who shorted and who potentially benefited from it. And we saw an awful lot of that in the last financial crisis. So I do think we need to have an investigation about the executives here, about the Federal Reserve folks and what they were doing in advance, about Goldman's role in this deal. I mean, people are like, can you believe it? Goldman made money on both sides. And I was like,

that's literally the definition of Goldman Sachs. Yeah, I agree. I still can't believe it. Like, you look it up in the dictionary, Goldman, an entity that manages to make money while you're losing it and make money while you're making it. That's literally what they're, that's what they do. That's their business model. But I do think we need to have the full regulatory apparatus. Like, I'm a,

I'm an oversight queen. Like, I believe in it. So I want the SEC on the job here. I want DOJ on the job. I want FDIC on the job. The California regulator here, there are questions to be answered.

But to be clear, I mean, people are like, oh, my God, can you believe the executives paid themselves? They do that, like, every day, people. They do. Like, it may or may not be. This was in the two weeks before when they were clearly, it was clearly there were problems happening. And I will say, as someone who taught bankruptcy law, that's pretty typical. And there are tools already. So people are rushing to introduce new bills on this. There are tools already to do.

get these call that's my call but I'm sure it's being a little bit money I one of the things that the roads are trying to cast about and I actually had an argument with one of the representatives about this was whether it was a bailout even though it's not it didn't use taxpayer money and the government holds the assets

How do you, but that's a Republican talking point. This is a bailout, bailout, bailout, which of course even Biden had a problem with in 2008. How do you get the idea that it's not a bailout? This idea that we're having to save banks because it could happen again, even with good banks. Yep. So I think this is a, the label here is sort of tough, right? Because

You know, look, the general rule is if you have over $250,000 in your account...

That amount is, if you have under that, you're insured and you will be made whole by the FDIC, you know, insurance fund. But if you have more, I never knew how many rich people I knew until Silicon Valley Bank went under. I realized I had been under asking for contributions for quite some time over the weekend. And so the idea, though, is if you're over that, then there's some loss, right?

And deposit insurance isn't free. It doesn't come from fairy dust. Deposit insurance comes from fees that banks pay in. And they pay in an amount that is based on the $250,000 cap. So if we want to move to functionally, as we are here, insuring everybody regardless of an amount,

I think the better way to do that is to make that as a policy decision with full understanding of what that's going to mean for banking costs. And who bears banking costs? The first rule of banking is the customer pays all the fees. The second rule of banking is you take all the profits. So we will, if we decide to do this, if we empty the deposit insurance fund to cover everybody's

amounts, we will have to replenish it. And again, it's not going to come from fairy dust. It'll come from charges that we all pay as depositors and banking customers. All right, let's talk about your whiteboard. I mean, obviously, that's your thing. How intentional was it? Well, the first time I used the whiteboard

I believe was with Jamie Dimon. And it was extremely intentional. I mean, I wanted to draw something, write something out, and I wanted everybody to be able to follow along. But more importantly, having been a professor before I ran for Congress, I had had the experience so many times of asking a really great question

And then the student says, can you repeat that? And witnesses do this all the time because they're just trying to run out the clock on you. I mean, Mark Zuckerberg is the master of this. I have...

I've never heard someone talk so goddamn slow in my whole life as Mark Zuckerberg when the five-minute clock, when someone was trying to hold his feet to the fire. He usually doesn't talk at all, but go ahead. Right. That might be better. But anyway, so we, when I did the whiteboard, part of my goal was to make sure that Jamie Dimon couldn't say, well, I can't really follow what you're saying. I wanted him to be able to follow it, and I wanted all of you to be able to follow it. So a whiteboard was, it didn't seem that...

or interesting to me to use a whiteboard. I used one every day as a professor to help get all my students on the same page and keep them there, hopefully, while we had a back and forth and a discussion. It's a good prop. It certainly seemed like when you were sitting and watching the McCarthy Speaker House marathon vote and you were carrying the subtle art of not giving a fuck...

And wearing a top of the same color. Talk about that. Okay, so here's the stone... Don't tell me it was just in your bag. No, no. So here's the stone-cold truth. That orange dress was the only clean thing I had. Because this voting series just went on and on. I mean, I was supposed to have gone home because I fly back every chance I can to California. I love California. And so I was out of outfits.

Like that wasn't even in the week's rotation. That was like the last clean thing before we were going to have to recycle. I sort of believe you, but go ahead. And the book, like here's the truth. I had brought with me, I'm a big reader. I've had to fly a lot. And I like to learn and I like to be distracted from the pain of politics sometimes. And so I read a lot. But again, that was like 11 votes, 15 votes. I was out of books.

So there's a little free library that's near my house. And so that book spoke to me for the obvious reasons. It was the vibe of the week. And so I took the book. And then that night we went to vote. It was like 10 o'clock. And we were told that we might, we will be there as long as it takes. So this typically means about three in the morning is when they give up. And so I was like, I got to have something to do.

I could play, you know, with my phone, but I was like, that's kind of, you know, it's like a waste, you know, waste of time. It's not very, I'm going to bring this book. And so I was sitting next to two really lovely, but quite boring house members, like Sean Caston, Kim Schreier, both friends of mine. But I was like, I'm not going to get in any trouble.

I'm not going to get in a fight with anybody. I'm not going to mix it up over on the Republican side. I'm not going to go get cooties from Matt Getz. I'm just going to sit here and like read my book and lo and behold. Lo and behold. I got in all kinds of... People notice that. The subtle art of not giving a fuck. It's interesting. I will say it's very bro-y and that got pretty old. So I was...

Like when I finally got to get up and go home. Okay. All right. But talk about that. Does the house seem functional now under Kevin McCarthy? He seems to have gotten control of it. I'm talking about functioning. I'm not, whether you like it or not is not what I'm asking about. Yeah. I mean, there's, so on the strict kind of stripping away, and I hesitate to do this, but stripping away any value, like moral, otherwise value, they're pretty operationally efficient. Right.

So I actually think Democrats should aspire to be more operationally efficient. And so, like, if they say it's a five-minute vote, guess what time they bang the gavel? Five minutes. You might be thinking, how novel is that? I mean, we had, like, a three-hour, five-minute vote once under Democrats. So there is a sort of...

efficiency about them that I think is something Democrats could aspire to. But the, you know, when you add in what are we doing with our efficiency, the answer is making really harmful policies. So on that, it's not, it's not a social good. You know, I think the thing with McCarthy is I honestly don't think Kevin McCarthy knows if he's in charge. He's hopeful.

He's hoping he's in charge, but I don't think he actually knows yet what the boundaries of sort of his control of the Republican caucus are. Okay. And I think they're untested as of yet. And so what we've seen in these first few weeks is...

trying to throw a few goodies at the people who are on the fringe and making them happy. But basically they're passing stuff on straight party line where we're voting no, they're voting yes. And it's just kind of, nothing's happening. Nothing's going to the president. Nothing's going to the Senate with any real legs, which means we're not solving any problems for the American people. And the problems are still there.

And the Republicans are not solving them. So from that standpoint, it is completely dysfunctional. Okay. So I want to do a lightning round of some of the sectors and executives you've taken on during your viral moments. Tell me the point you were trying to make, whether you think the attention sustained past the moment. Those two things. Banks, when you grilled JPMorgan Chase executive Jamie Dimon on why...

bank tellers aren't paid a living wage. So the point I was trying to make is that corporate executives and corporations have, as part of running a strong, stable, successful business, have a duty to make sure that their employees are able to have strong, stable, successful lives. Why do you use a bank teller named Patricia? Yep. And I, you know, the saddest thing about, I'll tell you the two saddest things about this.

We looked up an apartment and a real job that Chase Bank had in Irvine. And we created this character, Patricia. She has a single mom with one kid. They live in a one bedroom. We had the apartment listing. We had the food budget from the USDA, all these things. The two saddest things were we had people call our office that day asking if we could send them the apartment listing because it was so much cheaper than what they could find. Wow.

And the second really depressing thing was, and I'm not even going to talk about Jamie Dimon. The second really depressing thing was when I went to the floor later in the day to that main house to vote, people said, oh, I saw you with Jamie Dimon. That was great. Remember, I'm brand new. I've only been there a few months. And they said, how did you ever think of that question? That has really stayed with me. How did I think of that question? Do you not see...

the bank tellers or the parking garage attendants or the bus drivers. I mean, who are we there to fight for if it isn't those people? So when my colleagues said, how did you think of it? Thank you.

For me, that was really the first moment that I realized maybe I'm not going to do Congress like other people do. All right, so Big Pharma, when you grilled Amgen CEO Robert Bradway on why the top five or six executives earn over $100 million in compensation and why they spend about three times more on stock buybacks versus life-saving research. So the point I was trying to make is that this argument that we have to pay so much for pharmaceuticals

so that we can have innovation and research and development is bullshit. They charge more for the same drug and the drug doesn't get any better. So we don't, by definition, because of patents, this is not a competitive market.

They have an exclusive ability to make the drug, and that is designed to stimulate the innovation. But you have to then have some actual checks on the prices that are being charged, and we don't have that in our system. And so you're pushing on their compensation, which their excuse was the other guys paid. No, I mean, I literally asked him with an empty whiteboard. This is supposed to show you, you don't even have to have a marker. You can just have the empty whiteboard. I told him, I asked him, this is your compensation.

tell me why you deserve this. And that's what he said, nothing. His only response was the other guys are screwing us all too. And I think that's shameful. I think it's a reasonable question to ask as shareholders of companies, as employees of companies, as customers of companies, why are you spending the money this way? Why are you giving it to your CEO rather than plowing it back into growing the business? And executives are going to be highly compensated.

But that doesn't mean we don't have to get to ask any questions about it, and people shouldn't be able to explain why their compensation is deserved. Now, I personally think it's social media when you took on Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg for privacy breaches and lack of mental health support for Facebook content moderators and probably the rest of us, too. Talk about that. Right now, TikTok is going to be in front of Congress. That's more about China. Talk broadly about social media and why you aim at them. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, social media is a powerful influence on our society and on a lot of different areas. It affects mental health. It affects people's productivity, frankly. It affects how we get information, how we vote. It's important, and I think Congress should work on important issues. I don't think there's any exemption or pass for social media. And I think one of the things we've seen is when they've come to Congress, they act like, I cannot believe I have to do this.

And it's like, yes, yes, you do. Yes, you are operating in the United States of America and this is a democracy. And we on the oversight committee, it is our job to ask you questions about what you're doing and whether you're complying with the law and whether you're being harmful. So, you know, I think big tech for a long time has frankly relied on this argument that it's too complicated to

for Congress to regulate. Okay. Congress hasn't regulated. May I just say, at this point, I feel it's Congress's fault because they've abrogated the responsibility. There was a privacy bill. There was an antitrust bill. There was a transparency bill. All lobbed up. And honestly, it was the Democrats that pulled it back too when they got lobbied.

Yes. And I think this is something about me as a Congress member and as a candidate that I'm proud of and that I think is different. I am willing to hold our own party to account when we fall short. We cannot blame the Republicans for not passing those antitrust bills to rein in big tech. They are bipartisan bills with significant number of Republicans on them.

We had control of the House. We had control of the Senate. We had control of the presidency, and we didn't pass. So why? Why?

Straight up, there's too much special interest money in Washington. This is about donors and about who we fight for. They were attacking the Senate more than anything else because that's where it really, that's where. It didn't, I mean, it's a problem both places. But, you know, this is straight up the answer, right? And it's probably straight up the answer why so many Democrats voted with Republicans to gut the banking regulation. You know, I don't think Democrats should take corporate PAC money. I don't think we should take federal lobbyist money.

I think we should fund our campaigns through the voters and that's who we should fight for. And you can do that in a way that recognizes we have a capitalist economy and we need to make it strong and stable and globally competitive and businesses are going to be part of that. But you've got to be willing to ask the questions and not give it a pass. We'll be back in a minute.

So let's talk about your Senate campaign. The overall thesis for all these moments is the idea of rampant corporate greed screws over citizens and taxpayers. You don't look like Bernie Sanders to me, but is that the lane you're down? Is it Elizabeth Warren? What are you attempting to do here? Because I do know Elizabeth Warren does talk about capitalism a lot, but she's certainly not painted that way. Talk about where your lane is as you run for Senate. So

First, I'll just say that when I think about sort of who am I fighting, what am I doing, I think about fighting bad guys.

And sometimes, lately, frequently, the bad guys have been Trump Republicans. But sometimes the bad guy is a corporate CEO who's screwing us. Sometimes the bad guy is a government official who will not pick up the tools of government and use them to do their job. And so a big theme of it is, yes, it's holding corporations to account, but

Because, frankly, we live in an era in which corporations are behaving badly a lot. I wish that would stop. But the bigger project, the reason to hold corporations to account is people should be able to trust government. And when we pass laws and we have press conferences and we announce that we've done this or that,

And then every corporation gets to continue breaking the rules that diminishes trust in government. So I think about it fundamentally as an oversight project about trying to help people feel more confident that we can trust our government to hold people to the law. You announced in January you'd be running before Dianne Feinstein announced she wouldn't be seeking re-election. I'm just first curious, what was behind the timing?

Were you giving her a hip check or what was the plan? No, no, no. So two things. First, let me just say, Senator Feinstein blazed a path for women in politics to follow. And what it means to blaze a path isn't just for you to get to the end, in her case to the Senate, but it's to make a path for others to walk in, to make space for others. So I'm grateful for her for that. Part of the reason I declared early is I do the work.

And I do the work in community and in partnership with the voters and the volunteers. And California is a big state. If you're serious about winning votes in California and hearing Californians and understanding what challenges they're facing, you can't just pop off a couple times on TV. You have to get out there. You have to go to the tribal communities and the rural communities and the Inland Empire. You have to...

I get it. I'm from Orange County. Politicians don't come historically, especially not Democratic ones. And we're the sixth most populous county in the U.S. or something like that. So for me, it was about getting going with the work. Here's the other thing. I don't think it's respectful to run a whisper campaign.

I wanted to tell Senator Feinstein and show her respectfully that I was going to be running against her. And armed with that information, she could figure out what she wanted to do, which was either run for reelection or not. Did you call her? Yeah, we called her office. Yep. Before. Yep. And they got back to us. And told them before. Was it a first mover advantage? Because you'll be facing at least two other congresspeople for the seat, Adam Schiff and Barbara Lee. Right.

How do you assess that? Yeah. I mean, so I think that we're lucky in California to have the ability to make this choice. And I know some people are like, I got to choose. And I think because of a series of appointments and other things, we haven't had the chance to make a choice in a while. And I think it's really, really an opportunity for us to think about that.

where are we now and where do we want to go? What are the challenges facing California, including things like businesses in some cases leaving? And so I think one of the things that I bring to the race is that I know how to win every vote that we can win. You just can't get elected in a district with Huntington Beach if you don't know how to pull in every single person. So being willing to hold our own party as Democrats to account, not painting everything as Republicans' fault, they have plenty

They have plenty of things that you can blame them for. You don't need to invent things. We need to take ownership for our own party's areas where we need to do better. And being able to pull in those independents, my track record on not taking corporate PAC money, I'm the only candidate in this race who has never taken corporate PAC money.

You've raised $20 million more than your opponent in the last year without corporate PAC money or money from... Now, you're 100% committed to not accepting PAC money for your run for Senate. Absolutely. I've never done it. I'm not going to start. And you do not need to do it to win.

The people who trot out that tired old excuse are, they're being disingenuous. You can raise the resources. It takes more work. It takes a little bit more belief in the voters. But personally, I want a representative who believes in us, who believes in our country, who believes that they can bring people together and get across the finish line, even in the toughest races. So I think one of the things I bring is the ability to help us win down ballot in every part and pocket of California.

Because we have places that are deeply, deeply democratic, but we also have lots of places with county boards of education in California that are making it hard for LGBTQ plus trans students to learn in their schools. There are races to be won here, and we need someone who's going to do the political work. So you feel that you can reach out more towards the center more than they can? No, it's not about a label. It's about being able to talk to people about who you fight for.

So you don't need to put a label on it to do it. I think the label is actually part of the problem. So it's that I know how to talk. When you do things like don't take corporate PAC money,

Doors, when you knock them, doors of no party preference voters who think the Democratic Party is too beholden sometimes to corporate power open for you. And then those conversations happen. You don't win every voter because you don't compromise your principles. But you get to have the conversation and sometimes that gets you the vote.

So let's talk about you. What do you think your vulnerabilities are? I've just read a couple of things. One is the critique about, this was a letter in the LA Times who said that they felt like bait and switch for you to get the seat and then seek greener pastors in the Senate. That's one. Another is leaving your seat open for a possible Republican. Another one, you even got a bad boss problem article in Politico. Where are you most vulnerable to?

So I think the thing I hear the most is the Orange County is so tough. What's going to happen if you're not running? What will happen? We have to win back the house. And I want to be I want to really be clear about this.

The work that we've done in Orange County is work that we have done collectively. It's not all about me. It is about the people who came down and knocked doors and the people who, for the first time, went out and asked their neighbors to vote for a Democrat. There are more registered Democrats than there are Republicans in Orange County.

So we have to quit pretending that we can't win in places like that because it becomes self-defeating. You don't then attract the right kind of candidates and the right kinds of resources. And I pushed this boulder up the hill in 2017, 2018, trying to convince people that we could win in Orange County. So you feel that's the one you get the most pushback? I think that's where the most anxiety is because the stakes are so high. What about you running and then running for something else? Here's a newsflash. Everybody in the House...

everybody in this race, Barbara, Adam, and I, all ran for re-election in 2022 and are now all running for the Senate. So,

That's how the House works. It's an every two-year cycle. So I don't think there's anything exceptional or special about me. The only choice to not having run and won in 2022 would be to have even one less seat in the House. And that wasn't the answer. Do you feel vulnerable about the Politico article? I mean, I talked to Amy Klobuchar about this quite a bit. Yeah, I mean, look, I think...

This is an article. You're a bad boss. Yeah, yeah. So this is the thrust of the article. You're a bad lady boss. So look, I think that it's important to learn from moments like that and to take seriously your staff's feedback. It is difficult to run a big staff in Washington and California and a political staff. And I was a first-time candidate. And so I did learn and I am learning and I am committed to learning. I am grateful for my staff. There's none of those viral moments that you've heard about

happened alone. Well, okay, the Oreo because Ben Carson just did that to himself. But all of those moments came because we're part of a team. And in a team, you push each other. And in a team, sometimes there's frustration and sometimes there's celebration. So I think it's important to own that feedback and say...

I want to hear it and I want to think about it and I want to engage with it. But I am proud of my staff. I'm proud of what we accomplish. And I'm proud to continue to be committed to building a team where people want to be and they want to do the work. Okay, last question. You're supporting Biden for the next...

Election. Yes. Yes. So how do you look at the 2024 presidential election? That's my final question. So I'm definitely supporting Biden. That is not a hard choice. I'm very excited about President Biden. If we had more time, I would tell you all of the many things that I am excited about. That's okay. We're going to do an ad for him. His competition policy. Okay. Which I'm really excited about. Okay. His advocacy for child care policy. We've never had a president like this on those issues. Okay.

The Republican field is grim. And I think, you know, California will actually have a very big role in determining who the Republican nominee is.

And that surprises a lot of people when I say it, but we have an early primary in presidential years. This just started, right? So we have a March 5 primary, and there are a lot of delegates in California because we're the biggest state. So we will actually have all of this Republican cast of characters coming to California, and California Republicans will have a big say here in who the nominee is. So what do you think the ticket will be 2024, right now, if you were to say? Okay.

I think it will be DeSantis. DeSantis Biden. If I had to make a bet today. Why is that? Florida's a big state. He has a more organized, bigger machine kind of behind him. I don't think he has the kind of TV personality of Trump, but I don't see a candidate other than Trump who has that. And I think that there's...

Trump will have a donor problem in this cycle in a way that he didn't the first time because people deluded themselves that he wouldn't be that bad. And so I don't know for sure, but that would be my guess. Are you scared for violence? He's called for protests. Last time he called, it didn't turn out very well. Yeah, I mean, I think that unfortunately political violence is...

an intended consequence of these kinds. It's a tool that they're using. We had violence, you know, at my own, one of my own town halls. And it was, it wasn't spontaneous. It was a, it was a tactic, right? To discourage people from attending and participating in a town hall. And I think that Trump is trying to use violence in the same way as a political tool to try to cover his own ass here. And I hope it doesn't work. I think we all have to do our best to,

And I very much hope that whoever his supporters are, that they see that their actions on January 6th were destructive not just to our country and to the fabric of our democracy, but to their own political movement. And I think we've done a good job holding those folks to account. All right. Representative Katie Porter. Thank you.

Carrie, you said that people were accusing them of being bad lady bosses. Yeah, that's something that's been raised about her. You know, Amy Klobuchar had the same thing, difficulties in management. Again, I think there's plenty of men who are bad managers. They just don't get called that. But women have to be particularly careful, unfortunately. And I think she handled that well. She didn't say she didn't do it.

She didn't say it wasn't an issue. She's like, I'm trying to learn. You know, we had to scramble, et cetera, et cetera. So I thought she handled it well. And it's just, if it comes up again, it'll be a problem. If it doesn't, well, she learned.

She did a good job of handling the questions. I thought you also did a good job of pushing back on this Porter Warren argument that the whole Silicon Valley bank collapse started with this Trump regulatory rollback. Right. There's no proof of that. I like evidence. I like some evidence, like I said, with the same thing with the TikTok issue. And so it's not clear what's happened. It's a confluence of lots of different events, and it's not clear that this would have helped. The federal government knew the problems at all.

at Silicon Valley banks. They were not constrained to stopping them. This was a much more unusual situation, I think. And I'm not sure that more regulation, which I always think is a problem, mostly, and I believe in regulation to an extent. But I think in this case, it's not clear, and we'll see. But I think they're using it for their own purposes.

I agree with you. I think also I liked her point about how you have to systemize the idea that FDIC is going to cover everyone for every dollar. And of course, since we've taped this interview, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has come out saying that is not her top of mind consideration right now, expanding the 250,000 FDIC limit per relationship. Yeah.

Katie Porter says it doesn't come from fairy dust. We have to systemize this. I mean, it was a good point. It doesn't matter. They're going to cover it anyway. It just doesn't. They always do. Every time there's been a bank thing, they cover it. And listeners, if you're listening to this, don't take Kara Swisher's word as a government backed. No, I mean, it's just they do. They never let this happen. They never let it go. They never let it.

And so, and no matter how bad it's been, even the mortgage banks, some of the banks went out of business, but certainly not enough and no one went to jail. So it's like, everyone knows how it's going to go down. And you know what I thought was interesting about her? I think she did, I thought she was, she is a progressive, but oddly enough, my mother, who is a conservative, was like, I'd vote for her.

Oh, Lucky came to the interview? Yeah, she did. Okay. She liked her. She liked her because she was plain spoken and she explained herself. And so I thought that was, I think, compared to Elizabeth Warren, who I think people, you know, when I had Elizabeth Warren at the Code Conference many years ago, literally you could feel all the men, every man in the room was like, like that. They just recoiled from her. Even more than Hillary Clinton? Oh, they like Hillary. She's funny. You know what I mean? And Katie Porter really has a very appealing voice.

And I know you don't like to say this, it's not about women, it's political appealing. She's politically appealing. I agree. I think I've never heard a congresswoman who is so likable. Likeable. And my mom was like, I vote for her. And I was like, you know, I agree with what she said about that. I agree with what she said about that. And so people that can explain things

well and can be funny about it. And not just funny, but like sensible are very powerful politicians. So I think she is indeed. I thought Adam Schiff would run right over, but I don't think so. I think people don't like him and like her, by the way, comparatively. Yeah, she's authentic and she's consistent as well. And, you know, the whole, by the way, I didn't buy one thing I didn't think was authentic. Did you buy the backstory on the art of not giving a fuck book? No, she brought it just to perform. Okay.

Come on. It's fine. But I appreciate her consistency on the fundraising point in particular and on inequity. Yeah. Challenge will be if she can raise the money that's needed for the Senate seat while holding her principles. She has a lot of money already, and she's not taking PACs. I know. She's not going to take PACs. She's not going to take large corporate donations, right? And so we'll see. $100 million. I think she can. I think she can do it. Well, let's see. We shall stay tuned.

And you all can stay tuned for the credits. Mind to read us out, Cara? Certainly. Today's show was produced by Naeem Araza, Blake Neshek, Christian Castro-Rosell, Rafaela Seward, and Megan Burney. Special thanks to Eric Johnson and the team at Manny's. Fernando Arruda engineered this episode. And our theme music is by Trackademics.

If you're already following the show, you get a private lesson in whiteboard politicking from Katie Porter. If not, you get Matt Gaetz's cooties. Good luck with that. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Thursday with more.