Rep. Raskin legally OUTSMARTS Elon Musk with MAJOR move

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INTERVIEW - Brian intervies Jamie Raskin about his move to outsmart Elon Musk and his reaction to Trump's Tesla commercial on the White House lawn.  For more from Brian Tyler Cohen: Order my #1 NYT bestselling book: https://www.harpercollins.com/pages/shameless YouTube (español): https://www.youtube.com/@briantylercohenespanol Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/briantylercohen Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/36UvEHs Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0066rKCBIycIMI4os6Ec5V Twitter: https://twitter.com/briantylercohen Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/briantylercohen Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/briantylercohen TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@briantylercohen Newsletter: https://plus.briantylercohen.com Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/briantylercohen.bsky.social Threads: https://www.threads.net/@briantylercohen

Transcript

00:00I'm joined now by Congressman Jamie Rask, and thanks so much for joining.

00:02The pleasure is mine, Brian.

00:04So we have seen numerous efforts by Elon Musk to try and kind of circumvent the law

00:10and tell the courts and tell the government two different things.

00:13That effort has kind of backfired at this point. Can you explain the move that you just made?

00:20Well, they were trying to squeeze out of any kind of responsibility or accountability by saying

00:28that they just reported directly to the president, and they weren't actually a federal agency.

00:35But they were a federal entity. The courts ruled that they were indeed a federal agency because

00:42they read their own statements and professions that they had all kinds of power over the budget

00:49to be targeting different entities and so on.

00:52So in any event, we've got district court rulings now that they are a federal agency.

00:57Well, one of the implications of being a federal agency is you're subject to FOIA,

01:01and all federal agencies and departments have got to give us, the American people,

01:08we own the government, the data about us.

01:11Now, most departments and agencies have been vigilant about protecting the security and

01:17the privacy of people's information, but everybody's freaking out about Elon Musk

01:23and Doge having control over their data because he, of course, is trying to

01:29train his whole artificial intelligence system, Grok. He's trying to turn X into a financial

01:40payment system. I mean, like everybody else in the Trump administration and the cabinet,

01:46he is trying to be both a government leader and official and employee and also run private

01:54corporations that get money from the government. So it is a bundle of conflicts.

02:00But in any event, the courts have said that this is a federal agency, and given that it's

02:07a federal agency, we have the right to know what data they've got on us, and we have a right to

02:13know whether they've shared that with any third party, whether a private corporation or another

02:18public entity, and we've got the right to get them to correct any inaccuracies that may have

02:23been added to our data. So, okay. So FOIA is Freedom of Information Act, meaning when you

02:30make a request of the government, they have to tell you, they have to reveal what they've been

02:34doing. And so, in theory, now because Elon Musk, now because it's been ruled to be a government

02:40agency, they're subject to the same FOIA rules as every other government agency. And so my question

02:46here becomes, how do we know that they're going to comply with these requests and that they're

02:51going to comply accurately? Because even within, you know, I don't know how much we can trust

02:57DOJ itself to be the ones to police whether DOJ is accurately complying with the request that

03:04the government is making of it. Well, and you're totally right. As far as I can tell from the DOJ

03:08website, they don't even have a FOIA unit as part of their operation. And the website itself

03:15shows, is rife with inaccuracies. I mean, the whole point of DOJ is to eliminate waste, fraud, and

03:19abuse. They have $8 million cuts that are being billed as $8 billion cuts. They have things that

03:27were cut during the Biden administration or even before the Biden administration being presented

03:33as if it's happening right now. And so just to your point, I mean, the DOJ itself is not exactly

03:40some trustworthy arbiter of what they're doing here. No, and they're not in pursuit of corruption.

03:47They're not trying to ferret out waste, fraud, and abuse. On the contrary, they have sacked 18

03:54inspectors general who are the real anti-corruption fighters, the people who really get rid of waste

04:00and fraud and kickbacks and corruption and abuse taking place in the departments. But those were

04:05the first people they targeted to get rid of them, clearing the way for corruption. And of course,

04:10they've dismantled enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. They're trying to clean

04:16house at the Department of Justice to essentially get rid of the public integrity unit, totally

04:24demolishing the top leadership of it, and so on. And we know that Elon Musk gets tens of billions

04:32of dollars in government contracts, and they're seizing control over the payment systems and over

04:40everybody's data. So look, the Privacy Act of 1974 established that we all have control over

04:49our own data. I mean, that's really one of the critical differences between living in a democracy

04:54and living in a dictatorship. The government and the state doesn't own the data in us. We get to

05:01possess our own information, and so they've got to turn it over. Now, Doge doesn't seem to have

05:08an apparatus for doing that, but here's the thing, and Elon Musk is going to have to learn this

05:13quickly. Taking governmental office and power involves not just benefits of being able to

05:22control the action, but burdens too. There are responsibilities that go along with that. So

05:28pretending to be a government leader means you've got to live up to the law. And so I sent in my

05:34Privacy Act FOIA request yesterday. I'm hoping to hear back shortly, but I don't have any right

05:43that 340 million other Americans don't have. I mean, I don't know that the Proud Boys and

05:50Oath Keepers are necessarily going to be sending in their requests and other people who support

05:56the billionaire cabinet, but everywhere I go, people are asking, what's the story with our

06:02data? Is it safe there? And so we deserve an accounting. And so do you have confidence

06:09that the information that we do get back from Doge, if we get information back from Doge,

06:14I know that you mentioned that there's no apparatus to do that right now, but presumably,

06:18if they want to remain in compliance with the law, they'll have to figure that out,

06:22that the information we do get back from Doge is going to be accurate. If they say, for example,

06:26that they don't have private sensitive data from Americans, if they don't have social security

06:31information or tax information, whatever it may be, that if they say that, that that's trustworthy.

06:37Well, it's a very serious thing for them to misrepresent the status of the data that we've

06:46got. But look, I'm going into it with with good faith and with the hope that they are going to

06:52comply with the law promptly, as they must under FOIA. It's generally a 30-day period that they

07:02got, depending on what it is you're looking for. They've got to get back to us. And that is a

07:11for real obligation on their part. And there are opportunities for people to bring a legal action

07:19to compel production of the information if they don't produce it. And there are attorney's fees

07:25and other kinds of financial penalties that go along with the government not complying with this

07:31critical law for government accountability. To that point, and you had alluded to this

07:36before, the fact that Elon is really there to bolster his private businesses. What did you make

07:42of the fact that as of this recording, we're recording this on Wednesday, on Tuesday,

07:48Trump spent the day not focused on abiding by his promise to the American people during the

07:53campaign, not focused on lowering costs for Americans for rent or housing or groceries or

08:00eggs, but instead basically doing an infomercial on the White House lawn for Elon's private company,

08:06Tesla? Well, here's the thing that really freaked me out about that. You know,

08:12back if you can remember to the days before Donald Trump, no president ever would have had

08:21a commercial extravaganza auto showroom on the front lawn of the White House. Everybody would

08:29understand that that violates all the rules of ethics and the basic precept also codified into

08:36law that you can't use public property like that for the purposes of private moneymaking.

08:42And yet, we're dealing with such massive structural corruption and lawlessness that

08:50people even barely remarked upon the oddity of having this infomercial take place on the

08:58front lawn of the White House. But you can view it as at least emblematic of the far deeper

09:05structural corruption that's going on. And of course, that's the essential relationship between

09:11Elon Musk and Donald Trump. Elon Musk has put hundreds of millions of dollars into Trump's

09:18political election campaign in 2024. Trump has given him basically carte blanche over the federal

09:25government, over access to our information, over the computer systems, and to put him in a position

09:33to be looking at all of the information related to his rivals, related to his own government

09:41contracts, related to other countries. It's a very dangerous situation. And it gets even more serious

09:49when you look at what Elon Musk and his compatriots like Peter Thiel and Curtis Yarden believe in.

09:57I mean, these are people who believe that democracy is defunct. They believe we live in a

10:02post-constitutional world. They don't believe in our constitution. And they envision the rise

10:09of an autocratic techno state where the people who are the CEOs of the major corporations will choose

10:18the CEO of the government. Curtis Yarden told the New York Times about a month ago that

10:24the American people have to get over their fear of dictatorship and dictators. He said that

10:29the CEOs of the major corporations are just dictators, and we need a dictator to make the

10:35government work for them. And that's their vision of where we're going. And by the way, the reason

10:40why they want to pull the plug on Ukraine and give all power to Vladimir Putin to take over

10:46Europe, if that's what he wants, and Xi in China, and of course Elon Musk is deeply implicated

10:53with the Chinese government and half of all of his business investments are in China,

11:00is because they also view an autocratic new state arising in North America. That's why

11:08they keep talking about Canada and Greenland and Panama. They want a fundamental regime change.

11:14They don't believe in the United States of America and our constitution as the rest of us

11:20conceive of it. Well, you know, there are going to be people who say,

11:23who kind of cast off the idea that Donald Trump is being serious about his efforts to

11:30annex Canada as the 51st state. There are going to be people who cast off what he says as just this

11:35like, you know, errant synapses fire in Trump's brain. And so he acts on them until something else

11:40garners his attention. And really he's just trying to own the news cycle. What do you say about this?

11:45Because this is a situation where now the rubbers met the road and we have tariffs that have been

11:50imposed. We have a trade war that's broken out. We have a stock market that is collapsing and

11:55entered correction territory. We have a broader economy that's right now on the verge of recession

12:02and he still is parroting, not just from the campaign trail, but from the White House briefing

12:07room and from his interviews, this idea that the only way to alleviate any of this is to move

12:12forward with this insane lunatic idea that Canada has to become, that has to relinquish

12:18its sovereignty and become the 51st state. And so what do you make of this? Because again,

12:23there will be these competing factions of folks who say like, this is just something Trump says

12:28versus the fact that like, we are seeing market value erased by the trillions in the market right

12:34now. And the only steadfast principle that he's holding onto is this idea that he wants to

12:39annex Canada. Well, I'm sure it makes Vladimir Putin very happy because

12:44all of these completely bizarre overtures towards Canada and threats against Canada

12:51and trade war moves against Canada, one of our greatest allies in the world that have been with

12:57us every step of the way through World War II and everything else, all of that ends up justifying

13:07either deliberately or inadvertently. I would tend to think deliberately, but either way,

13:13it ends up justifying Putin's moves against Ukraine and his bloodthirsty imperialist invasion

13:21of Ukraine and his contention that Ukraine does not exist as an independent sovereign country and

13:27his attempts to take it over. This is a basically imperialist notion and it's a rejection of

13:35everything that we fought for in World War II. When we got out of World War II, the whole world

13:44settled on the proposition that nations could not invade other nations and that people have

13:53sovereignty in their own countries and we needed to organize ourselves around the principles of

14:00international law and human rights. And they have thrown all of that into a complete quagmire

14:09by validating the Russian invasion of Ukraine, by inviting China to regard Hong Kong and Taiwan and

14:21Tibet as their property, and now by having the United States of America make these hostile

14:28takeover maneuvers towards Canada and Greenland and Panama. I mean, again, it's been quasi-normalized,

14:36but 10 years ago, people would have thought you were absolutely a raving lunatic if you said

14:43that the United States was going to try to take over Canada and turn it into a state.

14:48Yeah, I still think we have plenty of people in this country who think you're a raving lunatic

14:52if you're saying that we should take over Canada from the United States.

14:55I should say, however, that if Canada were to choose to do that, we would probably add around

15:0340 progressive Democrats to the House and two progressive Senators. It would do a lot for us,

15:07I don't know what it would do for them. Yeah. First of all, yeah, it's like it's

15:12shoving them into a family that they probably, the crazy family. But yeah, I mean, this is a

15:17country that has become accustomed to universal healthcare, gun control, and environmental

15:21protection. So I'm not exactly sure the political benefit for the Republicans, but look, if Canada

15:28wants to take one for the team, we're happy to have you. Finally, Congressman, let's finish off

15:33with this. We have some pretty cataclysmic news on the economic front, and that is for the very

15:39first time in CNN's polling history, even including his first term, Donald Trump is now

15:44underwater on the economy. So for the first time ever, not just a majority of Americans,

15:50but 56% of Americans disapprove of Trump's handling of the economy. That's 56 to 44.

15:55The closest he ever was to those numbers was back in 2017, December of 2017, he got to 49%.

16:04So this is a pretty massive swing, obviously, in response to the war he's waged on our own

16:10economy by virtue of these tariffs and the trade war and watching the stock market crumble. So can

16:14I have your response to this swing among the majority of Americans with regard to how Trump

16:19is handling the economy? Well, one month before the election

16:26in October of 2024, The Economist magazine had a cover story called The Envy of the World,

16:36The American Economy, The Roaring American Economy. And Joe Biden gave us an economy

16:41that for more than 40 straight months was 4% or less unemployment. The manufacturing sector

16:53came roaring back, the record stock market, everything, you name it, The Envy of the World,

17:00said The Economist magazine. And now Donald Trump is in the process of crashing it.

17:04And everybody can see it. He picked out one thing where he thought Joe Biden was weak,

17:11which was inflation. He hammered it over and over again, talked about the price of eggs.

17:15Now the price of eggs is the highest it's ever been in American history. And the price of eggs,

17:20Benedict, is even much higher than that because he's betraying every value we've got in our

17:25society, in our government. So I think it was always fraudulent that Donald Trump was some

17:33kind of great businessman or a great economist, but they did a hell of a sell job on that. And

17:40all of it is PR, but it's a house of cards that's come crashing down and everybody understands that

17:45there's nothing there now. And this is just within the first two months of his administration.

17:50We had to get through four years of this. He has turned our closest allies in the world into

17:56enemies. He's turned our worst enemies in the world into his personal friends and bosom buddies.

18:03He's crashed the stock market. He has fired tens of thousands of people from essential jobs like

18:15air traffic controller and food and drug and safety inspectors, forest service firefighters.

18:24He's undermining the government that we need to keep it all together. So all I can say is

18:29if Vladimir Putin himself had invaded America and come up with a plan to try to destroy our economy

18:38and wreck the cohesion of our society, he could not have done better than Donald Trump has done

18:44on his own with the help of Elon Musk. Perfectly put. We'll leave it there.

18:48Congressman, thank you as always for the work that you're doing and for taking the time today.

18:51Thank you, Brian. Hang tough, man.

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