Name: How Lina Khan Became FTC Chair At 32
Uploaded: 2025-11-15T14:00:58.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'How Lina Khan Became FTC Chair At 32' from TAFS Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-11-15. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'How Lina Khan Became FTC Chair At 32' from TAFS Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-11-15. Transcript available.

And so, from my understanding, well, two things. First is like, how did
President Biden, how
did you get drafted into the league at 32?
It's a great question. I have no...
You were the youngest by like 40 years, probably, in the government.
Yeah. Oh, in the... I mean, there had been some prior FTC commissioners that
had been
in their 30s, but I think the chair, yeah, probably was the youngest.
So how did you get scouted? Like, how did they know that you were the GOAT? It's
really
cool that President Biden was like, this is the one.
Yeah.
And you like changed... we'll get into it, but you changed the way kind of a
toothless part
of the executive functioned, from what I understand.
Yeah, I mean, how people get picked is like a total mystery.
Oh, now you're lying. Now she's lying. We got her, guys. Let's clap it up.
What happened?
You know, you basically get a call being... asking you if you're interested in
serving.
From the Monopoly man.
From... from the federal government, and...
You get a call from the federal government?
You get a call from somebody, you know, working in the White House who does
personnel.
Who, Uncle Sam?
They... they... usually somebody who works in the Office of Personnel.
HR?
It's basically HR for the White House, who has to, like, figure out for all of
the political
appointees, who are we going to pick.
So they call you. They ask if you're interested. If you say yes, you have to
have all of this
kind of background checks and have a lot of conversation with security people.
Yeah. They looked into the Starbucks, right?
Probably.
They probably, like, called someone at the Starbucks.
Yeah. They call people who know you to kind of try to figure out what's going
on.
And then sometimes you don't hear for a while and you have no idea, am I in or
am I out?
In my case, I ended up being told that I had been picked as a commissioner and
they were going
to announce it, like, the next day.
Had you spoken to President Biden before?
No.
Really?
Yeah.
He wasn't like, kiddo, kiddo, the malarkey of you. You've got no malarkey.
No, we didn't get to have that conversation.
So you came into it, from what I understand, and as you alluded to, from Reagan
till the
time you came, which, 2020?
2021, yeah.
2021. Like, from, so for, what, 30 years, it was basically a completely, just,
they did Herbalife,
right?
Was that their big hit for 30 years?
They were very focused on, you know, frauds and scams and, you know, it's staffed
by very
well-meaning people, but there definitely had been kind of a real narrowing in
their ambition.
Yeah.
Well, so you walked into the office, everyone was Hawaiian shirt, beer pong.
Were people doing, like, Xeroxes of their butts?
You know, it was still COVID, so it took a while until everybody was, like,
back in.
But, no, I mean, you know, the staff there was very hardworking.
There had been people who'd been there since, you know, for decades.
She won't talk shit.
They were definitely, like, look at this homework nerd coming in, trying to
make us work for
the first time ever.
No, I mean, there, you know, it was, it was, I was an unusual pick for a bunch
of reasons,
so, you know, it was a bit of an adjustment for the agency.
Yeah.
Yeah.
How'd you get picked?
It's a great, it's a great question.
Because you, you're not Nepo, right?
No, I mean, no.
No, I mean, no.
You're, like, the smartest one.
They never picked the smartest one.
Seriously.
It's like a rarity.
That's why I'm so fascinated by it.
Yeah.
Especially when it's so young.
They hate youth in Hollywood, in ugly Hollywood, I mean, in D.C.
They have a contempt for youth.
It was an unusual pick, and I think it really did speak to how, in a pretty
small number
of years, the kind of elite, even elite consensus about antitrust has started
to change.
Yeah.
And so, there was a growing sense that the kind of Reagan approach, which had
become a bipartisan
approach, right?
Under Clinton and Obama, yeah.
I mean, the incredible thing about Reagan was, like, when they came in, the
stuff they
were pushing was seen as really fringe.
And, you know, there were deep partisan fights.
But then you fast forward 12 years after eight years of Reagan, four years of
Bush, and the
stuff that had been really fringe of theirs was now just the new common wisdom.
And so, they were pretty masterful in kind of getting their set of ideas and
ideology to
become the new mainstream.
And it took until, you know, 2018, 2019, 2020 for there to be a greater
recognition that
that had been the wrong path, and we needed to kind of reinvigorate this area
of the law.
Even, from what I understand, people that were supporting the Harris campaign
were kind
of going at your ass a bit.
Is that correct?
It wasn't clear if Kamala won, if she would continue kind of your project.
Yeah.
Look, I mean, you know, a president has the prerogative to kind of pick their
own team.
So, they were not choosing who they were going to have in place before they won.
But you were a first round draft pick.
You know, I think it was an honor to serve and it would have been her prerogative
to kind
of choose the path forward.
But it's true that there were people who were upset by what we were doing and
that were kind
of being very vocal about that.
There were a lot of people who were upset.
I don't know if I'd say a lot.
I mean, the newspaper, I believe, wait, what did I find?
There's like 53 op-eds against you after you came into the FTC?
At least, yes.
They were saying.
Why?
You drove them nuts.
You were living rent free because it's tech.
Was it big tech and hedge funds?
There was some big tech trade groups.
A lot of it was, you know, also the deal makers.
So, parts of Wall Street that make a lot of fees off of mergers and acquisitions.
But you're just some lady.
I mean, you're what?
Five foot four?
Yeah.
Five, four, five, five.
Yes.
Look, brain death at Khan's FTC and Lena Khan blocks cancer cures.
Hedge fund that made a killing betting against Lena Khan.
Lena Khan needs to see Shark Tank's Kevin O'Leary.
Lena Khan whiffs again.
Why were you such a lightning rod?
I mean, how are you like this but then in the court you're like that?
I mean, I think there were a few things.
I think we had had several decades of elite impunity where if you were breaking
the law but you were in a C-suite, the government would go light on you.
And, you know, even in places like the FTC, sometimes there had been a double
standard where if you kind of found that there was some like small-time scammer
or fraudster, you would like bring the full force of the law against them.
But then if you kind of found that a fancy CEO was breaking the law and their
company was publicly traded, you might go a little lighter.
They were contributing to your campaign.
And, you know, I thought that was just really problematic.
And so 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.
Two things.
Did President Biden, when you came in, give you that mandate?
Was he like, go for it?
The White House was very supportive of kind of what we were doing.
President Biden did sign this executive order in 2021 that was pretty
significant.
I mean, he basically said the last 40 years of kind of Robert Bork style antitrust
has been a total mistake.
And I'm, you know, directing my government to basically turn the page on that
failed approach.
And that means the FTC, the DOJ, but also all of these other agencies need to
really focus on taking on monopolies.
So there was definitely a mandate.
And they called you a hipster?
That was one of the labels that was attached to you.
So you were like listening to Grizzly Bear, Animal Collective.
What was it?
Why?
What was that?
Why did they go there?
You'll have to ask the people who came up with the term, but I think their,
their view was the approach to antitrust that we wanted to advance was like a
throwback.
What was the other thing?
Like neo post Brandeisian or something?
Right.
Neo Brandeisian.
That's pretty cool.
You functioned kind of like as someone that enforced the law.
You were kind of like a, like a cop or like a, you know.
Yeah.
Did you ever ask for a gun?
You should have got a badge.
I know.
We probably should have.
You know, we did have investigators who like went undercover sometimes and they
did have badges.
Deep undercover in Wall Street?
Usually, you know, usually not on Wall Street.
Usually kind of if there were like various types of frauds or scams or that
sort of thing.
Did you send guys to Burning Man to like figure out tech corruption?
We didn't, we didn't have that, that good idea.
See, I, had I gone to law school, I would have had that great idea.
Cause they would have been on Molly and they would have been like, we're going
to make one company.
The whole, the whole economy is going to be one company pretty soon.
Yeah.
And they would have been on ketamine or whatever the hell.
That, that is a very creative investigative technique.
Can we go back to the FTC and try it?
And can we cut that from the episode?
Because I feel like we cracked it just now.
Go to Burning Man.
They're all on drugs over there.
Talking about the, the singularity.
I guess.
So you took this toothless organization.
You made it, you made it a potent organization for the first time.
Did you have any structural changes that you had to enact in order to, to get
that?
The ball rolling there?
Yeah, a few.
I mean, first we brought on more technologists because a lot of the economy is
now becoming digitized.
But you kind of need people on your team who understand how the stuff works.
So we brought in a bunch of them.
We hired more lawyers.
You know, we started litigating more.
And so we brought on more litigators.
The FTC is pretty small relative to the size of its job and mandate.
So we tried to.
I would imagine you just get outgunned.
Like they have 9,000 lawyers.
You have like 12 guys.
Yeah.
I mean, sometimes the like in-house lawyers of these companies are greater than
like the
entire like competition bureau of the FTC.
How many guys did you have?
In total, we had 1,300.
Oh, I thought you were going to say 13.
That would have been hilarious.
But no, I mean, we are totally outmatched when it comes to resources and the
amount of
money they have.
So you kind of have to figure out how to navigate that.
What do you view as like your biggest dub?
Gosh.
I mean, there are a lot of cases that are still pending.
You sued Call of Duty?
We did sue to block the Microsoft Activision merger.
That merger did go through.
Yeah.
We weren't successful.
And now you can't get it on PlayStation?
Call of Duty?
I think you can, but I think you get it early on Xbox.
Look at what you did, what they did.
You were trying to stand up for Caleb.