Speaker 1: Today.
I welcome Matt Lewis to the program.
Matt is a senior columnist for The Daily Beast and also author of the brand new book Filthy
Rich Politicians The Swamp Creatures, Latte Liberals and Ruling Class Elites Cashing In
on America.
In all honesty.
Did you come up with the title or did your literary agent or publisher do that one?
Speaker 4: Oh, they came up with that.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but.
And this is same way with most of my columns that I write as well.
I just dumb.
I'm not good at headlines, but thank goodness for people who are because I really think
the filthy rich politicians title is great even though I had nothing to do with it other
than greenlighting it.
Speaker 1: Well, what I think is interesting about the book and for context, I hope I'm
accurate when I tell the audience, if people aren't familiar with you, you're you're a
right wing guy.
But I don't think you're a right wing nut.
And certainly under Trump, you have maybe been more critical of it in the past of the
direction of the party.
Is that fair for context?
Speaker 4: Well, look, I think I mean, I'd like to think that I've always been a center
right conservative who was introspective and willing to criticize my team.
Yeah.
When.
When need be.
But I think that Trump you know, when Trump came along and I'm very proud that I have
immediately opposed Trump and have opposed him every step of the way.
Yeah, but I do think that that had this weird psychological effect on all of us, which in
a way was freeing to really reexamine things even more than we might have, even if we thought
we were being open minded.
So, one, there's a lot of bad things that came from Trump.
One of the good things that came from him is that it really shook people like me from
any sort of, I don't know, intellectual like commitment to sticking with our team based
on team spirit as opposed to philosophy or the facts.
Speaker 1: So with that kind of as a jumping off point, one of the things I find interesting
about your book is you sort of seem to be making a point I've made about the narrow
range of sources from which we get our top level politicians in the United States.
Now, your criticism is not exactly what mine is.
Your solutions are not exactly what mine are necessarily.
But that is a point you're making, right, that we have this very narrow path into top
level elected official dumb in the United States.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that, you know, hopefully if you're an open minded person, you know,
you're changing all the time right now.
I don't think you should be flip flopping all the time over like deeply held convictions.
Yeah, but you should be.
And so, like, I really had not thought that much about money in politics, believe it or
not.
I mean, my wife's a Republican political fundraiser.
I've been writing about politics for decades.
But this book writing this book and researching it well, filthy rich politicians made me start
to think things through.
And one of the kind of epiphanies I had was that I could not get elected to Congress,
and not just because I wouldn't fit in with the Trump Zeit guys, but because I probably
wouldn't have the money to do it.
And that was a realization that hit home.
I mean, again, I'm somebody who I know about politics.
I've got a lot of friends and contacts in politics, and yet I don't I don't have that
Ivy League pedigree and I don't have the bank account that I mean, even the so-called populists
like Marjorie Taylor.
GREENE she's worth like $5 million or something.
I mean, that's chump change.
So, yeah, I think that this forced me to kind of reckon with that.
And, you know, the ball has started rolling.
Who knows?
Maybe I'll end up where you are someday.
Speaker 1: Well, I don't know that you're right that you couldn't get elected to the
House.
I think.
I mean, listen, Jorge Santos got elected now.
Yes, he got elected with a bunch of lies, but he was I don't I think if we actually
figured out the amount of money he really has, it's it's not really that much.
I think a lot of it would be if you picked the right district to run in and you've got
connections that your local electrician wouldn't have.
You know, I think I still think you would have a better shot than many.
But I do think this idea of, you know, the Ivy League.
Okay, I mean, yes, Harvard and Yale are certainly overrepresented in the halls of Congress.
I think that that's true.
The ability to raise money, maybe in addition to whether you're coming in with money, is
certainly a factor.
But talk to me about latte liberals, like what exactly is is a latte liberal like a
limousine liberal?
Speaker 4: Yes, pretty much.
First, let me just give you a quick my spiel, because I just want to put it in context of
sort of why I wrote the book.
So like, one of the things that I learned in writing it is that the average member of
Congress is about 12 times richer than the average American household.
So I'm kind of looking at why the rich get elected, but also how the elected get rich.
So once they get an office, there's, you know, the insider trading, you know, that kind of
thing.
So that's kind of the big picture of the book.
But there are, you know, ten chapters.
And one of them well, one of them looks at what I call Ivy League populist.
Right?
That's like the Josh Hawley's and the Ted Cruz's and the J.D.
Vance's.
But I have one on latte liberals, too.
So this could be this could be like I would I would say like Nancy Pelosi, Bernie Sanders,
John Kerry, AOC.
And basically what I'm looking at here is hypocrisy.
Hmm.
So for that is to give you one example of many AOC showing up at the Met gala during
that tax, the rich dress I felt like was.
You know, somebody who's, like, dressing up in a designer dress, going to a not only a
posh, you know, sort of cosmopolitan affair, but also a very expensive one.
And yet she gets to also play the populist.
And, you know, at the same time, it's really a win win for her.
And I found that kind of disingenuous.
And I think that it's the kind of thing that turns off a lot of working class folk out
there.
And, you know, I also think that most of the book looks at money specifically like politicians
who are cashing in.
Yeah.
But I think in this case, it was it had more to do with like the attention economy.
I think it's also corrosive, but just in a slightly different way.
Speaker 1: I think there are two different groups there.
When I hear you say Pelosi and John Kerry.
Okay.
I mean, a bunch of Pelosi and Kerry's wealth is actually from their spouses, but still.
Okay.
So that's one category.
I don't know that AOC has really cashed in.
The dress was borrowed.
I mean, yes, I agree.
I agree.
But by the way, I agree that when I found out about the dress, I was like very much
the wrong move.
But it's not her dress.
She borrowed the dress.
Sometimes people borrow jewelry for Rolling Stones shoots or whatever.
Bernie, I think he's got a couple million bucks, but he's been making six figures for
40 years and he's in his eighties.
Unless you're terrible with money, you're going to have that amount.
I understand that it's not average, but it's also not I mean, a couple million bucks, including
property, one property that was left to him from someone who died or to his wife.
When you're in your eighties, it's actually nowhere near the top couple percent.
So I think there's a couple categories here, but I think you're you are getting at the
tension between what happens up until the point at which you get into these positions
of power and this promises one makes, then the opportunities that present themselves,
either because you seek them out or because it's the way the system works is one, once
you're in power and then whether it creates a tension with how you choose to legislate.
I think that's what ties the four people you mentioned together.
Speaker 4: Yes.
And I would agree that I mean, if people are changing the way that they vote based on money,
that is a really bad type of corruption.
And I'm not, you know, generally not leveling those charges in this book.
I do think like the average member of Congress now is a millionaire.
More than 50% are millionaires, but it's only 7% of the population in America.
So there's a big disconnect.
So even though Bernie Sanders is far from being the richest member of Congress, yep,
even he would be a little bit out of touch with with Joe Sixpack.
Obviously, I think there's something the irony of him being, you know, a social Democrat
that's tied to this and with in the case of Bernie Sanders, you know, I've had a little
section in the book about book deals, how politicians cash in on book deals.
Bernie Sanders literally said, you know, I wrote a bestselling book.
You could be a millionaire if you wrote a bestselling book.
Right.
Well, I think fair point, Bernie.
I hope.
I hope I do.
I hope it works out for me.
But that was a great line.
The other thing that comes up with Bernie is his wife, Jane.
Yep.
Who he has throughout many decades found ways to pay her, including making her his media
buyer.
You know, typically this is actually a profession and there are people who like that is what
they do.
They're media buyers on campaign.
They take the campaign money, they buy TV ads and they get a percentage of it.
It's a pretty good life.
Bernie made Jane his media buyer, even though she had never had zero experience doing that.
It certainly smells swampy.
Yep.
And so but I will concede this section on latte liberals and the one on Ivy League populist
are both different from the rest of the book because by and large, these are younger politicians
who have not yet kind of cashed in and gotten to that.
Nancy Pelosi.
John Kerry.
Speaker 1: Level.
Yeah.
I didn't know about Bernie hiring his wife in that capacity.
Reminds me of, you know, Trump pilot hiring Lara Trump and Kimberly GUILFOYLE and that
sort of thing.
So to some degree, I mean, okay, So on the one hand, there's the it is more difficult
for large swaths of people to even make it into elected office.
To what degree do you think the self-selection bias plays a role in that?
Lots of the people like, for example, I think Neil deGrasse Tyson would be a super interesting
person to be, you know, maybe a senator, I don't know.
And people say, well, he has no political experience.
He can think in a way that I think the Senate would benefit from at the least, I think is
something we could say.
And yes, he happens to be on the left from everything I've heard and we could say, well,
maybe a different scientist or something like that, but a lot of people like that aren't
interested.
Didn't going into politics, in part because of some of the very things that you point
out in the book.
So to what degree do you think the self-selection bias is a factor and what really could be
done to change that?
Speaker 4: Well, that's a good question.
I definitely I'm a big believer in incentives, and I don't think we want a scenario where
people are like running for office to get famous and to get rich.
And sadly, that kind of is what it is today.
And I actually think the fame thing is on the rise, the attention economy.
But so I think we just have to think about incentives.
I call for lots of reforms in the book.
I don't believe any of them are going to solve the problem of corruption.
But to mitigate the downside.
Right.
So banning stock trading.
So if you get in there, you're there, but you can't cash in.
Term limits that would limit the ability to sort of make generational wealth based off
of your service, your tenure.
The one thing that the one sort of I guess, counterintuitive thing I would do is actually
pay them more but actually raise the salary because I'm going to cut off their ways to
make a lot of extracurricular money.
We might as well pay them a little bit better salary so they can focus on their actual job.
Speaker 1: Like, how much better?
Speaker 4: Oh, I don't know.
Right now, the average member of Congress is making like $174,000 a year.
Right.
Like, on one hand, that sounds like a lot.
I think the average salary in America is like 56,000.
So this is a lot more.
However, in the members of Congress, sometimes they they might have a residence back in the
district and also have to rent or own a place in Washington, D.C..
I would be cutting off their ability to make money from book deals.
I would be cutting off their ability to bet on the stock market.
Yeah.
So I don't know.
I would probably raise it to say $225,000 a year, which.
Speaker 1: Is not a crazy difference in in the grand scheme when you're talking about
the limits that you're imposing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, No, I don't.
I mean, I could probably be, you know, talked into 300 or something if someone persuaded
me it was right.
I mean, another thing I would do is to in this this actually is not in the book, but
while we're talking about it, I would also uncap the house like there's been 435 members
for 100 years or something.
Yeah, I would like to have four or five times as many House members.
I think that would bring down the average net worth of your average congressperson.
It would, I think, get rid of the sense that they're more elite and bashful than us.
They would probably be more responsive to us.
And then I think that $225,000 salary would be pretty appealing.
Speaker 1: What's interesting about that is I don't have the number in front of me, but
I know a couple of MPPs in Canada, and I was shocked when they told me that based on Canada's
population and the number of them, they represent a fraction of the number of people that an
American member of the House represents.
I think right now it's about 750,000 in the U.S.
And I don't want to say what the number is in Canada.
I don't remember.
I think it's a lot less.
What you're proposing is that AOC or Marjorie Taylor GREENE, instead of representing three
quarters of a million people, they might only represent 125,000 people.
You think that not only by by opening up more seats, it would kind of widen out the types
of folks that serve?
Would would individuals, would constituents be better represented as well by default?
Because they have there are fewer of them represented by each member.
Speaker 4: Oh, definitely.
I think it would.
A lot of the problems of gerrymandering would go away.
And also a lot of the problems of feeling like you're not represented or that your member
of Congress is out of touch with you.
That was one of the things that I found in writing Filthy Rich Politicians is this Pew
Research survey where 75%.
About three quarters of Americans felt like their member of Congress was more focused
on their own interests than on We the People.
And they I think, with 72% of Americans survey describe their member of Congress as, quote,
selfish.
I just feel like if you were representing a smaller group of folks, they would have
more access to you.
And I think also it would broaden the type of people who get elected around the country.
Speaker 1: Give us a little bit.
Give us some vignettes, Matt, if you can, of the type of character you would like to
see as a member of the House.
You know, we we've talked before about scientists.
I've talked before, but what about like a school principal, for example, or something
like that?
All of this is very dependent on personality and interest and all of these different things.
But who are the sorts of folks you would like to see representing Americans in the House
of Representatives?
Speaker 4: Oh, that's an interesting question.
I have not thought about this partly because, you know, we get stuck into this thing where
we can't imagine anything different because it's almost unthinkable.
But I like where you're going with this.
I mean, I think, Bill, it was Bill Clinton who said that he wanted an administration
that looked like America.
And I think he was probably thinking like identity politics, like race or something
like that.
But but why couldn't we have if we had, you know, 2000 members of the House of Representatives,
you could imagine right away the diversity you would have.
Speaker 1: And but let's really think it through.
Teacher Yes.
No.
Electrician Yes.
No.
I mean, you know, let's let's look.
Speaker 4: No, but actually that's an interesting point.
And one of the things I learned when I was writing the book is that is recently and this
is of course, this was I'm citing The Washington Post here, but is it as recently as 19 as
the 1970s, there was like a plumber in Congress.
There was a pipe fitter.
Mm hmm.
I think there's a woman who just got elected in Washington state, a Democrat who is like
a mechanic or something like that.
I think that's good, actually.
And maybe we'll get maybe we would get back to that.
Speaker 1: Last thing I want to ask you about, because you're not going to give me a list
of professions that are okay.
Looking at the Republican primary right now.
Is it obvious that Chris Christie is the most honest and sane actor currently running?
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 1: Oh, interesting.
Okay.
That's my opinion.
Speaker 4: That's hyper, right?
Yeah.
Speaker 1: Who would be second after him?
Speaker 4: I'd say Tim Scott.
Speaker 1: Okay.
All right.
Speaker 4: Tim Scott.
I like Tim Scott a lot.
What disqualified him from winning is that he.
He's pander.
He has to pander too much.
Yes.
He's not as honest.
I don't think he's an evil or dishonest person, but he doesn't have the luxury of being able
to call it the way he sees it, the way Chris Christie can.
Speaker 1: I think that that's fair.
Fair on both accounts, we've been speaking with Matt Lewis, senior columnist for The
Daily Beast.
The new book is Filthy Rich Politicians The Swamp Creatures, Latte Liberals and Ruling
Class Elites Cashing In on America.
We'll link to the book.
Matt, really appreciate your time and your thoughts today.
Speaker 4: Thank you for having me.