Transcript of GOP Turns on Trump & Rep. Constantino Blasts "A**holes" | Teddy Schleifer

The Democrats are up to 252 House seats and counties. They've pulled ahead in the Alaska Senate race, and they're even sure, they're even on the cusp of winning a Senate seat in Mississippi. I was like, I didn't even know Mississippi had Democrats. It's like finding out McDonald's serves a risotto. It just doesn't seem right.

And over in Texas, Democrats flipped everything. They flipped the governor. Yeah, they flipped the governor. They flipped the statehouse. They even flipped George Strait. He's George Gay now. It's the blue wave. A blue wave. It's a huge victory for Democrats, but a somber time for the few Republican survivors.

But even amongst this carnage, there were some bright spots for the GOP and some potential new rising stars.

A lot of girls are nowadays, you know? Come on. Let's caucus. Let's do it. But maybe he's got some big plans for when he gets to D.C. First, obviously, will be getting himself unbanned from Hinge. But after that, what's on his agenda? Affordability? Health care?

It's about inventing what we want. And yeah, Mama wants thrusters. But seriously, I can't wait to fly around New York in this thing.

Love is a strange thing. And you might be wondering, does this robot do more than kickflip burglars in the tank? It doesn't have to, but it does. No way. He saved that kid from being hit by a car and instead gave him a quick and painless death from blood-forced trauma to the head.

God, what a time to be alive, unlike that kid. Well, that's all the time we have for Tech Yeah. Tune in next time when we decide who has better content, Netflix or your neighbor's doorbell cam.

<spk:33> You know, you could have stopped talking a few minutes ago and left it at billionaire. I just left it there. How nice would that be? The problems go away, right? <spk:33> I went into media and, you know, it's a great beat. I mean, you get to cover the richest people in the world. I kind of feel like I'm on a safari. You know, I got my binoculars out and I'm watching kind of all these peculiar creatures roam across. Is that because you can't get close to them? You have to have binoculars outside their doors? <spk:33> Yeah. I mean, a lot of these people don't want you to get close to them, and certainly not me. No, but I do think about this as a way of covering inequality, right?

Like, there's people out there who cover poverty, and this is sort of the opposite. Yes. Oh, that kind of inequality, yeah. The people who have nothing, and these are the people who have everything. <spk:33> Yeah, but I feel like if we're going to have, like, debates about taxes, we need to know how much people pay in taxes. Or if we're going to have debates about political influence, you need to know facts about the political influence. And, you know, I think this beat really requires specialists who really understand the way that billionaires operate. Do you have Jeff Bezos's phone number?

Because I'm still waiting on some toilet paper that has not arrived. <spk:33> I'll let him know. I'll let him know. Well, this has been a big week with the midterms. How are billionaires feeling about the midterms and how far their money went? <spk:33> I was talking to someone yesterday who has that amount of net worth. And, you know, they were describing this as worse than 2006. And, you know, for a lot of I know. For them, that's a bad thing. Yeah. Sure. <spk:33> You know, I mean, this is a class of people that is used to being effective, right?

And someone who covers these rich people. I mean, like, in politics, there's sort of this gospel that's told, which is you raise a lot of money, you spend a lot of money, you buy the ads that pull well, and then you win, right? It's like easy. And I think, even as someone who's been writing about this for a while, I think I have to remind myself that that doesn't always work out. Yeah. <spk:33> That sometimes you can really want something, and you can have a lot of money that you want to spend on it and lose. Well, I mean, when you look at somebody like Elon Musk, who poured in almost half a billion dollars, a lot of that to Texas, and got none of the things that he wanted within Texas.

And now he has a governor, a blue governor in the state that he now lives in. Talk to me about the effectiveness. Like, how are we supposed to how are we supposed to analyze this right now? Is money not going as far as it used to? Is it not being utilized in the same. We're talking. When you have a billion dollars, is it going as far as it used to go? But I think, like, you are right. The general narrative was you can raise enough money, you can dump enough money, you can change enough minds. And I look at somebody like Elon Musk, who had that much money in Texas.

He also has the algorithm that is beaming into a lot of people's faces that can control those narratives. And these narratives around somebody like Talarico, Tallafrico as they tried to label him, getting people caught up in these culture wars. Frankly, I thought it would be more effective than it seemed to have been. What happened there from your perspective? <spk:33> Well, last night, Elon Musk deleted a tweet of his. It said, "Vote red." And then that tweet just somehow disappeared. So that's the most introspection I think you're going to get from Elon Musk, which is, like, the deleted tweet.

And I'm joking, but also not. Like, Musk deletes tweets at times, you know, with no fanfare. And he knows that people notice when he deletes his tweets, obviously. And I think it actually is a reflection of what he's privately thinking. It's like a diary, but the diary explodes, right? You can't actually read the diary because it doesn't exist anymore. The deleted tweets tell us something. Musk is the world's richest person. The amount of money he spends, $500 million to him, who cares? But I think it speaks to a realization that he's had, based on my reporting, that he realizes him being the main character hurts himself, hurts his own policy goals.

You may remember last year he went to Wisconsin and made this huge thing about this judicial election being essential to saving Western civilization. He said that if this conservative lost, then the world was over. He put on a cheese head hat and was like, you know, in Packer's paraphernalia. It was a whole thing. He was handing out these huge, massive, oversized checks. He lost that race. And I think he's beginning to realize that he is more effective in the shadows, as lots of billionaires have, which is it's better to be quiet. You can still be kind of a power broker or a puppeteer or whatever, but don't tell people about it.

Is that the lesson somebody like Elon Musk is going to take from this? I mean, it's crazy how much money he spent on this election. But if you look at, like you said, it's a pittance for Elon Musk. I think the average like, for somebody who makes $400,000 a year, correct me if I'm wrong, ballpark that, he spent the equivalent of a couple hundred dollars on the election. So does Elon Musk go away from this election, not getting the results that he wanted? He has a lot of businesses that are affected by the governance. Does he go away and think, like, I need to spend more money, but I need to this needs to be dark money, and it's money that people can't trace?

Is that the mindset that the billionaires have now? <spk:33> I'm often amazed people don't spend more. Yeah. <spk:33> You know, if you believe that Western civilization depends on this judicial election in Wisconsin, like, why are you only spending $45 million, buddy? Like, add some zeros. And I think there's a sense that some Republican politicians love to quote that there's more money spent each year on toothpaste or on Halloween candy than there is on elections. But politics matters. Policy obviously matters. And if you believe that, you know, abortion access is super important or low taxes are super important or education reform is super important, like, you should be willing to spend billions of dollars.

And I think that, you know, lots of donors I talk to and billionaires I talk to think about their political giving as philanthropy. You know, and I know that might sound ridiculous if you disagree with them, right? And, like, but they think about it as a way of using their money to make an impact on the world, just like they do with charity. Well, you see the Democrats who have this blue wave, who were huge beneficiaries of dark money in this campaign. <spk:33> Yeah. Is that correct? Like, in fact, they were using they had more dark money than Republicans at one point in April? <spk:33> Yeah. I mean, I'm not allowed to talk about it because I'm, you know, part of the dark money industrial complex.

But, no. Clearly, I don't really know what I don't know on that front, frankly. I mean, like, there is so much money that comes in to super PACs. Because that is the point. Like, super PACs, you have to at least. <spk:33> Disclose it. You have to disclose it right there, right? But it's sort of unlimited for corporations. Dark money, at this point, you can just dump as much as you want and nobody can find out. Like, how are as a reporter, how are you tracing something like that? <spk:33> There are ways to kind of see maybe, like, the top of the grass on that. But, like, so much of the political system, I think more so on the left now than on the right, is dark, opaque.

You know, nowadays, if you want to support a candidate, doing it through disclosed money kind of makes you a sucker. I mean, like, you can do this stuff through there's a whole, you know, world of accountants and lawyers and operatives who are experts in the dark arts here. And if you want to be disclosed, it's basically a choice. It's an option to be disclosed. And. You're like showing off at that point. <spk:33> Yeah, yeah, yeah. But are you if you're donating to a super PAC and not through dark money, are you doing that because you're signaling to the politicians that you have the money?

Are people who are giving dark money and sneaking it in that way, they're also signaling to the politicians, correct? <spk:33> Yeah. I mean, their politicians know about the dark money. I mean, like, let's take Trump, for example. You know, Trump has been proudly and maybe you could argue candidly transactional in how he thinks about political giving in exchange for favors. My colleagues have really done a lot of reporting on the pardon industry, for instance, where you donate a million dollars, you get access to a dinner with Trump, and then maybe you get a presidential pardon for your son or your business colleague.

Just classic business right there, guys. <spk:33> But a lot of that is based on the idea that you want Trump to know and you want the public to know that you gave a million dollars to this. And Trump, in the Republican circles now, I feel like there's less dark money because Republicans had more to offer you if you gave publicly. Now the Democrats are controlling Congress. I wonder if that'll flip. What do you think? Do you think there will be campaign finance reform? Will Democrats pursue that or? <spk:33> I don't. You don't. Sorry. <spk:33> No.

No. I think at this point, you know, 15 years after Citizens United, which is basically what started this whole era, so much of the incumbent Democratic establishment likes the status quo. They won't admit that to you or to voters, but I think there is a whole world of progressive billionaires and their attendant operatives and lawyers and accountants who thrive on this, who basically have created, you know, a multibillion-dollar industry around keeping the status quo the status quo.

And voters might not like it, and most voters in both parties don't. But the powerful like it. I'm curious what your take is on California had a ballot measure, essentially the wealth tax, to tax billionaires. And it looks like it's not going to pass. Is that an example of money working? <spk:33> Yeah. I mean, and Elon Musk should wish that he had the political influence that these guys in California have. They spent a ton of money.

Like, what is a ratio where the other number is zero? It's like infinite, right? You know, if it's 333 million to zero, it's like they spent infinitely more money. That's basically what the billionaires did in California. They were going to pass this tax, which was going to allow you a 5% assessment on the billionaires' fortunes. So if you're worth $100 billion, suddenly you've got to pay up five. What's cheaper than paying up five is donating $4.99 to kill it. And that's basically what happened. All these billionaires banded together in California to it's not officially called yet, but it looks like the billionaires' tax in California is going to lose because of direct democracy.

As a non-billionaire, it feels I become nihilistic and I feel like I have no true say, that we are still just pawned in the large money game. Like, what do you say to a pessimist who hears these things, who reads the billionaire beat and feels like it's still all a sham and rigged and we're just playing by somebody else's rules? <spk:33> Yeah. I mean, I get it. I mean, ultimately, like, the a lot of Democrats this cycle, like James Talarico, he mentioned, talked about, like, up versus down versus left, as opposed to left versus right.

There's a sense, I mean, like, amongst the very, very wealthy, even if you're far left or far right, Elon Musk or whomever, you benefit from the status quo. In a lot of ways, the status quo is the status quo because you made it the status quo, right? And I guess the best advice I can offer Jordan is that, like, change happens very slowly. Like, I'm not I see my job and my role in the system as to expose what is, and then people here can change it if they want to. But, like, these things happen very, very, very, very slowly.

And, like, you know, you're talking about Texas. Like, I started my career covering Texas politics 11, 12 years ago now. And, like, everyone was so excited about Texas turning blue. And then suddenly it never happened. It never happened again. It never happened again. It never happened again. And then it happened, right? So sometimes 12 years is what it takes to create change. And it might take a couple centuries here, but. A couple centuries? A couple millennia? Do you think we got that much time, my friend? Teddy, well, I look forward to someday as the billionaire man for you can cover me and all of the wealth that I have so that I can use it to wield good in the world.

Thank you for your insights. Billionaires Reporter for The New York Times, Teddy Schleifer. We'll take a quick break. Be right back after this.