‘My Firing Helps The Mark Zuckerbergs Of The World’: Former Federal Trade Commissioner

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/34354802

President Donald Trump has managed to make his mass firing of federal officials one of the hallmarks of his lawless second term, including the firing of Democratic appointees across multiple government agencies.

Former Federal Trade Commission (FTC) commissioner Alvaro Bedoya, who was among these firings, says that his removal was not just illegal but a part of Trump’s scheme to “enrich his billionaire besties.”

In this ‘Mehdi Unfiltered’ interview, Bedoya tells Mehdi what he and his former colleague Rebecca Kelly Slaughter’s firing from the Federal Trade Commission says about the Trump administration’s “naked open corruption.”

Bedoya: “We were suing Mark Zuckerberg for his acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp, and suddenly Mark Zuckerberg pays $23 million to the presidential library, and he has Oval Office meetings where he can lobby the president to drop that lawsuit against him."

The former FTC commissioner also talks about why Democrats’ failure to embrace Biden’s progressive FTC chair Lina Khan during the past presidential election was a “mistake” and that the party needs to “stop listening to their own oligarchs”. He also discusses the moment he was fired and when the FTC controversially dropped a lawsuit against PepsiCo after the company donated to Trump’s inauguration fund.

Watch the full interview to hear about how it’s not just big oil that benefits from people like Bedoya getting booted from the FTC, but big tech too. Take AI for example, where in 2023, the FTC banned drug store chain Rite Aid from using AI-based facial-recognition technologies that falsely accused customers of crimes and targeted people of color. Rite Aid denied the allegation but still agreed to a 5-year ban. Under the Trump administration, Bedoya warns, “this is the kind of investigation that'll be stopped.”

*This interview was published for paid subscribers a week ago on zeteo.com. For early access to exclusive content like this, do consider becoming a paid subscriber - it costs less than a monthly cup of coffee and goes a long way in supporting our mission of bringing bold, unfiltered, and independent journalism to YOU.

Chapters:

00:00 intro 1:34 Firing 6:00 Oligarchs 9:06 AI 11:36 Immigration 14:00 Democratic Party 15:39 Lina Khan

Subscribe to Zeteo to support independent and unfiltered journalism: https://zeteo.com/subscribe

Find Zeteo: Twitter: / zeteo_news
Instagram: / zeteonews
TikTok: / zeteonews
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/zeteo.com

Find Mehdi: Substack: https://substack.com/@mehdirhasan Twitter: / @mehdirhasan
Instagram: / @mehdirhasan
Tik Tok: / mehdirhasan