Part of the problem

Theo Von Asked All the Right Questions. Trump Gave the Wrong Answers.

When it comes to the influence of lobbyists, the former president was part of the problem.

Russ Choma

Last week, Donald Trump sat down with former-MTV-reality-star-turned-comedian-turned-podcaster Theo Von. The interview was surreal. Von repeatedly called Trump “homie” and explained how much he had previously enjoyed/hated cocaine—”You think it’s going to be easy, and then you’re go-kart racing with hookers and stuff, and it gets bad,” Von explained.

The interview and and its implications are complicated to unwind—Trump himself looked befuddled for large parts of it—and Von is not without his own issues. But Von did at one point ask Trump a series of quite probing, and accurate, questions about the way lobbying works in Washington. Following a discussion of the opioid epidemic, Von began querying Trump about just why there are so many pharmaceutical lobbyists in the nation’s capital.

“One of the things I wanted to ask you about, like, the big pharma lobbyists— there’s, like, 1,800 big pharma lobbyists in Washington, D.C. There’s only 535 total representatives or senators, total, so, just the fact that there’s this whole other almost drug government,” Von said. “They’re, kind of pushing agendas and influencing things, like, how do we stop that, man? It just seems like, it’s obviously killing people, like, people are dying, you know, it’s like, what do we have to do that our own government wont’ help us?”

Von was expressing what most voters feel. A recent Pew report found that 73 percent of Americans think that lobbyists have too much influence and that the majority of lawmakers are focused on their own financial success rather than the concerns of their constituents.

So it’s a good question.

According to OpenSecrets.org, the non-partisan non-profit that tracks money-in-politics and lobbying, in 2023 there were 1,871 registered lobbyists representing the pharmaceutical industry in Washington in some capacity or other. Von was right about that. The industry reported spending $383.6 million on those lobbyists, and that’s likely a fraction of what it really spent trying to influence lawmakers and regulators—it only counts the expenses on specific, legally defined lobbying activities.

Trump never directly responded to Von’s question—what can be done?—and while he sometimes did a pretty good job of reinforcing Von’s concerns over the role of lobbyists, he was also pretty dishonest about his own record.

“Well, you have to stop listening to lobbyists,” Trump said. “You know, I was not a big person for lobbyists, and if they have even a little access to a president or a senator or a congressman or woman…”

Trump trailed off as Von interjected, “They’re snakes!”

In fact, Trump has long had very close relationships with lobbyists. And lobbyists have loved him. The very idea that access to Trump can be sold has long been prevalent within Trump’s inner circle. From the first days of his administration, some of his closest associates were hanging out the shingle as Trump-access-experts. His long-time fixer (later turned enemy) Michael Cohen registered as a lobbyist and his original campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, quickly followed suit, opening a lobbying shop. (Notably, Lewandowski has recently returned to the fold, as a senior campaign adviser to Trump’s 2024 campaign).

And just two years into his administration, a review by ProPublica of Trump’s political appointees found that one out of every 14 appointments Trump had made went to a formerly registered lobbyist. In total, by 2019, Trump had recruited 281 lobbyists into his administration. (By comparison, a similar review of Barack Obama’s administration found 65 former lobbyists working in the administration.) Thirty of those former registered lobbyists were appointed by Trump to positions at the Department of Health and Human Services. That’s the agency that includes the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates pharmaceuticals.

Instead of talking about that, however, Trump pointed out that many lobbyists actually just rip off their clients. Also, he noted, some lobbyists work for the alcohol industry.

“They get a lot of money, in some cases they just take the money, they don’t do anything,” Trump mused. “But you have a lot of lobbyists in Washington pushing, and certainly a lot for all the things that we’re talking about , including alcohol.”

(The alcohol industry, for the record, spent about $29 million on lobbying last year.)

Trump then repeatedly tried to steer Von in a curious direction—a discussion of how the most effective way to limit the influence of lobbyists on an administration would be a rule banning people who had served in government from going to work as lobbyists, or vice versa.

“You could say that if you’re an elected official or if you work in government, you can never be a lobbyist,” Trump suggested, before going on to repeatedly talk about how people who work in agencies that hand out large military contracts often go work in the defense industry after they leave the government. Von attempted to tie Trump’s comments back to the opioid crisis, noting that the Sackler family, which ran Purdue Pharma, often hired former regulators. Undeterred, Trump went back to talking about military contracts.

The reason this was such a weird direction for Trump to take the conversation is that he had such a ban in place when he took office. It was, more or less, a watered down copy of the ban that his predecessor, Obama, had implemented.

And then, Trump cancelled it. One of his last acts before he left office, in fact, was to toss out the very ban that he now wistfully told Von might solve the problem, if only it could be enacted. Thanks to Trump’s own decision, the method he describes as the best way to combat the swamp’s “snakes” was dismantled.

Trump was not the first president to cancel a ban on lobbyists on his way out the door. Bill Clinton had done precisely that. Obama, on the other hand, had left his ban in place when his term ended. In 2017, when Trump implementing his own version of the ban, he excoriated Clinton for having previously axed it, claiming, “He rigged the system on his way out.”

Apparently unaware of the role that his interview subject played in encouraging the lobbying industry, Von lamented the whole concept of the lobbying revolving door: “It’s like you’re playing both sides of the net.”

As if he was helpless to do anything about it, Trump told Von that he wished he could’ve done something more to curtail the influence of lobbyists.

“It’s obviously a probelm, and it’s a big problem, and we were doing things about it, but then we had to get down to other business, we had to solve a lot of other problems in this country,” Trump said.

The interview then moved on.

Probably not coincidentally, Von had another recent conversation on his podcast—with a very different politician—that had touched on related subjects. In a similarly goofy interview with Bernie Sanders released earlier that week, Von homed in on the lobbying issue. Sanders had a lot to say, and to Von’s credit, he seemed to have been listening.

“You know how many lobbyists there are in Washington, representing the pharmaceutical industry?” Sanders asked Von. “Take a wild and crazy guess!’

Decked out in a tie-dyed Grateful Dead shirt and backwards hat, Von thoughtfully rubbed his chin.

“Um, 2,000?” he asked.

“You got it! That’s a pretty good guess, about 1,800!” Bernie crowed.

“Wow!” Von said, looking stunned.