Sohrab Ahmari

That was an area where kind of left wing and right wing populists had begun to see eye to eye going back to the first Trump administration.

And part of it falls under the Department of Justice.

There's a

specific antitrust unit within the Department of Justice.

And over the past year, you know, the person who was put in charge of that, her name is Gail Slater.

She came from J.D.

Vance's office and was seen as a as a mega populist, someone who would translate the mega populist agenda into going after big tech and other companies.

That is not the free market, right?

Businesses colluding to buy each other and ultimately so that consumers only have one choice to go to, whether that's in technology or ticket prices with Ticketmaster and the like.

That's not free market capitalism.

And antitrust is a way to correct for that.

Unfortunately, the Bondi DOJ was pretty actually bad in that regard.

Gail Slater, the person who was, again, put in charge of the antitrust unit, basically had all her power taken away.

Firms that had reached basically settlements with the Department of Justice were able to...

sidestep her so that the normal scrutiny that goes into how a settlement was reached, this happened, for example, with the merger between two companies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Juniper Networks that provide like Wi-Fi and networking services to big stadiums, hospitals and things like that.

They

Basically, they reached a settlement with the DOJ, but one that where it was done behind in a kind of behind closed doors, literally over cocktails, which raises serious legal questions.

And when Gail Slater's team objected to this, one of her deputies was fired and then eventually she herself was fired as well.

So it's one of those instances where, you know, what looks like populism is

on the campaign trail.