Transcript
WOW: Trump Suddenly FIRES TOP DOJ Official
From MeidasTouch · Episode page · Watch on YouTube
· 13 min · 2,109 words · 18 timestamped sections
This is the full, timestamped transcript of "WOW: Trump Suddenly FIRES TOP DOJ Official", an episode of MeidasTouch published February 14, 2026 (13 min, about 2,109 words). It mentions 14 people, works and ideas, including Donald Trump, Abigail Slater, Warner Brothers, Google LLC, CNN.
What this episode is about
Donald Trump has dismissed Abigail Slater, the head of the Department of Justice's antitrust division, amid concerns about her conflicts with his interests, particularly regarding the acquisition of CNN's parent company. This removal highlights a broader trend of Trump targeting officials who challenge his agenda, raising alarms about the impact on competition and consumer prices in the marketplace.
Key takeaways
- When Trump's interests clash with antitrust, heads roll—like Abigail Slater's, leaving consumers vulnerable.
- 11 months in power, Slater's push against tech giants met swift dismissal; is independence in DOJ a myth?
- Firing a U.S. attorney after just 24 hours? A new record for Trump's revolving door of justice.
- Acquiring competitors raises prices—just ask the American consumer, who pays for Trump's cozy relationships.
- Trump's DOJ may be 'independent', but insider influence suggests control is a puppet show without strings.
Who speaks in this episode?
- Michael Popac (Host) · 11 min speaking
- Abigail Slater (Guest) · 1 min speaking
- Pam Bondi (Guest) · 1 min speaking
- Donald Trump (Guest) · 1 min speaking
What is discussed, and when
- – 3:00: Donald Trump, Abigail Slater, Attorney General Pam Bondi, CNN
- – 6:00: Warner Brothers, Donald Trump, Abigail Slater, Netflix, Inc.
- – 9:00: Donald Trump, Abigail Slater, Trust and Will, Tim Lewi
- – 12:00: Donald Trump, Abigail Slater, Warner Brothers, Google LLC
- – 13:06: Donald Trump, Abigail Slater, Attorney General Pam Bondi
Notable quotes from "WOW: Trump Suddenly FIRES TOP DOJ Official"
And the heads continue to roll at the Department of Justice following Pam Bondi's immulation and embarrassing and unhinged performance in front of the House Judiciary Committee. Except it's not Pam Bondi's head. They just.
about Attorney General Pam Bondi · atNow Abigail Slater had been with the Department of Justice for a long time in antitrust.
about Abigail Slater · atJustice Antitrust Division. But we've been reporting for over a year that Donald Trump has corrupted it, allowing insiders, allowing business lobbyists to get inside of the…
about Donald Trump · atDonald Trump has his big fat thumb on the scale because he wants the Ellison family, who also own Oracle, to acquire Warner Brothers and get their hands on CNN, giving Donald…
about CNN · atProtect your loved ones today, tomorrow, and beyond with Trust and Will, the most trusted name in online estate planning.
about Trust and Will · atWent after them related to ads that you see on Google and YouTube. And we know that Google and YouTube are big supporters of Donald Trump as well. So when you look at the industries that she's taken on, media, technology,.
about Google LLC · atElizabeth Warren, Senator Elizabeth Warren fighting every day for us said that the dismissal or firing of Abigail Slater is corruption again in our midst. And I'll I'll be on…
about Senator Elizabeth Warren · at
Who and what is mentioned in this episode?
People
- Donald Trump — Person · Primary referenced political actor · 15 mentions · first at
Portrayed as directing DOJ personnel changes and influencing antitrust outcomes to benefit allies and media/tech interests. - Abigail Slater — Person · Central subject of the segment (referenced DOJ official) · 13 mentions · first at
Discussed as a career antitrust official whose firing is framed as weakening consumer protection and enabling politically favored mergers. - Attorney General Pam Bondi — Person · Referenced DOJ leader/figure used as catalyst in narrative · 5 mentions · first at
Her House Judiciary Committee appearance is cited as triggering fallout; she is also depicted as part of a politicized DOJ leadership structure. - Tim Cook — Person · Referenced business leader (example of 'tech giant' ties) · 2 mentions · first at
Cited as Apple’s leader and characterized as aligned with Trump; used to illustrate alleged conflicts around antitrust enforcement.Bondi. But let's just call this out for what it is. She has gone after I'm talking about Abigail Slater now. Apple run by Tim Cook, best buddies with Donald Trump, right? And…
- Senator Elizabeth Warren — Person · Referenced elected official / commentator · 1 mention · first at
Quoted as labeling Slater’s firing as corruption, reinforcing the episode’s thesis about politicization of antitrust enforcement. - Tim Lewi — Person · Referenced criminal-justice subject (pardon recipient in narrative) · 2 mentions · first at
Presented as a bid-rigging convict pardoned by Trump; used as additional evidence of alleged corruption and favoritism.Just 11 months in, is because Donald Trump also pardoned a guy named Tim Lewi who had a company called Oak View where he rigged the bids in order to make sure that Oak View won a contract. It's called bid rigging. It's when you have what's.
Companies & orgs
- Warner Brothers — Company · Business focus · 5 mentions · first at
Central to discussions about antitrust issues and media acquisitions.Is owned by the Ellison family, close friends with Donald Trump, effectively sidelined. Paramount wants to buy Warner Brothers, including CNN, but Netflix stepped in the…
- Google LLC — Company · Business focus · 2 mentions · first at
Discussed in the context of antitrust actions and market dominance. - CNN — Company · Business focus · 1 mention · first at
Discussed in the context of media acquisitions and antitrust concerns. - Netflix, Inc. — Company · Business focus · 2 mentions · first at
Mentioned in relation to media mergers and antitrust investigations.Slater because she's a career antitrust lawyer and a public servant. So, she has continued to go after the Warner Brothers Netflix combination.
- Oracle Corporation — Company · Business focus · 1 mention · first at
Mentioned as part of the Ellison family's holdings.Down to the antitrust division. Now, Donald Trump has his big fat thumb on the scale because he wants the Ellison family, who also own Oracle, to acquire Warner Brothers and…
- Oak View — Company · Case study · 1 mention · first at
Used as an example of bid rigging and corruption.Just 11 months in, is because Donald Trump also pardoned a guy named Tim Lewi who had a company called Oak View where he rigged the bids in order to make sure that Oak View won a contract. It's called bid rigging. It's when you have what's.
- Meta — Company · Business focus · 1 mention · first at
Briefly mentioned in the context of tech giants and antitrust issues.Instead of friends and family, it was just tech bros in the back, Tim Cook and the head of meta Facebook and Zuckerberg and all that.
Sponsors
- Trust and Will — Product · Sponsor · 3 mentions · first at
Promoted as an online estate planning service during the podcast.
Full transcript with timestamps
And the heads continue to roll at the Department of Justice following Pam Bondi's immulation and embarrassing uh and unhinged performance in front of the House Judiciary Committee. Except it's not Pam Bondi's head. They just fired Abigail Slater, a little known but super powerful head of the Department of Justice's antirust division because she's gotten sideways with Donald Trump, particularly about uh the acquisition of CNN's parent company where Donald Trump has a vested interest in and has a conflict of interest in. She's taken on Abigail Slater has taken on the tech giants. many of them are in Donald Trump's back pocket or vice versa. And she finally outworn uh wore out her welcome 11 months into her tenure. This is not about Abigail Slater. This is about the American consumer now not having anyone to push back against Donald Trump's efforts to raise prices, to make things uncompetitive, to benefit
his tech bro buddies. And who's going to pay the price? Literally you and me and the American consumer. I'm Michael Popac. You're on Mightest Touch and Legal AF. Let's talk about this. In the last 24 hours, Donald Trump has fired a bunch of people. He fired after just 24 hours a US attorney that he had appointed to be the US attorney in the Northern District of New York. The guy made it 24 hours. That brings us to Abigail Slater. This is all in the wake. It's like Donald Trump needs to fire somebody after watching Pam Bondi's performance, but he doesn't know who. So now he's going to go to the next person on the list, which is Abigail Slater.
Now Abigail Slater had been with the Department of Justice for a long time in antitrust. Antitrust is the or antitrust regulation is the um going after companies who through acquisition of their competitors make markets less competitive to the consumer meaning your prices are higher. So when a major cell phone company acquires a competitor and gets a large market share, that means they have the ability through market muscle to raise prices and there's no competitor to balance it off. Right? If you acquire all of your competitors, you can just raise prices as high as you can. And who's going to stop that? The antitrust division of the Department of Justice through their investigations. Many things like combinations of companies have to ultimately be approved and be cleared through this Department of Justice Antitrust Division. But we've been reporting for over a year that Donald Trump has corrupted it, allowing
insiders, allowing business lobbyists to get inside of the Sacrosen Department of Justice Antitrust Division to manipulate policy. Now, that hasn't stopped Abigail Slater because she's a career antitrust lawyer and a public servant. So, she um has continued to go after the Warner Brothers Netflix combination. She's basically had um Paramount, which is owned by the Ellison family, close friends with Donald Trump, effectively sidelined. Paramount wants to buy Warner Brothers, including CNN, but Netflix stepped in the middle, and it all comes down to the antitrust division. Now, Donald Trump has his big fat thumb on the scale because he wants the Ellison family, who also own Oracle, to acquire Warner Brothers and get their hands on CNN, giving Donald Trump yet another non-independent media company under his control to to add to CBS and 60 Minutes and ABC. And then he would add one of the crown
jewels, CNN, through his buddy uh his buddy acquiring it. Now, Donald Trump just last week had a tell. He had a tick that sort of told us that Abigail Slater's time on this planet was not long, at least as the head of the antitrust division. Actually, two tells. One, he when he was interviewed about the acquisition, he made a very interesting comment that he would no longer be involved. He said he was going to be involved with who gets the prize of CNN and who gets the prize of Warner Brothers assets. And then suddenly last week he said, "No, no, I'm not going to be involved. My Department of Justice is going to handle that, which we know he's captured and completely controls." But here's the clip.
You are close with the Ellison's who are trying to stop a merger between Warner Brothers, Discovery, and Netflix. This deal could change the makeup of the media as we know it. Are you personally going to get involved in that deal?
I haven't been involved. Uh I must say, I guess I'm considered to be a very strong president. I've been called by both sides. It's the two sides, but I've decided I shouldn't be involved. The Justice Department will handle it.
Okay. In what way? Just looking at it to see if it's make a decision. I mean, there's a theory that one of the companies is too big and it shouldn't be allowed to do it and the other company is saying something else about, you know, they're knocking,
but you're not going to interfere even though you're close with the hell out of each other and they'll be a winner.
So, yes, he he his Department of Justice is control, but he doesn't want Abigail Slater to be controlled. So she was canned as a to get her out of the way for Donald Trump to influence and try to award the prize of CNN and Warner Brothers assets to the Ellison family. I mean you it couldn't be any clearer than that. Let's talk about something no one wants to talk about. What happens when you die? Because unfortunately it's going to happen to you to me. But you can be prepared with trust and will online estate planning. I'll be honest.
Estate planning is one of those things that really is easy to put off. A lot of us are parents, homeowners, spouses, or we're caring for aging parents and children, and we know it's important, but it just sits on the to-do list. Look, I've definitely been guilty of that in the past, and then you realize something as important as naming a guardian for your kids shouldn't be left to chance. That's why I like trust and will. You can create an estate plan online in as little as 30 minutes. And the platform walks you through a simple step-by-step guided process. If you have questions, they even offer optional one-on-one support from attorneys in your state. And they're committed to making estate planning affordable because everyone has something to leave behind. Don't wait until it's too late.
Protect your loved ones today, tomorrow, and beyond with Trust and Will, the most trusted name in online estate planning. Go to trustandwill.com/legalaf and get 20% off. That's trustandwill.com/legalaf to get your 20% off. trustandwill.com/legal aaf. The other reason that Abigail Slater knew the writing was on the wall, that her career was going to be cut short just 11 months in, is because Donald Trump also pardoned a a uh a guy named Tim Lewi who had a company called Oak View where he rigged the bids in order to make sure that Oak View won a contract. It's called bid rigging. It's when you have what's supposed to be competitive competition between competing bids, all right, in order to do a contract, right? Uh a request for proposal goes out, an RFP bids come in the and the lowest bidder, law, lowest cost provider is supposed to win as long as they meet all the criteria of the bid. He rigged it to
make sure that he would get it. and he was sent and he was convicted by Donald Trump's own department of justice in the first term led by Abigail Slater and Donald Trump pardoned him. Donald Trump just pardoned him for this biding scandal. So if Abigail Slater didn't know her time was up then she certainly knows it now. And then you get this lukewarm, you know, thank you for your service social media post from Pam Bondi. But let's just call this out for what it is. She has gone after I'm talking about Abigail Slater now. Apple run by Tim Cook, best buddies with Donald Trump, right? And Donald Trump doesn't like that. And Tim Cook doesn't like that. She's gone after Google and successfully uh went after them related to ads that you see on Google and YouTube. And we know that Google and YouTube are big supporters of Donald Trump as well. So when you look at the industries that she's taken on, you know, media,
technology, buddies of Donald Trump, many of them donated to his inauguration or his ballroom or both or were up at the podium during his inauguration where instead of friends and family, it was just tech bros in the back, Tim Cook and and uh the head of meta Facebook and you know, Zuckerberg and all that. Of course, Abigail Slater standing tall in defense of proper antitrust regulation was going to be on the way out. And Donald Trump said out loud in that video, I am going to uh keep out of it. I'm going to have the Department of Justice did it do it. What he really meant to say is, I got to get rid of Abigail Slater because she's in the way of what I want to accomplish with making our country not competitive, making sure that my buddies can acquire the companies that they want to acquire and not have any push back from the antitrust division.
Earlier in the year, we reported on lobbyists. This has never happened in the history of the antitrust division. You know, you're not supposed to have crosscontamination or contamination. You're not supposed to allow lobbying to come into the antitrust division. Lawyers, lawyers representing Discovery or Warner Brothers or Google, Apple, any of the companies in pharmaceutical arena, any of the companies that are going are going to interface with the antitrust division, they send their lawyers. They don't send their lobbyists.
But to Donald Trump, everything is transactional, right? everything is commercial. And so he allowed and Slater put an end to it, a lobbyist to get inside of the antitrust division to try to lobby for new regulations that uh would regulate them as an industry. That's wrong. That's corrupt. Elizabeth Warren, Senator Elizabeth Warren Warren fighting every day for us said that the dismissal or firing of Abigail Slater is corruption again in our midst. And I'll I'll be on record once again, this Department of Justice is the most corrupt Department of Justice completely captured by the presidency, completely captured by a criminal president. And this is the result. No, no doubt. why we see US attorneys get fired after. Look at what we've just looked at in the last year.
You've got at six different US attorneys who have been bounced by courts and had to resign in in disgrace because they were not qualified. They couldn't get confirmed at the Senate and they were illegally appointed by Pam Bondi. Gone. Including Lindseay Hagan, including Alina Haba, those closest to Donald Trump, you know. Uh then you've got even the ones that they're trying to encourage to take the job are lasting shorter than you know uh you know like the shelf life for a US attorney is apparently 24 hours. We just had one replaced after 24 hours. The leading attorney prosecutor for one of the 93 federal districts made it 24 hours. And now you've got Abigail Slater, which is which is indicative of a broader disease and corruption and cancer with a Department of Justice named Donald Trump and Pam Bundy. So I'm going to continue to follow it all right for here for you.
I'm Mightest Touch. Take a moment, slide over to Legal AF YouTube channel, hit the free subscribe button. Can't get your fill of legal AF? Me neither. That's why we formed the Legal AF Substack. Every time we mention something in a hottake, whether it's a court filing or a oral argument, come over to the Substack. You'll find the court filing and the oral argument there, including a daily roundup that I do called, wait for it, Morning AF. What else? All the other contributors from Legal A are there as well. We got some new reporting. We got interviews. We got ad free versions of the podcast and hot takes where Legal AF on Substack. Come over now to free subscribe.
Questions about this episode
Who speaks in "WOW: Trump Suddenly FIRES TOP DOJ Official"?
Michael Popac (Host), Abigail Slater (Guest), Pam Bondi (Guest), Donald Trump (Guest).
What is "WOW: Trump Suddenly FIRES TOP DOJ Official" about?
Donald Trump has dismissed Abigail Slater, the head of the Department of Justice's antitrust division, amid concerns about her conflicts with his interests, particularly regarding the acquisition of CNN's parent company. This removal highlights a broader trend of Trump targeting officials who challenge his agenda, raising alarms about the impact on competition and consumer prices in the…
What is mentioned in this MeidasTouch episode?
14 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Donald Trump, Abigail Slater, Warner Brothers, Google LLC, CNN, Attorney General Pam Bondi. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.
How long is "WOW: Trump Suddenly FIRES TOP DOJ Official"?
The episode runs 13 min; the transcript is about 2,109 words in 18 timestamped sections.
More from MeidasTouch
About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated February 15, 2026.