Senators Bob Corker and Jeff Flake are showing us that we should not lump all Republicans in with South Dakota’s Congressional delegation as morally spineless fascist enablers. We may say the same of Trump’s fellow billionaires. While we should still be wary of our corporate overlords, some plutocrats are willing to admit that Trump is doing a terrible job in the White House.
Consider these remarks from gold-plated Republicans in the ironically named Robin Hood Investment Conference in Manhattan last week:
At this year’s event, despite a roaring stock market, the mood was glum. Barry Sternlicht, a billionaire real-estate investor, hotel mogul, and self-described Trump friend and golf partner, seemed to have soured on the president. “I expected him to go to the middle, because I thought he wanted to be great,” he said of Trump, according to an audio of his off-the-record talk obtained by New York. “I played [golf] with Donald Trump and his golf game is like his presidency,” he said, eliciting guffaws. “He’s amusing as my friend, but he’s not very amusing as president of the United States. And I’m a Republican.”
…“The president is a threat to democracy. He has attacked journalists and he’s threatening to take away NBC’s license,” [GOP donor and hedge funder Seth] Klarman said, according to an audio recording of his remarks. “He’s attacking judges. He’s violating all sorts of democratic norms, from the emoluments clause to questioning the election and threatening to lock up his opponent. People don’t focus on this but Nazi Germany had a constitution before Hitler came to power and at the end of the war they had the exact same constitution. It lasted all the way through, but democracy didn’t.”
Klarman continued: “The country is getting divided, whether it’s immigrants, whether it’s transgender people, whether it’s blacks, whether it’s Mexicans. It’s awful” [Michelle Celarier, “Billionaire Republicans Privately Diss Trump,” New York Magazine, 2017.10.27].
These rich Republicans like being rich, and they want their tax cuts so they can get richer. But these rich Republicans also appreciate basic American principles and constitutional democracy. Even rich Republicans are recognizing that Trump is failing to deliver the former and protect the latter.
I’m sorry. I’m not shedding any tears for these folks. I appreciate that they do give back some of their wealth to good causes, but that does not excuse voting for and kissing Trump’s rectum to get tax cuts.
They knew what Trump was and they voted for him anyway. Of course Trump “is a threat to democracy,” Seth Klarman said. Yes, he’s a Hitler in the making. People voted Hitler in, too. Hitler was great for the economy, at least for some people. But smart people figured it out before they cast that vote and puckered up to der Fuehrer.
These people are so filled with white privilege and greed that they never stopped to consider what that would mean to anyone not rich or not white. Shame!
The roaring stock market is set for the 1% to play with. They are the ones reaping huge benefits from the market. Watch your 401k take a substantial hit with the NOem, Thune and Rounds tax cuts. Someone has to pay for it, looks like the suckers will do just that.
Jim Wright nails it, as usual. Looks like the market is in line for a large correction or something.
http://www.stonekettle.com/2017/10/giving-us-business.html
Before cheering Corker and Flake for their “courage” (when they have already decided to withdraw from races they were probably going to lose), remember that a few hours after Flake made his “brave” speech excoriating Trump, he and Corker both voted to allow banks to continue defrauding customers with impunity. Either of their votes, had they gone the other way, would have provided at least some chance banks could be held accountable for their perfidy.
Wingnuts are so desperate to get a big item passed, tax breaks for the wealthy, they have totally given up on wingnut fantasies such as fiscal responsibility and small government. The newest tax code iteration supposedly ads another 5 trillion to the debt they blame Obama for.
I think we can separate those issues, Bob. We can hold them accountable for anti-consumer, anti-working class votes while still recognizing the validity and usefulness of their denunciations of Trump. That’s the whole point: even conservatives and corporatists with whom we disagree on numerous important issues are coming to the same conclusion about Trump: the man is a menace to democracy and peace.
Tom Steyer’s $10 million ad campaign to impeach Trump is the only really rich guy I approve of.