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Items tagged with: EconomicElites
"It’s difficult to convey to people how much the GOP has radicalized, how much the power centers of conservative politics are in the hands of extremists, how much the rightwing intellectual sphere is dominated by some really radical ideas that are being pushed into the mainstream."
#Trump #ElonMusk #RFKJr #economy #oligarchs #EconomicElites #healthcare #vaccines
/18
"One of the most frustrating things about U.S. politics is that people who aren’t engaging with it much will look at you like you are some kooky leftist propagandist if you simply outline what the Republican Party is doing wherever it is in charge and explicitly promises to be doing in the future."
~ Thomas Zimmer
#Trump #ElonMusk #RFKJr #economy #oligarchs #EconomicElites #healthcare #vaccines
/17
thomaszimmer.substack.com/p/it…
It Could Definitely Happen Here
Many Americans struggle to accept that democracy is young, fragile, and could actually collapse – a lack of imagination that dangerously blunts the response to the Trumpist RightThomas Zimmer (Democracy Americana)
"It’s easy to look back at the Trump years and declare, “We survived!”—unless you’re one of the thousands of Americans whose death from COVID might have been avoided if not for Trump’s mismanagement, demagoguery, selfishness, penchant for conspiracy theories, and incompetence. There’s no guarantee that any of us, in the next crisis, will be lucky again."
~ Cathy Young
#Trump #ElonMusk #RFKJr #economy #oligarchs #EconomicElites #healthcare #vaccines
/16
thebulwark.com/p/the-next-cris…
Trump’s COVID Response: A Preview of Disasters to Come
Based on his past record, Trump should not be anywhere near American government during the next national emergency.Cathy Young (The Bulwark)
“'By my calculations he will need 58,201 flights in fully loaded Boeing 737-800s to fly them all out' and five large-scale staging grounds the size of Houston, Porter reports, concluding that it is an impossible enterprise and Trump will fail, not before creating immeasurable hardship."
#Trump #ElonMusk #RFKJr #economy #oligarchs #EconomicElites #healthcare #vaccines
/15
"When the goal is to crash the economy and cause widespread despair and ruin, depriving America of a labor force necessary for our productivity is just part of the plan. Here is the assessment of Washington Post economic columnist Edoardo Porter based on a 'reduced' proposal by Trump to deport 'only' 11 million 'unauthorized immigrants' from the U.S."
#Trump #ElonMusk #RFKJr #economy #oligarchs #EconomicElites #healthcare #vaccines
/14
"If Trump returns to the White House, his plans for mass deportation would unfold on 'an incomprehensible scale,' as Melissa Gira Grant writes in an excellent essay for The New Republic. Removing 15 million people is equivalent to emptying out the populations of entire countries such as Belgium or Bolivia."
~ Ruth Ben-Ghiat
#Trump #ElonMusk #RFKJr #economy #oligarchs #EconomicElites #healthcare #vaccines
/13
lucid.substack.com/p/trumps-ma…
Trump's Mass Deportation Machine in the Making
Trump's migrant detention system while president rehearsed his plans to turn the state into a mass deportation machine on an epic scaleRuth Ben-Ghiat (Lucid)
"Some people talk about Trump’s economic plans; others about his intention to undo the rule of law. In this five-minute video, I try to explain how the two relate: how lawlessness will wreck the economy."
~ Timothy Snyder
#Trump #ElonMusk #RFKJr #economy #oligarchs #EconomicElites #healthcare #vaccines
/12
snyder.substack.com/p/trumps-l…
Trump's Lawless Crash (video)
Ending the Rule of Law Brings Down the EconomyTimothy Snyder (Thinking about...)
Jay Kuo says that :Trump wants to destroy our government institutions, and he's recruited just the team to do it."
Kuo provides a list of Trump's proposed wrecking crew, led by Elon Musk and RFK Jr. He concludes,
"Fascism thrives in chaos and misery, and that is what a second Trump term expressly seeks to create."
~ Jay Kuo
#Trump #ElonMusk #RFKJr #economy #oligarchs #EconomicElites #healthcare #vaccines
/11
thinkbigpicture.substack.com/p…
Trump's Second Term Plan To Empower Musk, RFK Jr. To Undermine Institutions
Donald Trump wants to destroy our government institutions, and he's recruited just the team to do it.The Big Picture
"This campaign is fueled by hate—hate for diversity, for progress, for women, for democracy, for expertise, for facts, for the truth itself. At its center is a pathetic, egotistical would-be dictator, fueled by his own petty, self-serving hatreds."
~ Elliot Kirschner
#Trump #ElonMusk #RFKJr #economy #oligarchs #EconomicElites #healthcare #vaccines
/10
"Elon Musk could never have got himself elected into office in the US. But as the cost-cutting tsar, a made-up role Trump has promised him, he would exert extraordinary power to cause pain, with the only choice left to citizens being whether or not to hug it."
~ Zoe Williams
#Trump #ElonMusk #RFKJr #economy #oligarchs #EconomicElites #healthcare #vaccines
/9
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
An excess of billionaires is destabilising politics – just as academics predicted
Politicians have always courted the wealthy, but Elon Musk and co represent a new kind of donor, and an unprecedented danger to democracy, writes Guardian columnist Zoe WilliamsZoe Williams (The Guardian)
"If Trump wins, we’re entering uncharted territory where private actors with vast wealth and power join with a corrupt president to pursue their own ends and not those of the people of the United States. Welcome to oligarchy, American style."
~ Mona Charen
#Trump #ElonMusk #RFKJr #economy #oligarchs #EconomicElites #healthcare #vaccines
/8
thebulwark.com/p/donald-trumps…
Donald Trump’s American Oligarchy
The billionaires are lining up to get their bread buttered.Mona Charen (The Bulwark)
Boddie quotes Jake Tapper of CNN:
"Just a reminder, RFK Jr has no medical license, and has made wildly inaccurate claims about all sorts of medicines. Frankly, this is what he said — kind of a deranged remark — about coronavirus."
#Trump #ElonMusk #RFKJr #economy #oligarchs #EconomicElites #healthcare #vaccines
/7
"'I'm gonna let him go wild on health,' Trump said this week, referring to Kennedy. 'I'm gonna let him go wild on the food. I'm going to let him go wild on medicines.'"
~ Maya Boddie
#Trump #ElonMusk #RFKJr #economy #oligarchs #EconomicElites #healthcare #vaccines
/6
alternet.org/tapper-trump-rfk/
CNN’s Tapper slams Trump and RFK Jr’s plan: 'There aren’t even words to describe what hackery that is'
CNN host Jake Tapper on Wednesday blasted Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s plan to join forces to take over medical government agencies. "I'm gonna let him go wild on health," Trump said this week, referring to Kennedy.Maya Boddie (Alternet.org)
"Last night, antivax crank Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—a man who once said Covid was possibly a bioweapon that had been 'deliberately targeted' to spare Ashkenazi Jews—told a group of supporters on a video call obtained by CNN that Trump had promised him 'control' over America’s public health agencies."
#Trump #ElonMusk #RFKJr #economy #oligarchs #EconomicElites #healthcare #vaccines
/5
"And on Monday, he replied to an X account predicting 'markets would tumble' thanks to an 'initial severe overreaction in the economy' if Trump followed through on his mass-deportations strategy, before ultimately resulting in 'a healthier, sustainable economy.'
'Sounds about right,' Musk replied."
#Trump #ElonMusk #RFKJr #economy #oligarchs #EconomicElites #healthcare #vaccines
/4
"Elon Musk, Trump’s richest and loudest backer and his 'secretary of cost-cutting'-to-be, has repeatedly suggested that the opening act of a second Trump presidency could be a period of serious economic turbulence. On a call last Friday, he warned that 'some temporary hardship' would be necessary to put America back on a sustainable fiscal course."
#Trump #ElonMusk #RFKJr #economy #oligarchs #EconomicElites #healthcare #vaccines
/3
"In the closing days of the election, one party and its leading candidate are promising to inflict economic pain on the electorate; stating that they will turn over the top health agencies to one of the country’s leading vaccine skeptics; and pledging to pursue a disruptive, 'massive reform' to the nation’s healthcare system—historically, the sort of move that has proven extremely unpopular."
#Trump #ElonMusk #RFKJr #economy #oligarchs #EconomicElites #healthcare #vaccines
/2
"MAGA’s closing pitch to voters: economic pain and health care sorcery:
With days to go, top Trump surrogates are laying out a presidency that they admit will include some suffering."
~ Andrew Egger
#Trump #ElonMusk #RFKJr #economy #oligarchs #EconomicElites #healthcare #vaccines
/1
"Readers do not distrust opinion journalists for forming opinions and sharing them with the public. They distrust condescending, ham-fisted plutocrats who have no blessed idea what they’re talking about, moving fast and breaking stuff."
"Bezos is right to worry about waning trust in the media. But he does not understand that people like him are in large part responsible for this distrust, and that cosplaying as a pundit while pandering to the worst-faith actors in American politics is not a plan for restoring it."
#WashingtonPost #JeffBezos #EconomicElites #media
/5
~ Jay Willis
newrepublic.com/article/187685…
Jeff Bezos Doesn’t Understand That He Is the Problem
Brace yourself, but The Washington Post’s owner’s decision to destroy his paper’s credibility in order to restore trust in journalism may have a few flaws in its logic.The New Republic
"I’d hoped (forlornly) that all major outlets would see the rush for the exits at the Post and start asking themselves whether they’re taking their own subscribers for granted. Seems they did not."
~ Brian Beutler
"Independent analysts such as Edison Research said in March that X’s usage in the United States dropped 30 percent since last year. Fidelity this month estimated that X’s value has plunged by about 80 percent since Musk’s takeover."
~ Robert Reich
#WashingtonPost #JeffBezos #ElonMusk #Twitter #EconomicElites #Trump
/3
"So, why did I cancel my subscriptions?
Because this wasn’t about an endorsement. It was about what it says of these papers’ owners—and a troubling trend among oligarchs more generally. From silent acquiescence to, in the case of Elon Musk, unhinged cheerleading, some of the most powerful people in the world are conspiring in complicity to undermine our country and our democracy."
#Trump #fascism #WashingtonPost #JeffBezos #LosAngelesTimes #PatrickSoonShiong #EconomicElites
/7
"Of all the expectations I had for these final weeks of the election, canceling two of my newspaper subscriptions wasn’t one of them.
I’ve always believed newspapers are essential to our democracy."
~ Elliot Kirschner
#Trump #fascism #WashingtonPost #JeffBezos #LosAngelesTimes #PatrickSoonShiong #EconomicElites
/6
elliotkirschner.substack.com/p…
Canceled Subscriptions
In service of democracyElliot Kirschner (Through the Fog, by Elliot Kirschner)
"But here we see billionaires, who own press operations as side businesses, out of their back pocket, as it were, seeming to decide that it’s easier to pull up stakes in advance, get out of the way of the freight train, lay down before Trump has even won the election."
#Trump #fascism #WashingtonPost #JeffBezos #EconomicElites
/5
"A lot of the country is convinced that a second Trump presidency will push America into the kind of elective autocracy we see in degraded democracies like Russia, Turkey and India. That brings with it the standard package of curtailments of press and other civic freedoms."
#Trump #fascism #WashingtonPost #JeffBezos #EconomicElites
/4
"It’s been suggested to me that Jeff Bezos’ decision here may be based on more than just fear. Perhaps carrots are operating in the background as well as sticks. I don’t know if that’s true. But I mention the possibility because I think it’s a critical driver of what I’ve called that climate of bewilderment. The choice has the whiff of decisions or deals made off stage, out of public view."
~ Josh Marshall
#Trump #fascism #WashingtonPost #JeffBezos #EconomicElites
/3
talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/t…
Trust, Bewilderment and Billionairedom: Understanding the Backlash Against Bezos
It's part of the stock in trade of liberal American discourse: threatening or claiming to cancel a subscription to this or that once-revered journalistic institution in response to bad behavior…Josh Marshall (TPM - Talking Points Memo)
“'Trump waited to make sure that Bezos did what he said he was going to do, and then met with the Blue Origin people,' he said on Saturday. 'Which tells us that there was an actual deal made, meaning that Bezos communicated, or through his people, communicated directly with Trump, and they set up this quid pro quo.'”
#Trump #fascism #WashingtonPost #JeffBezos #EconomicElites #RobertKagan
/2
"Robert Kagan, who resigned from his position [as editor at large at Washington Post] on Friday after more than two decades at the publication, told the Daily Beast that Trump’s meeting with executives of Bezos’ Blue Origin space company the same day that the Amazon founder killed a plan to support Harris was proof of the backroom deal."
~ Lily Mae Lazarus
#Trump #fascism #WashingtonPost #JeffBezos #EconomicElites #RobertKagan
/1
thedailybeast.com/ex-washingto…
Ex-WaPo Editor: This Is a Straight Bezos-Trump ‘Quid Pro Quo’
Robert Kagan tells the Daily Beast that Donald Trump’s meeting with Blue Origin executives the day its founder Jeff Bezos killed his paper’s Kamala Harris endorsement is proof of a backroom deal.Lily Mae Lazarus (The Daily Beast)
"It is not hard to guess why Bezos and Soon-Shiong made these decisions. Both are billionaires whose other businesses could be hurt by people who conflate their papers’ editorials with the two men’s own opinions. And both are hedging against the chance of Donald Trump winning the election, since he will surely turn his vengeance on those who opposed him."
~ Judd Legum
#Trump #fascism #WashingtonPost #JeffBezos #EconomicElites #SuperRich #immigration #TaxCuts
/13
wonkette.com/p/thanks-for-all-…
Thanks For All These New Wonkette Subscribers, Jeff Bezos Of The Washington Post!
And LA Times, shame on you too!Gary Legum (Wonkette)
"For decades, the business lobby fundamentally moderated the nation’s immigration debate. But in the age of Trump, fearful of advocating publicly on this issue, they’ve largely prioritized other things like corporate tax cuts and deregulation."
~ Eli Hager
#Trump #fascism #WashingtonPost #JeffBezos #EconomicElites #SuperRich #immigration #TaxCuts #deregulation
/12
"This is the time for political courage.
Instead, America’s highest-profile business leaders — Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase; Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft; and Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway — are displaying political cowardice."
~ Robert Reich
#Trump #Republicans #fascism #EconomicElites #CorporateLeaders #JamieDimon #WarrenBuffett #BillGates #Hitler
/5
robertreich.substack.com/p/pol…
Political cowardice in the C-suites
Jamie Dimon, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett have spoken out on everything else but are afraid to come out against Trump. They are relinquishing whatever claims they had to leadership in America.Robert Reich