Latest / Politix / Who Wants To Beat The Billionaires?

Transcript

Who Wants To Beat The Billionaires? · Politix

0:00
SPEAKER_01: Hey,
0:00
SPEAKER_01: one thing we realized when we finished recording this conversation is that none of
0:05
SPEAKER_01: the conversation was good and we don't have anything to use as a cold open.
0:08
SPEAKER_00: It was good.
0:09
SPEAKER_00: I thought we had a very substantive conversation.
0:11
SPEAKER_00: We just, we didn't say anything witty or at all funny.
0:15
SPEAKER_00: Enjoy.
0:22
SPEAKER_01: Hey everyone, you're listening to a free preview of the Politics Podcast.
0:26
SPEAKER_01: In this episode, we'll discuss Donald Trump's consolidation of the billionaire vote.
0:31
SPEAKER_01: Why do the owners and executives of multinational corporations feel insulated from
0:36
SPEAKER_01: consequences for supporting a convicted white-collar felon who tried to overthrow
0:41
SPEAKER_01: the government?
0:42
SPEAKER_01: Which of them is truly red-pilled and which of them are trying to conceal their
0:47
SPEAKER_01: greedier motive of tax cuts behind a kind of pseudo-populism?
0:52
SPEAKER_01: Do they actually stand to gain anything from a corrupt inflationary Trump presidency?
0:58
SPEAKER_01: And can Biden welcome their hatred the way FDR did in a climate where Democrats are
1:03
SPEAKER_01: also a bit cozy with affluent donors and reluctant to impose consequences on them?
1:09
SPEAKER_01: I hope you enjoy the conversation.
1:10
SPEAKER_01: And if you want to hear the whole thing, you can upgrade your subscription to paid at politics.fm.
1:21
SPEAKER_01: Hey, everyone.
1:22
SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the Politics Podcast.
1:23
SPEAKER_01: I'm Brian Boitler.
1:24
SPEAKER_01: And I'm Matthew Iglesias.
1:25
SPEAKER_01: So we're about two weeks out from Donald Trump's beautiful transformation into a felon.
1:31
SPEAKER_01: And I think it's safe to say a couple things about the initial impact of the verdict.
1:36
SPEAKER_01: First, it might have moved polls just a little bit in Joe Biden's favor.
1:41
SPEAKER_01: But it did not render Trump toxic in the way he was and probably should have stayed after January 6th.
1:48
SPEAKER_01: And like to the contrary,
1:49
SPEAKER_01: I think if anything,
1:50
SPEAKER_01: we've seen tech and financial elites respond by by almost like riding to Trump's
1:56
SPEAKER_01: rescue as if they're worried the convictions would send his campaign into a
2:00
SPEAKER_01: nosedive and they wanted to help him weather the turbulence.
2:04
SPEAKER_01: Politico had a piece about this and we'll link to it in the show notes.
2:07
SPEAKER_01: But Matt,
2:08
SPEAKER_01: I think what I want your take on is like what's going on behind the scenes in
2:13
SPEAKER_01: billionaire world?
2:14
SPEAKER_01: And just like as a matter of basic brand protection,
2:19
SPEAKER_01: why do people associated with these valuable entities not fear also associating
2:24
SPEAKER_01: with Donald Trump?
2:25
SPEAKER_00: Well,
2:25
SPEAKER_00: so,
2:25
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
2:25
SPEAKER_00: I think it's important to sort of explain what's going on because you described
2:29
SPEAKER_00: this as sort of like billionaires riding to Trump's rescue.
2:33
SPEAKER_00: In part, I think that this has been a deliberate Trump messaging strategy, right?
2:39
SPEAKER_00: So there were sort of like two big pillars to this.
2:41
SPEAKER_00: One was that Trump did a very high dollar fundraising event
2:46
SPEAKER_00: in San Francisco at David Sachs' house.
2:49
SPEAKER_00: And the other is that a bunch of sort of New York-based Wall Street titans voiced
2:55
SPEAKER_00: their support for Trump and committed money to him.
2:58
SPEAKER_00: Although I don't think there was like an in-person event in the same way.
3:03
SPEAKER_00: So now if you look down at to like
3:06
SPEAKER_00: who is in these stories.
3:08
SPEAKER_00: The Politico story is mostly about Wall Street guys.
3:11
SPEAKER_00: And they're talking about John Katsimidis, who's a New York real estate guy.
3:17
SPEAKER_00: They're talking about Stephen Schwartzman from Blackstone.
3:21
SPEAKER_00: They're talking about this guy, Hal Lambert, who's a more obscure kind of hedge fund guy.
3:27
SPEAKER_00: They're talking about Ken Griffin.
3:29
SPEAKER_00: These are all guys who've been Republicans forever.
3:33
SPEAKER_00: You know, like they are Mitt Romney donors, they're George Bush donors, they're NRSC donors.
3:40
SPEAKER_00: The story is that these are people who had backed like Ron DeSantis or somebody else, right?
3:46
SPEAKER_00: They kind of condemned Trump after January 6th.
3:49
SPEAKER_00: They tried to steer the Republican Party to a different candidate.
3:54
SPEAKER_00: And then like once Trump, I think the right way to understand it is that like a lot of people,
4:00
SPEAKER_00: They believed Trump was not the best possible nominee for the Republican Party, but they're Republicans.
4:07
SPEAKER_00: So once Trump became the nominee, they were supporting Trump.
4:11
SPEAKER_00: But the rollout of their support was orchestrated to come after the conviction, right?
4:18
SPEAKER_00: Because there's a risk that the conviction reinforces that sort of like January 6th untouchability.
4:27
SPEAKER_00: And so I mean,
4:28
SPEAKER_00: I don't have like secret info on this,
4:31
SPEAKER_00: but at least from what I understand from the Silicon Valley side of this,
4:34
SPEAKER_00: where again,
4:35
SPEAKER_00: like Marc Andreessen and David Sachs are not
4:38
SPEAKER_00: newly red-pilled figures.
4:40
SPEAKER_00: Those guys have been Republicans as long as they've been active in politics, going back multiple cycles.
4:46
SPEAKER_00: Andreessen was a big Romney fundraiser.
4:48
SPEAKER_00: They held back their vocal support for Trump until after the conviction.
4:56
SPEAKER_00: In order to make the case,
4:59
SPEAKER_00: to use the conviction as a permission structure for arguing that,
5:04
SPEAKER_00: in fact,
5:05
SPEAKER_00: Joe Biden is a threat to democracy,
5:09
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
5:10
SPEAKER_00: To not just say I will overlook the misconduct that was at the root of this felony conviction,
5:16
SPEAKER_00: but to say that in my mind,
5:18
SPEAKER_00: this felony conviction ought to counterbalance other Trump crimes and malfeasance.
5:26
SPEAKER_00: Because it's not that Trump has gained new support from right-wing billionaires
5:31
SPEAKER_00: that he didn't previously have,
5:33
SPEAKER_00: so much as these billionaires are trying and I think succeeding to
5:37
SPEAKER_00: in creating social permission for other rich people to do what rich people have
5:43
SPEAKER_00: traditionally done,
5:44
SPEAKER_00: like in pre-Trump election cycles,
5:47
SPEAKER_00: which is like mostly vote Republican and donate to Republicans.
5:51
SPEAKER_00: Trump got freakishly little business support for a Republican Party nominee in 2016 and 2020.
5:58
SPEAKER_00: And what he's achieving in 2024 is coming...
6:03
SPEAKER_00: closer.
6:04
SPEAKER_00: He's approaching,
6:05
SPEAKER_00: we don't know if he'll match traditional Republican levels of support,
6:09
SPEAKER_00: but what we have right now is like very right-wing billionaires are trying to sort
6:15
SPEAKER_00: of like bring the CEO class back to Trump,
6:19
SPEAKER_00: right?
6:20
SPEAKER_00: To say, look, if you're mad at Lena Kahn or what's his name at the SEC?
6:27
SPEAKER_00: Gary Gensler.
6:28
SPEAKER_00: Gary Gensler at the SEC,
6:30
SPEAKER_00: or some shit the EPA did,
6:32
SPEAKER_00: or you don't like Biden's calls for tax increases,
6:34
SPEAKER_00: or this greedflation rhetoric bothers you.
6:37
SPEAKER_00: It's okay.
6:38
SPEAKER_00: The water's warm here.
6:39
SPEAKER_00: Join the grand old party.
6:41
SPEAKER_00: And if your wife tells you, didn't he try to overthrow the government?
6:48
SPEAKER_00: You could be like, no, Joe Biden is the real threat to democracy.
6:51
SPEAKER_01: I think that there's been a bit of code switching in that like in the forums where
6:54
SPEAKER_01: they're talking to a bunch of red pilled freaks,
6:57
SPEAKER_01: they will talk about how
6:59
SPEAKER_01: the felony,
7:00
SPEAKER_01: the hush money trial is like the summa of deep state attacks on Donald Trump and
7:08
SPEAKER_01: thus the liberals are the real threat to democracy.
7:10
SPEAKER_01: In their big public,
7:12
SPEAKER_01: like I have decided to endorse Donald Trump or I will raise money for him or whatever.
7:17
SPEAKER_01: They're just not talking about January 6th at all.
7:19
SPEAKER_01: They're not talking about the convictions at all.
7:21
SPEAKER_01: They are
7:23
SPEAKER_00: I read this sort of latest- Sacks' thing is a very message discipline.
7:30
SPEAKER_00: According to David Sacks,
7:31
SPEAKER_00: David Sacks has none of the kinds of concerns that you would expect a wealthy
7:36
SPEAKER_00: venture capitalist to have.
7:38
SPEAKER_00: He is purely motivated by worry about the price of groceries and border security.
7:45
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
7:45
SPEAKER_00: Right.
7:46
SPEAKER_00: Like Trump, like a Trump pitch to swing voters.
7:50
SPEAKER_01: Prior to the convictions, you saw Jamie Dimon of J.P.
7:54
SPEAKER_01: Morgan do this at Davos where
7:57
SPEAKER_01: you know,
7:57
SPEAKER_01: he didn't come out and say,
7:58
SPEAKER_01: I will be supporting Donald Trump,
8:00
SPEAKER_01: but he did sort of present this revisionist history of the Trump presidency where
8:06
SPEAKER_01: Donald Trump was right about so many things,
8:07
SPEAKER_01: including immigration,
8:09
SPEAKER_01: which is like,
8:11
SPEAKER_01: I don't have the research in front of me,
8:13
SPEAKER_01: but I would wager that it's never been Jamie Dimon's or JP Morgan's position that
8:20
SPEAKER_01: highly restrictionist immigration policy is awesome.
8:24
SPEAKER_01: And so they – I interpreted it,
8:27
SPEAKER_01: therefore,
8:28
SPEAKER_01: as them wanting to help him crowd out the convictions with some good news about
8:37
SPEAKER_01: these respectable people who nevertheless saw fit to endorse him and raise money
8:43
SPEAKER_01: for him so that –
8:45
SPEAKER_01: people would essentially forget that this had happened.
8:49
SPEAKER_01: And like, as a strategy, I think it's sharp.
8:54
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
8:55
SPEAKER_01: they really have managed to draw a lot of attention to the fact that Trump has
9:01
SPEAKER_01: these affluent supporters without the affluent supporters facing a lot of questions
9:08
SPEAKER_01: about the wisdom of what they're doing.
9:11
SPEAKER_01: And I find that part of it a little bit weird.
9:14
SPEAKER_01: And like,
9:16
SPEAKER_01: like thinking through how to explain why it's weird as we were prepping this.
9:20
SPEAKER_01: Like I come back to what's happening in journalism right now.
9:25
SPEAKER_01: Like we're living through this disastrous era for the journalism industry.
9:30
SPEAKER_01: And there's obviously like a ton of reasons why journalism is in such bad shape.
9:35
SPEAKER_01: But the one that doesn't get enough attention in my mind is that Donald Trump made
9:40
SPEAKER_01: politics toxic to advertisers,
9:42
SPEAKER_01: right?
9:42
SPEAKER_01: Like before Trump,
9:44
SPEAKER_01: Republicans would shit talk mainstream media all the time,
9:49
SPEAKER_01: but politics kind of turned on normalish stuff.
9:52
SPEAKER_01: And you could still put an ad for JP Morgan, for instance, next to some content about politics.
10:00
SPEAKER_01: And people thought that that was a good swap.
10:03
SPEAKER_01: They don't want to do that anymore.
10:04
SPEAKER_01: And fine, right?
10:06
SPEAKER_01: They have their interests to protect, and they're not obligated to prop up my industry.
10:12
SPEAKER_01: But if politics is toxic,
10:13
SPEAKER_01: and we all know why,
10:15
SPEAKER_01: why do they not interpret being openly supportive of the insurrectionist felon
10:20
SPEAKER_01: Donald Trump as a big risk for whatever their companies happen to be?
10:25
SPEAKER_01: JP Morgan, Tesla, whatever else.
10:28
SPEAKER_01: They seem to have decided that this comes with no...
10:34
SPEAKER_01: Meanwhile, like putting an ad next to news about politics is an intolerable risk for them.
10:40
SPEAKER_00: Well,
10:40
SPEAKER_00: and,
10:40
SPEAKER_00: you know,
10:41
SPEAKER_00: I so I do think that like one thing that,
10:44
SPEAKER_00: you know,
10:44
SPEAKER_00: something that's interesting because I talked to somebody,
10:47
SPEAKER_00: a couple of people who've been involved in sort of trying to do this.
10:53
SPEAKER_00: political outreach to the business community for Biden.
10:57
SPEAKER_00: And one point that the people who do that work made to me is that even if you look
11:04
SPEAKER_00: at the people who are vocally pro-Trump,
11:06
SPEAKER_00: none of them,
11:07
SPEAKER_00: with the exception of Musk,
11:08
SPEAKER_00: who is important enough that we need to talk about him separately,
11:13
SPEAKER_00: it's usually not executives of consumer-facing brands.
11:18
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
11:18
SPEAKER_01: I mean, David Sachs is like a good example of this.
11:20
SPEAKER_01: Nobody would have any reason to care who he is except – And again,
11:25
SPEAKER_00: Ken Griffin,
11:25
SPEAKER_00: Bill Ackman,
11:26
SPEAKER_00: these are all – they're investors.
11:29
SPEAKER_00: And so it's like even though – like if you ever talk to an executive at like a fast
11:35
SPEAKER_00: food company,
11:36
SPEAKER_00: those guys are super right wing because like they hate labor unions and various
11:41
SPEAKER_00: other things.
11:42
SPEAKER_00: But like you will never – not this cycle, not any cycle ever –
11:46
SPEAKER_00: hear like an executive from Wendy's offering an opinion about partisan politics.
11:52
SPEAKER_00: Cause that's just like,
11:53
SPEAKER_00: you know,
11:53
SPEAKER_00: when,
11:54
SPEAKER_00: when liberals tried to get Michael Jordan to come out against like racist Republicans,
12:01
SPEAKER_00: he said like Republicans buy sneakers too.
12:04
SPEAKER_00: And so you get the same thing with these kinds of consumer brands, right?
12:06
SPEAKER_00: So like the heavy politicization tends to be concentrated in these like companies
12:12
SPEAKER_00: that like normal people don't know what they are.
12:14
SPEAKER_00: person square capital, anything like that.
12:19
SPEAKER_00: But they do have employees.
12:23
SPEAKER_00: And there has been a shift here.
12:26
SPEAKER_00: I think the perception in 2016, in 2020, was that the workforce in Silicon Valley was very liberal.
12:37
SPEAKER_00: And that you were at real risk of pissing off engineers,
12:43
SPEAKER_00: the people who were working at not just Apple and Google,
12:48
SPEAKER_00: but all kinds of startups.
12:50
SPEAKER_00: The whole ecosystem was very, very left wing.
12:53
SPEAKER_00: And that's what drove a lot of the content moderation policies that Republicans didn't like.
13:00
SPEAKER_00: But this is what the people working at Meta and Twitter and working in that ecosystem wanted to do.
13:08
SPEAKER_00: And something has changed there.
13:11
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
13:11
SPEAKER_00: Not that it's over.
13:14
SPEAKER_00: Obviously, San Francisco and Santa Clara County continue to be very liberal places.
13:21
SPEAKER_00: But there is more and more comfort with being openly right-wing.
13:26
SPEAKER_00: in those kind of universes, right?
13:27
SPEAKER_00: Like less of a sense that you will face some terrifying, problematic staff revolt.
13:35
SPEAKER_00: And some of that is that the labor market for software people has gotten much weaker.
13:40
SPEAKER_00: There isn't the same kind of desperate battle to compete.
13:45
SPEAKER_00: And some of it is that the Biden administration has governed in a very kind of like
13:52
SPEAKER_00: bold, progressive manner on economic issues, which has some upsides and has some downsides.
14:00
SPEAKER_00: But they have definitely,
14:01
SPEAKER_00: on the helping Republicans get votes side of it,
14:08
SPEAKER_00: sort of brought back a more traditional class politics.
14:13
SPEAKER_00: And
14:15
SPEAKER_00: You know,
14:16
SPEAKER_00: if that had generated for Biden like Obama levels of working class support,
14:22
SPEAKER_00: I think everybody would be saying like it's a great trade.
14:24
SPEAKER_00: You know, like some tweets from some venture capitalists are not necessarily worth that much.
14:32
SPEAKER_00: But,
14:33
SPEAKER_00: you know,
14:33
SPEAKER_00: it's a perilous position for Biden to be in,
14:37
SPEAKER_00: you know,
14:38
SPEAKER_00: that like he has alienated some people and it's not obvious to me.
14:44
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
14:45
SPEAKER_00: people who are worth alienating,
14:46
SPEAKER_00: like I don't think courting the votes of people who are just desperate for low
14:51
SPEAKER_00: taxes would be a good path forward for Democrats.
14:55
SPEAKER_00: But what you want to do is like win back the votes of Democrats.
15:01
SPEAKER_00: working class people who need health insurance.
15:04
SPEAKER_00: Because like, that's the flip side of this, right?
15:06
SPEAKER_00: Like the thing that's the other,
15:08
SPEAKER_00: one thing that's not in David Sachs' long form tweets is like,
15:12
SPEAKER_00: I personally lust for TCJA extension.
15:15
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
15:16
SPEAKER_00: But then the other thing that's not in it is like,
15:18
SPEAKER_00: Matt Iglesias will tell you that Trump's tax policies are going to blow out
15:22
SPEAKER_00: inflation interest rates.
15:24
SPEAKER_00: But don't worry,
15:25
SPEAKER_00: Trump has assured me that he's going to take care of the deficit with savage cuts
15:30
SPEAKER_00: to poor people's healthcare and nutrition assistance.
15:33
SPEAKER_00: Right?
15:34
SPEAKER_00: Because that's how you would make the numbers add up.
15:38
SPEAKER_00: How you do the tax cuts Trump is promising without cutting Social Security or Medicare...
15:44
SPEAKER_00: without creating a huge fiscal crisis is you go to town on Medicaid.
15:51
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think that the implications of what you're saying
15:56
SPEAKER_01: is that ideally the response from Democrats and Biden to this realignment of
16:02
SPEAKER_01: billionaires behind the extremely wealthy Republican nominee would be to run
16:08
SPEAKER_01: something like the 2012 campaign against Donald Trump.
16:11
SPEAKER_01: And I was thinking about the 2012 campaign as you were running through all that.
16:17
SPEAKER_01: And I just struck by the fact that Mitt Romney,
16:20
SPEAKER_01: almost like David Sachs,
16:21
SPEAKER_01: was not famous for being the CEO of
16:25
SPEAKER_01: some beloved brand, right?
16:26
SPEAKER_01: He was not the CEO of Nike.
16:28
SPEAKER_01: He was Bain Capital guy, right?
16:30
SPEAKER_01: Yep.
16:31
SPEAKER_01: And in a weird way, the narrative tension in that campaign was,
16:37
SPEAKER_01: between the Obama campaign trying to define him as this Bain capital corporate
16:44
SPEAKER_01: raider type and him trying to emphasize his,
16:47
SPEAKER_01: I've saved the Olympics.
16:49
SPEAKER_01: He was trying to make what he did seem like what the corporate leaders people respect do.
16:57
SPEAKER_01: And I don't think that for a number of reasons, I don't think that
17:02
SPEAKER_01: Biden can do that to Trump so easily because the Trump brand is much more like,
17:06
SPEAKER_01: even though it shouldn't be,
17:08
SPEAKER_01: is much more like a respected consumer brand than like random consulting company
17:14
SPEAKER_01: that no one's ever heard of and it sounds vaguely nefarious.
17:18
SPEAKER_01: And then separately,
17:19
SPEAKER_01: just that like the trends that have made working class people swing right are more
17:24
SPEAKER_01: entrenched than they were in 2012.
17:27
SPEAKER_01: And so like the nightmare scenario is that Trump consolidates
17:32
SPEAKER_01: the corporate elite without losing much support from workers.
17:38
SPEAKER_01: And then Biden, I think, is just completely fucked.
17:40
SPEAKER_00: Well, the other thing about 2012, right?
17:43
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
17:43
SPEAKER_00: everybody remembers the sort of like Bain attacks on Romney,
17:48
SPEAKER_00: but that was a two,
17:50
SPEAKER_00: that was like a plane with two wings,
17:52
SPEAKER_00: right?
17:53
SPEAKER_00: And like one of it- Good for a plane to have two wings.
17:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, no, but I mean, there was the kind of like,
17:59
SPEAKER_00: personal digs at Romney as this out-of-touch rich guy.
18:02
SPEAKER_00: And then there was Paul Ryan pushing grandma off the cliff, right?
18:07
SPEAKER_00: And the thing that happened after 2012 is that Republican Party elites didn't want
18:16
SPEAKER_00: to compromise on entitlement programs.
18:20
SPEAKER_00: So they wrote this autopsy report that was like, we need to move to the center on immigration.
18:24
SPEAKER_00: And then Trump did what rank and file Republican voters wanted.
18:28
SPEAKER_00: which was drop the Paul Ryan Medicare stuff and stay right-wing on immigration.
18:36
SPEAKER_00: And if you had just asked the Obama campaign in the heat of 2012,
18:45
SPEAKER_00: what if Mitt Romney had spent this whole campaign vowing not to cut Medicare?
18:50
SPEAKER_00: like Romney would have been in way better shape.
18:53
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
18:54
SPEAKER_00: And it's like, it's made it tough.
18:56
SPEAKER_00: I was talking about Medicaid, right?
19:00
SPEAKER_00: I was talking about SNAP.
19:01
SPEAKER_00: I mean, those are popular programs.
19:03
SPEAKER_00: If Trump becomes president and tries to cut them, he will, I think, pay a steep political price for it.
19:09
SPEAKER_00: But as you like to point out, it's always harder
19:13
SPEAKER_00: to make people fear something hypothetical.
19:14
SPEAKER_00: That's something that's on the table.
19:17
SPEAKER_00: And Medicare is like five times hotter than Medicaid.
19:22
SPEAKER_00: So like mobilizing people against hypothetical Medicare cuts is,
19:28
SPEAKER_00: gets you somewhere.
19:29
SPEAKER_00: We're mobilizing people.
19:31
SPEAKER_00: I will tell you,
19:32
SPEAKER_00: I hope that people who have parents who are in long-term care understand that even
19:40
SPEAKER_00: if you're middle class,
19:41
SPEAKER_00: you think this is a program for the poor.
19:43
SPEAKER_00: It's like, no, your parents' long-term care is being subsidized by the federal Medicaid program.
19:50
SPEAKER_00: If Donald Trump becomes president,
19:52
SPEAKER_00: Either he is going to enact swinging cuts in that program or the deficit is going to explode.
20:00
SPEAKER_00: I can't tell you which of those it will be because conservative media doesn't do
20:06
SPEAKER_00: reporting on intra-Republican dialogue about public policy.
20:11
SPEAKER_00: But this is a big stakes in the election.
20:15
SPEAKER_00: There is a much larger disagreement between Biden and Trump about Medicaid policy
20:20
SPEAKER_00: than there is about immigration.
20:22
SPEAKER_00: But, like, that's not what's out there in the discourse.
20:27
SPEAKER_00: And,
20:27
SPEAKER_00: like,
20:27
SPEAKER_00: I unfortunately cannot,
20:28
SPEAKER_00: like,
20:29
SPEAKER_00: mind control everybody covering the campaign and,
20:32
SPEAKER_00: like,
20:32
SPEAKER_00: get them to write it that way.
20:34
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
20:35
SPEAKER_00: And it makes it tough because rich people...
20:39
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to say that,
20:41
SPEAKER_00: like...
20:41
SPEAKER_00: Rich people are more informed about politics than working class people.
20:47
SPEAKER_00: You know, like, if you are a billionaire...
20:49
SPEAKER_00: You can just hire somebody to do bespoke research for you to understand what your
20:56
SPEAKER_00: personal stakes in this election campaign are.
20:58
SPEAKER_00: You can get Donald Trump on the telephone.
21:02
SPEAKER_00: And ask him your questions and get commitments out of him.
21:07
SPEAKER_00: And so it's tough.
21:10
SPEAKER_00: It is much easier for Trump to court a small number of very rich people with
21:17
SPEAKER_00: right-wing class politics than it is for Biden to pitch left-wing class politics to
21:23
SPEAKER_00: an electorate that is not being fed that in the media.
21:26
SPEAKER_01: So there's like two distinct challenges here if you're looking at the dilemma from Biden's perspective.
21:33
SPEAKER_01: One is getting the tens of millions of working class people who will be on Medicare
21:38
SPEAKER_01: someday and who have an interest that they might not recognize in keeping Medicaid
21:46
SPEAKER_01: like –
21:47
SPEAKER_01: protecting it from huge cuts, right?
21:49
SPEAKER_01: People like that,
21:50
SPEAKER_01: getting them to realize that Donald Trump is not a good choice for working or
21:55
SPEAKER_01: middle-class people,
21:56
SPEAKER_01: right?
21:57
SPEAKER_01: The second is,
21:59
SPEAKER_01: and I mean,
22:00
SPEAKER_01: it's delicate for a number of reasons,
22:02
SPEAKER_01: but it would also be helpful for Biden,
22:06
SPEAKER_01: I think,
22:06
SPEAKER_01: if the people who are endorsing Trump,
22:11
SPEAKER_01: these Republican financial and tech elites who are endorsing and raising money for Trump,
22:17
SPEAKER_01: were a little bit more nuanced in their thinking about what the implications of a
22:23
SPEAKER_01: second Trump presidency would be versus a Biden presidency.
22:27
SPEAKER_01: In 2012,
22:29
SPEAKER_01: the value proposition on the table for these guys between Obama and Romney was
22:34
SPEAKER_01: pretty clear to me.
22:35
SPEAKER_01: I understood why the rich guys were gravitating towards Romney.
22:42
SPEAKER_01: I don't totally understand what it is that makes
22:48
SPEAKER_01: someone like Steven Schwartzman,
22:49
SPEAKER_01: who's like,
22:50
SPEAKER_01: who's like net worth went up under Trump,
22:52
SPEAKER_01: but really exploded under Biden.
22:54
SPEAKER_01: Why he thinks Trump is his, like is a safer bet than Biden.
23:00
SPEAKER_01: And it's not just like backward looking in that sense.
23:04
SPEAKER_01: I'm,
23:04
SPEAKER_01: I'm,
23:05
SPEAKER_01: we talk about this on this show all the time is like the,
23:09
SPEAKER_01: the Biden promise is essentially like more of the same,
23:11
SPEAKER_01: like,
23:12
SPEAKER_01: like we've got a good economy and,
23:15
SPEAKER_01: We're just going to carry that forward and make adjustments as needed.
23:18
SPEAKER_01: The Trump promise is like huge cuts to the like the blue collar workforce because
23:28
SPEAKER_01: he's going to kick out all the immigrants and inflationary tax cuts and price
23:37
SPEAKER_01: increasing tariffs.
23:38
SPEAKER_00: So I mean, so there's one thing that's going on that I think is a little tough.
23:45
SPEAKER_00: is like when I have talked to... I saw an interesting thing, actually.
23:50
SPEAKER_00: So like Mark Cuban is a... Who's like the one, he's like the exception.
23:55
SPEAKER_00: He's like the one who seems to see it clearly, yeah.
23:57
SPEAKER_00: He's a vocal Biden supporter.
23:58
SPEAKER_00: But I saw him getting pushback on social media from some of his rich guy peers.
24:04
SPEAKER_00: And not the like...
24:06
SPEAKER_00: Most vocally red pilled ones, some like slightly random, you know, sort of like tech and finance people.
24:13
SPEAKER_00: And they were really fired up about this like Treasury Department white paper about
24:19
SPEAKER_00: Biden's plans to tax unrealized capital gains.
24:23
SPEAKER_00: So this is different from like Biden would partially.
24:27
SPEAKER_00: Partially extend the Trump tax cuts, whereas Trump would fully extend them.
24:32
SPEAKER_00: But over and above that,
24:34
SPEAKER_00: Biden has this stated budget proposal,
24:39
SPEAKER_00: which calls for...
24:41
SPEAKER_00: It does call for trillions of dollars in tax increases over and above TCJA repeal.
24:49
SPEAKER_00: And Cuban was saying what I think is true, which is that this is not...
24:54
SPEAKER_00: It's an idea.
24:55
SPEAKER_00: It's not.
24:56
SPEAKER_00: This is not happening.
24:57
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
24:58
SPEAKER_00: This is like saying that like, you know, this is not how politics works.
25:03
SPEAKER_00: It's not how the system works, etc.
25:04
SPEAKER_00: I don't think this is an area where like Trump's brand as like a liar.
25:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
25:11
SPEAKER_00: Kind of serves him well.
25:12
SPEAKER_00: Like if Trump says something that's like politically implausible,
25:16
SPEAKER_00: like I'm going to deport all 11 million undocumented people.
25:20
SPEAKER_00: aliens, people who think that's a good idea are like, great.
25:25
SPEAKER_00: But people who think it's a bad idea,
25:27
SPEAKER_00: precisely because they think it's a bad idea,
25:30
SPEAKER_00: they sort of reason,
25:31
SPEAKER_00: look,
25:32
SPEAKER_00: if he actually did that,
25:34
SPEAKER_00: it would be a huge disaster.
25:36
SPEAKER_00: So he's not going to do that.
25:39
SPEAKER_00: He'll probably step up enforcement a little bit.
25:41
SPEAKER_00: But I remember when he was president, nothing like that happened, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
25:46
SPEAKER_00: But Biden,
25:48
SPEAKER_00: because Democrats are seen as a more serious party,
25:52
SPEAKER_00: and because Biden is seen as a more serious person,
25:55
SPEAKER_00: if Biden says,
25:57
SPEAKER_00: when we get a majority,
25:59
SPEAKER_00: we are going to create
26:01
SPEAKER_00: A multi-trillion dollar expansion of the welfare state financed through attacks on
26:06
SPEAKER_00: the unrealized capital gains of a handful of wealthy investors.
26:12
SPEAKER_00: People...
26:14
SPEAKER_00: like people believe that, you know what I mean?
26:16
SPEAKER_00: Like they don't go for like, Oh, that's just like Biden blustering.
26:20
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
26:20
SPEAKER_01: But I have,
26:21
SPEAKER_01: but I want to press this point because I,
26:23
SPEAKER_01: I do not believe that if Biden and like,
26:26
SPEAKER_01: I might encourage him to try just as an experiment,
26:29
SPEAKER_01: but like,
26:30
SPEAKER_01: because I,
26:30
SPEAKER_01: you know,
26:31
SPEAKER_01: I don't particularly have strong feelings about Biden,
26:34
SPEAKER_01: Where the revenue comes from in some sense, as long as it's like mostly progressive, right?
26:40
SPEAKER_01: But if you were to say enough with the Trump bullshit,
26:43
SPEAKER_01: if all it will take for you guys to realize I'm the better choice for not just like
26:49
SPEAKER_01: for the country,
26:49
SPEAKER_01: but for your specific interest,
26:50
SPEAKER_01: I will withdraw that policy.
26:53
SPEAKER_01: I don't think a single one of them would be like,
26:54
SPEAKER_01: okay,
26:55
SPEAKER_01: you know,
26:55
SPEAKER_01: in that case,
26:56
SPEAKER_01: I rescind my endorsement of Trump.
26:59
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
26:59
SPEAKER_00: you know,
27:00
SPEAKER_00: I just look,
27:00
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
27:01
SPEAKER_00: again,
27:01
SPEAKER_00: you got to talk about different populations of people like the longtime Republicans
27:06
SPEAKER_00: of the investment community.
27:08
SPEAKER_00: Like, of course not.
27:09
SPEAKER_00: But like, it's just true.
27:11
SPEAKER_00: Like,
27:11
SPEAKER_00: if you ask any like any of the Democratic lobbyists for these companies,
27:17
SPEAKER_00: like people were freaked out.
27:20
SPEAKER_00: By that.
27:22
SPEAKER_00: When it came out,
27:23
SPEAKER_00: because,
27:24
SPEAKER_00: you know,
27:26
SPEAKER_00: and they're talking down like I think most of the people who were freaked out by
27:29
SPEAKER_00: that white paper at the end of the day are going to vote for Biden.
27:33
SPEAKER_00: Because like precisely as you say, like it's it's hard to move people's opinions with this kind of thing.
27:39
SPEAKER_00: But I think it's a troubling, to me, asymmetry.
27:46
SPEAKER_00: Sartre,
27:46
SPEAKER_00: I think,
27:47
SPEAKER_00: has this thing about how anti-Semites benefit from the perception that they're just
27:53
SPEAKER_00: trolling and joking.
27:55
SPEAKER_00: And this kind of, like, wink-wink thing.
27:57
SPEAKER_01: And Hannah Arendt... And a semi-Jew.
27:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
27:59
SPEAKER_00: and Hannah Arendt talks about this in fascism,
28:02
SPEAKER_00: that,
28:02
SPEAKER_00: like,
28:02
SPEAKER_00: it's not that...
28:04
SPEAKER_00: It's not that the fascist convinces his supporters that he's honest.
28:07
SPEAKER_00: It's that he convinces his supporters that lying constantly is good.
28:11
SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
28:12
SPEAKER_00: Right?
28:12
SPEAKER_00: And,
28:12
SPEAKER_00: like,
28:12
SPEAKER_00: that's just,
28:13
SPEAKER_00: like,
28:13
SPEAKER_00: part of the Trump dynamic,
28:15
SPEAKER_00: where it's,
28:16
SPEAKER_00: like,
28:16
SPEAKER_00: Biden is very tied down by this kind of,
28:19
SPEAKER_00: like,
28:19
SPEAKER_00: literalism.
28:20
SPEAKER_00: You know, where, like...
28:22
SPEAKER_00: And Biden went to a fundraiser, or I think it was a virtual fundraiser because it was 2020.
28:27
SPEAKER_00: And he told a bunch of rich people what I think is a totally reasonable Biden
28:32
SPEAKER_00: message to rich people,
28:33
SPEAKER_00: which is like,
28:34
SPEAKER_00: look,
28:35
SPEAKER_00: if I'm president of the United States,
28:37
SPEAKER_00: your taxes are going to go up somewhat as part of my commitment to social
28:42
SPEAKER_00: solidarity and equality.
28:43
SPEAKER_00: But nothing is going to fundamentally change about...
28:48
SPEAKER_01: You'll still be rich.
28:49
SPEAKER_00: Well, and crucially, you'll still be executives of your company.
28:54
SPEAKER_00: If you think about what is the social standing and esteem of a CEO or a leading venture,
29:00
SPEAKER_00: it's like you're a captain of industry.
29:03
SPEAKER_00: You not only have a larger house than the people who work for you, but those people work for you.
29:09
SPEAKER_00: And Biden is trying to reassure them.
29:12
SPEAKER_00: He's not a communist.
29:17
SPEAKER_00: It's just still going to be a capitalist economy with a hierarchy,
29:20
SPEAKER_00: but more of the revenue is going to come from wealthy people.
29:24
SPEAKER_00: He got...
29:25
SPEAKER_00: slammed by the left for this.
29:28
SPEAKER_00: And I still see posters from the leftist poster and crew in my neighborhood who's like,
29:35
SPEAKER_00: they want to ban oil.
29:37
SPEAKER_00: They hate Israel.
29:39
SPEAKER_00: They have these Biden, nothing will fundamentally change kind of stickers out there.
29:45
SPEAKER_00: And when he promises big sweeping change, moderates get pissed off.
29:52
SPEAKER_00: When he reassures people about the modesty of his agenda, leftists get pissed off.
29:57
SPEAKER_00: Whereas Trump just says stuff.
30:00
SPEAKER_00: And I don't want to say it's like nothing Trump has ever said has alienated anyone,
30:04
SPEAKER_00: but he holds together,
30:06
SPEAKER_00: if not a big tent,
30:07
SPEAKER_00: at least a medium-sized tent of
30:10
SPEAKER_00: of different kinds of people of right-wing dispositions without them all
30:14
SPEAKER_00: complaining all the time because people are afraid of him.
30:18
SPEAKER_01: But Matt,
30:19
SPEAKER_01: as you say,
30:20
SPEAKER_01: these people,
30:22
SPEAKER_01: whether they have a long history of being Republicans,
30:26
SPEAKER_01: whether they feel an affinity to Republicans or not,
30:29
SPEAKER_01: they have money to hire people to tell them,
30:33
SPEAKER_01: who would be better for my bottom line as president, Joe Biden or Donald Trump?
30:38
SPEAKER_01: And like, I think the answer is Joe Biden, but I think it's at the very least a close call.
30:46
SPEAKER_01: And Joe Biden is presumably better for whatever brand interest these people have
30:51
SPEAKER_01: than Donald Trump,
30:52
SPEAKER_01: who,
30:52
SPEAKER_01: whatever you think about his policy,
30:54
SPEAKER_01: his view about democracy versus fascism,
30:57
SPEAKER_01: he's like,
30:59
SPEAKER_01: he's like a kind of brutish figure that is not good for advertisers, right?
31:05
SPEAKER_01: Like people just don't like, right.
31:07
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
31:08
SPEAKER_01: So why, where are the people, are they paying people to offer them this advice?
31:13
SPEAKER_01: What advice is being given?
31:15
SPEAKER_01: And like,
31:15
SPEAKER_01: I feel like the,
31:16
SPEAKER_01: the blindness to the likelihood that Trump would be worse for them as president to
31:22
SPEAKER_01: say nothing of like the tail risk of another COVID like catastrophe is,
31:26
SPEAKER_01: kind of like calls into question the presumption,
31:30
SPEAKER_01: which I feel like you tend to share,
31:33
SPEAKER_01: that these people are like,
31:39
SPEAKER_01: bright.
31:40
SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, it's interesting, you know, I mean, because I sometimes think about this.
31:45
SPEAKER_00: It's like, it's like a pretty bad call.
31:49
SPEAKER_00: You know,
31:49
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
31:49
SPEAKER_00: I think that if you try to do the sort of like cost benefit,
31:53
SPEAKER_00: even from like a kind of business rich guy standpoint,
31:57
SPEAKER_00: that it's like,
31:58
SPEAKER_00: you know,
31:58
SPEAKER_00: Trump has policies that will help rich people as individuals.
32:02
SPEAKER_00: He also has policies that will be bad for the overall economy.
32:06
SPEAKER_00: And he also has like
32:08
SPEAKER_00: I think reasonable people can disagree as to like, is it Trump will establish a fascist dictatorship?
32:16
SPEAKER_00: Or is it like there's a 5% chance that Trump will establish a fascist dictatorship?
32:21
SPEAKER_00: But for a whole bunch of reasons,
32:22
SPEAKER_00: like Trump's personality versus Biden's,
32:25
SPEAKER_00: but also like the skew of the Supreme Court.
32:28
SPEAKER_00: And the tilt of the Senate map,
32:30
SPEAKER_00: it's just so much more likely that a second Trump administration will go off the
32:35
SPEAKER_00: rails than that a second Biden administration will go off the rails.
32:40
SPEAKER_00: It's like- That's important political intelligence.
32:43
SPEAKER_00: And they don't seem to have it.
32:45
SPEAKER_00: And I think that like-
32:49
SPEAKER_00: I think that there has been really effective relational organizing by hardcore
32:54
SPEAKER_00: right-wingers in the finance community of some of their peers,
32:59
SPEAKER_00: and that there has not been the same kind of pushback.
33:03
SPEAKER_00: One thing that Democrats did during the four years of Trump,
33:07
SPEAKER_00: that progressives did,
33:08
SPEAKER_00: rather,
33:09
SPEAKER_00: is they really raised the bar in terms of revolving door type stuff.
33:16
SPEAKER_00: They successfully got Joe Biden to appoint dramatically fewer people with business
33:22
SPEAKER_00: backgrounds into his administration.
33:24
SPEAKER_00: There's way fewer Wall Street guys who worked for Biden,
33:28
SPEAKER_00: way fewer tech guys,
33:30
SPEAKER_00: lots of people who worked for Obama and then did lobbying or something for Google
33:35
SPEAKER_00: and Apple and thought they might be invited to come back,
33:38
SPEAKER_00: who instead told thanks but no thanks.
33:42
SPEAKER_00: Some good reasons for that.
33:44
SPEAKER_00: Some less good reasons.
33:45
SPEAKER_00: It's a complicated topic.
33:47
SPEAKER_00: But one cost of it has been a decline of a pro-Biden whisper network in those places,
33:55
SPEAKER_00: where people can tell you guys,
33:56
SPEAKER_00: you know what?
33:58
SPEAKER_00: Sherrod Brown is toast.
34:00
SPEAKER_00: There's no way we're going to have a Senate majority who's going to be able to do any of this stuff.
34:04
SPEAKER_00: Because obviously, Joe Biden's public posture has to be that Sherrod Brown is not toast.
34:09
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
34:09
SPEAKER_00: And that he's going to carry forth a bold progressive agenda in his second term.
34:14
SPEAKER_00: But he's definitely not.
34:16
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
34:18
SPEAKER_00: I don't know exactly what will happen in the down-ballot elections,
34:21
SPEAKER_00: but it would be so crazy to have a strong progressive legislative majority
34:28
SPEAKER_00: And anything Biden does by executive order is being like hyper checked by the judiciary.
34:33
SPEAKER_00: It's just like, it doesn't make any sense rationally to worry about this.
34:37
SPEAKER_00: That being said,
34:38
SPEAKER_00: we're talking about,
34:39
SPEAKER_00: you know,
34:40
SPEAKER_00: people live in San Francisco,
34:41
SPEAKER_00: people live in New York city,
34:42
SPEAKER_00: people who are in fact exposed to,
34:45
SPEAKER_00: uh,
34:46
SPEAKER_00: more aggressive left-wing governance.
34:49
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, they don't like it.
34:50
SPEAKER_00: And I think only recently has the White House started actually trying to address
34:57
SPEAKER_00: this because their fundraising was so strong.
35:01
SPEAKER_00: You know,
35:02
SPEAKER_00: like this whole concern that like Trump is suddenly raising lots of money from rich people,
35:07
SPEAKER_00: although it sounds so banal,
35:08
SPEAKER_00: like of course Republicans are raising money from rich people.
35:11
SPEAKER_00: It's like only actually popped up very recently until this June.
35:15
SPEAKER_00: Biden was just like crushing Trump in fundraising.
35:18
SPEAKER_00: So there was a lot of complacency about this side of the politics.
35:22
SPEAKER_01: Okay,
35:23
SPEAKER_01: let's put a paywall here and we can talk on the other side of it about to what
35:27
SPEAKER_01: extent the anti-Biden whisper network that these people inhabit is rooted in real
35:33
SPEAKER_01: material interests versus like grievance politics or whatever.
35:38
SPEAKER_01: And then also like if what Biden can do
35:41
SPEAKER_01: carrot and stick wise to sort of reset things in a better way.
35:46
SPEAKER_01: If you want to hear that piece of the conversation, go to politics.fm and upgrade your subscription.