"Donald Trump continues to pose as a hero of the working class who will fight for average working people. He is not, of course. He is a stooge of the moneyed interests."
"Which makes it doubly important for Biden to channel FDR a week from tonight and speak the truth — that only once before, 88 years ago, have the moneyed interests been so united against one candidate as they stand today against Joe Biden.
They hate Biden — and Biden should welcome their hatred."
"Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday said that business executives and shareholder representatives should 'be 100% behind' him or face termination.
'Business Executives and Shareholder Representatives should be 100% behind Donald Trump! Anybody that’s not should be FIRED for incompetence!,' the former president wrote in a post on his social media website, Truth Social."
"The Business Roundtable is an association of more than 200 CEOs of America’s biggest corporations, their most powerful voice in Washington.
Last Wednesday, its chair, Joshua Bolten, told reporters that his group planned to drop 'eight figures' while 'putting its full weight behind protecting and strengthening tax reform.'"
"Translated: It’s going to pour money into Trump’s campaign to ensure that Trump’s 2017 tax cuts — most of which benefit big corporations and the rich — don’t expire in 2025, as scheduled.
On Thursday, Trump met at the Business Roundtable’s Washington headquarters with over 80 CEOs, including Apple’s Tim Cook, JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon, and Walmart’s Doug McMillon."
Why does NYTimes relentlessly attack Biden? 👆🏼👆🏼👆🏼👆🏼👆🏼
"While Donald Trump’s felony conviction for falsifying business documents is hurting him with independent voters, it has only increased his popularity with a demographic cohort that is much smaller in number—but still has an outsize role to play in election outcomes: the super-rich."
~ Jeet Heer
Because the super-rich think they, too, should be above the law and that he will help them in that regard….
"Trump’s return to the White House would literally allow the wealthiest Americans to pocket trillions that would otherwise be used for public services. This simple material fact is enough to explain why the propertied class won’t listen to civic lessons about the toxicity of Trump. They are obscenely rich and Trump will help them stay that way. In fact, he’ll allow them to become even richer than they’d otherwise be."
"In recent weeks, one strategy [of Trump's] for raising money has become clear: Trump is going to wealthy donors and interest groups and offering to cede policymaking to them—in exchange for massive campaign contributions."
"Billionaire money is now gushing into the 2024 election. Just 50 families have already injected more than $600 million into the 2024 election cycle, according to a new report from Americans for Tax Fairness. Most of it is going to the Trump Republican Party."
"What are we to make of the fact that Trump can be re-elected, that the Supreme Court is full of reactionary fanatics, and Congress isn't acting on the will of the American people? For starters, we have a political system that acts like a dam, blocking the 'main stream' of where this country is today. …
Our political system has been rigged by corporate lobbyists, lawmakers, and judges to hold public office hostage to big money—intentionally excluding the working-class majority from its rightful place at America’s policy table."
“Lenin is supposed to have said that when it came time to hang them, the ‘capitalists will sell us the rope.’ These capitalists are deluding themselves if they imagine that another Trump term in office will be good for them. Yes, Trump is a ‘businessman,’ but more in the style of Tony Soprano than Andrew Carnegie.”
“What these Trump backers seem not to appreciate is that their riches are only possible because the United States is a stable, democratic country. If we cease to be stable—and perceived as such by investors around the world—our national debt, already among the highest in the world, would become a potentially crushing burden.”
As Thomas Zimmer says, America's mainstream elites, richly represented in the nation's corporate media, just can't get over the narrative that If rightwing extremism breaks out, the left is really to blame for it.
America's elites are fascist-adjacent, preferring a fascist-lite approach to governance to anything at all leaning left of the very rightward center they've long established, especially via the media.
Jeet Heer on how Trump's billionaire buddies bail him out over and over – and he's for sale:
"The trouble with Trump is not that he’s poor but that he stays rich by selling his services to fellow plutocrats. Whatever his actual net worth, Trump is an honorary member of the billionaire boys’ club. The task of the Biden campaign is to keep reminding voters of this fact."
Dean Obeidallah opens his commentary about Trump's gala to fleece super-rich Republicans in Palm Beach last weekend by reminding us of a meeting Hitler held with super-rich German business leaders in 1933. He promised them if they'd give money to the Nazi party, he'd end democracy to benefit them. And give they did, lavishly so.
"These wealthy people bankrolling Trump are traitors to the United States. I know that sounds extreme but let’s be clear, these people are not the run of the mill MAGA supporter who Trump has conned into believing the 2020 election was stolen. These people –like Paulson who has an MBA from Harvard business school—know full well that Trump attempted to end our democracy in 2020, both by way of a behind the scenes coup and the Jan 6 attack."
"These wildly rich people also fully grasp Trump has vowed to pardon his MAGA terrorists, has literally channeled Hitler with his language about immigrants 'poisoning the blood' of America, intentionally incited violence, spoken about being a dictator, repeatedly praised autocrats, vowed to 'liberate' America from Trump’s political opponents and more that are all flashing red warning signs for our democracy."
"Trump pandered to the Palm Beach plutocrats: 'The most successful people in the whole country are in this room.'
This is the gospel according to Trump. Success is all, and success is wealth. In Trump’s America, wealth is what is to be praised, and the wealthy are to bathe in their own self-regard.
But successful as they are, the plutocrats still need the solicitous help of their government."
"On Saturday night, Trump convinced 117 extraordinarily wealthy people to give him $50 million at a campaign fundraiser at the Palm Beach home of billionaire investor John Paulson. They believe that if Trump becomes president again, he’ll give them another big tax cut."
"But the only way to finance another big tax cut without exploding the federal budget deficit would be to cut Social Security and Medicare, which Trump now promises he won’t do. So either Trump’s billionaire backers are being conned or the American people are.
Aldous J. Pennyfarthing notes that while Trump parties with billionaires, Biden and Bernie have united – offering a sharp contrast that points the way to what we'll get if we vote for one or the other of the two candidates.
Trump's promising to shovel more money into billionaires' pockets via tax cuts. Biden wants them to pay their fair share.
P.S. There's a reason the media want to undercut Biden: wonder what it might be?
Jay Kuo shows us some of the faces of the "deplorable MAGA über-wealthy" with whom Trump hobnobbed yesterday in Palm Beach as he tried to get them to fund his campaign (Kuo is replicating a thread published on social media by Biden-Harris HQ).
The people who want to rule us and be our lords and masters, claiming with no justification at all that they're superior and should be entitled….
"In today’s America, the right wing seems to be echoing its antebellum predecessors. It is attacking women’s rights; diversity, equity, and inclusion programs; immigration; LGBTQ+ rights and so on. At the same time, it continues to push an economic system that has moved as much as $50 trillion from the bottom 90% to the top 10% since 1981 while exploding the annual budget deficit and the national debt."
Brad Onishi and Dan Miller look at the Society for American Renewal, “an exclusive, men-only fraternal order which aims to replace the US government with an authoritarian “aligned regime." IIt includes Harvard grads, millionaire industrialists, the president of the Claremont Institute, financiers, and other upper-crust right-wing men (and they are all men).
"In the second segment, they turn to more toxic masculine Christianity in the form of a call for violence and spiritual warfare from Oklahoma State Senator Dusty Deevers – an abortion abolitionist who is trying to outlaw pornography.
To finish the episode, the hosts discuss the tragic news about Nex Benedict’s death – the non-binary teenager who died by suicide after bullying at school."