Donald Trump Turns From Orange to Pink
Just for a day or so, granted, but good things may come from it.
The American socialist Norman Thomas (1884-1968). I worked for his grandson once, though not in any identifiably pinko enterprise.
I’ve been trying, dear reader, to stay out of your hair to give you time to read my New Republic cover piece about how, over a period of six decades, the billionaires took over everything. It’s lengthy but, I hope, very entertaining, with the unhappy ending we all live with today. I discussed the piece yesterday on Zoom with my boss Michael Tomasky and two other contributors to TNR’s special issue on the American oligarchy: the journalist Joe Conason and the traitor-to-her-class heiress and documentary filmmaker Abigail Disney. You can watch that here.
But the world doesn’t stop just because you’re trying to finish reading a print article that’s 10,000 words long (in recent memory standard magazine length but now considered something akin to War and Peace).
On Monday I posted an article for the New Republic about how I still think Donald Trump is going to fire Jerome Powell and that the Supreme Court will let him. You can read that here.
Today I posted an article for the New Republic about an experiment in socialism by Donald Trump, of all people, that, forgive me, I kind of like (though if he’s going to turn all Bolshie on us he really needs to stop calling Democrats communist). It’s called a golden share, which sounds like something naughty from the Steele Dossier but is actually a non-financial stake that grants the U.S. government power over certain decisions at a private company (in this instance U.S. Steel). Although there’s a very real danger Trump will apply it to kleptocratic or otherwise evil purposes, as is his wont, there’s also the possibility that it will turn out to be a pretty useful experiment in regulation. You can read that piece here.
I also posted today a (highly favorable) review for Democracy Journal of Michael Lewis’s anthology celebrating the accomplishments of federal employees (which I praised in Backbencher when it was a series in the Washington Post). You can read that here.