Trump and his moneymen: Billionaires repeat Hitler mistake

in 2019 I interrupted private equity mogul Stephen Schwarzman as he addressed hundreds of his and my Yale classmates at our 50th anniversary reunion dinner under a large white tent on the university’s Old Campus.

“That’s enough, Steve, you’ve displaced tens of thousands of Americans,” I announced in my powerful, second-bass Yale Glee Club voice as I rose from my seat at a table not far from the podium where Schwarzman was sitting. He was talking tolerantly about a donation he had made.

“Well, it looks like someone took a little too much,” Schwarzman replied — a little underwhelming, I thought. But as I turned my back on them and walked off into the night, more than half my classmates jumped to their feet and applauded.

I returned an hour later to find that a few of my classmates felt the same way but did nothing but squirm.

Schwarzman and another Yale graduate knew that future treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin was foreclosing on properties that doomed his purchases by overleveraging his purchases, as I have previously described. New Republic a few months after I confronted him.

After my outburst that evening, a candid discussion of the incident was posted on our class website. Schwarzman did not attend; I have been criticizing their facilities and practices since 2017. Washington Monthly, Opposition and in other venues I criticized him with renewed intent days after the 2020 election. here in the Hall.

The question is now more important than ever before. You might think I’ve made my say about Schwarzman by now. I would be glad to see others take up the torch of objection and dissent. Fortunately, Financial Times writer and American editor Edward Luce came close to doing just that in his October 23 column: “What Does Croesus Want from Trump?Luce sees Schwarzman as an American CroesusElon Musk, like Peter Thiel and other billionaires, is terrifyingly influential in politics as well as finance.

More tellingly, historian Christopher R. Browning, writing in the New York Review of Books, explains Wealthy, reactionary German elites estimated how much they could profit from Adolf Hitler’s alarming, if unstable, demagoguery while also controlling it. That’s pretty much what some American billionaires, including Schwarzman, Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, think they think they can do with Trump once he’s secured his election.

If they “elect” Trump, they will regret it, as I have warned since I wrote the Salon article referenced above. But even if Trump narrowly loses to Harris, his aides may feel vindicated even if they erupt into belligerent, violent, and prolonged outbursts. I am pleased to report that Yale School of Management professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld has brought together 20 former CEOs of major American companies who support Kamala Harris, as did he and former CEO of American Airlines, Doug Parker. explained on CNBC and Fortune Magazine. But Schwarzman is not one of them.

Schwarzman’s and my alma mater had been torn apart like this before—long before our 1960s: In 1860, before the start of the Civil War, some Yale students and graduates, including John C. Calhoun, fought Southerners deeply into slavery. had invested – they were packaged. They packed their bags and left New Haven, leaving their Northern classmates who would defend the Union and abolish slavery.

Some of the emerging Yale abolitionists who remained loyal to the Union were capitalists by education and inheritance who had already indirectly profited from slavery. But they also concluded that slavery was morally wrong and that the secession and success of the Southern slaveocracy would harm the republic, not to mention their own dignity.

Yale Law School professor Daniel MarkovitsMeritocracy Trap“Decide Americans to submit to our own take on what Harvard political theorist and classicist Danielle Allen describes asThe Road to Slavery“—the casino-like financing, brutal political demagoguery, and caste-like inequalities that Trump, a corrupt Supreme Court, and a paralyzed Congress have all but normalized?

Want a daily digest of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletterCrammer.

Kamala Harris may not be an Abraham Lincoln to crush the worst of it, but the rest of us need to stop normalizing our reliance on finance and corporate marketing; especially since Citizens United The decision disrupted public debate over the Croesus-like intrusion into freedom of expression by Schwarzman and others. We need to intervene in other ways, not just by voting against Trump, but by restructuring our priorities and habits as investors and citizens.

No one said this better than the 19th-century social theorist and economist and incorrigible social justice warrior. Henry GeorgeIn the book “Progress and Poverty” warned “Forms are nothing when the essence is gone… and a government with universal suffrage and theoretical equality can easily degenerate into despotism under conditions that force change. For there despotism proceeds in the name and power of the people… There is no unvoted class to be appealed to, but its own There is no privileged estate that can defend the rights of all while defending their rights… (It) was the middle classes that broke the pride of the Stuarts; The aristocracy of mere wealth will never struggle as long as it can hope to bribe a tyrant.”

And now? Trump, Schwarzman, Musk and others think so too. And half of American voters will do the same, at least according to polls. I hope we, rather than them, say otherwise.