from the look-mom-I am-a-populist dept

In a lead as much as the final Presidential Election, one of many lies circulated by the Trump camp to befuddle plebs and rubes was that Trump 2.0 was going to be “critical about antitrust reform.” You didn’t should look far for some baseless claims within the press (or by supposed experts like Matt Stoller) that Trump would “expand on the antitrust legacy of former FTC boss Lina Khan” or “rein in large tech.”

The proof of this declare was paper skinny. Most of it circled round Trump’s assaults on firms like Google and Meta. Which had much less to do with any good religion curiosity in “reining in company energy,” and every little thing to do with bullying them away from engaging in content moderation of racist right wing propaganda, hate speech, and election disinformation online (fairly successfully, because it turned out).

Nonetheless, a lot of the press (particularly the Politico, Axios, brunchlord DC gossip press routinely ran over-credulous stories claiming that the GOP was “serious about antitrust now,” falsely serving to promote a second Trump time period as one thing that may be vastly useful to the frequent man.

That was, unsurprisingly, all bullshit. Six months into Trump’s second time period and it has been a nonstop nightmare for client safety, company oversight, labor legislation, regulatory independence, and already underwater activist battles in opposition to media consolidation and monopoly energy.

For those who’ve been napping, grotesque ranges of lobbying and corruption below Trump have hollowed out all federal regulatory autonomy via court ruling, executive order, or captured regulators. Quite a few harmful and precedent-ignoring Supreme Courtroom rulings have declared that U.S. regulators not have the authority to make expertise-driven determinations to rein in company energy.

Trump’s additionally mindlessly rubber stamping mergers all over the place you look, supplied the businesses prove they’re racist and sexist enough, or promise to participate in Trump’s ongoing attacks against U.S. journalism and the First Amendment.

On the identical time, businesses just like the FTC are losing limitless time on proper wing zealotry, anti-trans harassment, and politically motivated investigations, whereas businesses just like the FCC strip away whatever was left of broadband consumer protection enforcement and media consolidation limits.

Regardless of this, the press nonetheless can’t appear to assist itself in propping up claims that the second Trump administration offers a fleeting shit about unchecked company energy. Bloomberg, for instance, simply this week ran a narrative with this headline, regardless of the very fact the precise story doesn’t help it:

You solely should make it a couple of paragraphs into the article to search out that’s clearly not true:

“But almost six months in, a extra nuanced image is rising. Ferguson’s FTC reached settlements in a number of multibillion greenback megadeals and dismissed one Biden-era lawsuit altogether. He has acknowledged hurt from mergers, however eschews the language of a conventional trustbuster, saying dealmaking will be “gas for the fires of innovation.”

The one remaining remnants of Lina Khan’s antitrust legacy has been the truth that the Trump administration hasn’t killed a number of of her distinguished antitrust instances in opposition to tech giants like Meta and Google. However once more, this isn’t as a result of Trump needs to genuinely rein in company energy, it’s as a result of he needs to take care of leverage over firms that management the movement of on-line info.

The U.S. hasn’t taken antitrust reform and company oversight significantly in a era, and the affect (particularly on the labor and product enshittifcation entrance) is totally all over the place you look. Lina Khan, warts and all, was the closest we received to an actual antitrust enforcer in many years. And the press, centrist Dems, billionaires, and Republicans all had a coordinated 4 yr, full-diapered tantrum about it.

Your complete Trump lie is determined by the false declare that dim authoritarian zealots care about frequent Individuals. That Trump is an precise populist. That he cares in regards to the blue-collar pursuits of the working and center class, most of whom have been pummeled for generations by bottomless U.S. corruption and unchecked company energy.

Trumpism is a clear farce to anyone with a couple of mind cells to rub collectively. However not even six months in the past, distinguished “antitrust specialists” like Matt Stoller (buoyed by a 2023 puff piece in Politico framing him as a prime political thinker of the age) had been insisting the Trump FTC hiring decisions (just like the collection of JD Vance advisor Gail Slater to go the Trump FTC antitrust division) meant good things for corporate oversight:

“It is a very highly effective assertion that Trump needs to tackle Large Tech,” wrote Matt Stoller of Trump’s choose of Slater in a submit on X. Stoller, who runs an anti-monopoly podcast and is a fellow on the American Financial Liberties Venture, added in his e-newsletter, “whereas it received’t be like Joe Biden’s, it appears [Trump] goes to proceed some vital components of the anti-monopoly revival.“

Since then, Trump has illegally fired both Democratic FTC Commissioners. His FTC hires have stood mute as quite a few, populist and popularist insurance policies (from the FTC’s effort to make cancelling services easier to the Khan FTC ban on shitty noncompete restrictions) had been destroyed. The FCC and DOJ have rubber stamped a protracted line of shitty mergers, once more supplied the businesses demonstrate satisfactory levels of racism and blind fealty to our fool king. Most firms have been comfortable to oblige.

There are some real populists embedded throughout the Trump regime, however they’re by no means going to beat the administration’s signature corruption and incompetence to truly accomplish something. They usually’re too feckless to truly do something as their beliefs are trampled underfoot (this story about some DOJ staffers whining as they rubber stamp another T-Mobile merger demonstrates this effectively).

I really did attempt very hard to warn people what was coming. Trump 2.0 was all the time going to be a devastating however lethal clown present that took a hatchet to company oversight, labor legislation, environmental safety, and company oversight. It was by no means refined. It’s going to kill lots of people. Anyone who claimed in any other case holds vital duty for the widespread struggling and bloodshed to come back.

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