CNN keeps stamping on their sour grapes over the Trump victory.
In a CNN This Morning segment on corporate donations to the Trump inauguration, substitute host Danny Freeman touted how The Wall Street Journal "identified at least 11 companies and trade associations who are backing the inauguration, despite once saying they would not donate to him after the January 6th attack on the Capitol."
Freeman turned for former Democrat congressman Max Rose, who was outraged. "God bless 'em: they're full of it, right? I mean, two years ago, you care about one thing, and now you obviously don't. It's clear that what they're in it for is their shareholder interest."
Uh, yeah—they better be!
As the great free-market economist Milton Friedman put it in his Doctrine:
"An entity’s greatest responsibility lies in the satisfaction of the shareholders. Therefore, the business should always endeavor to maximize its revenues to increase returns for the shareholders."
Leftist CNN analyst and historian Leah Wright Rigueur agreed with Rose:
"One of the lessons that a lot of these corporations have learned over the last four years is that it is about money. That there are no permanent friends, that there are no permanent affiliations or alliances."
If any of these corporations hadn't long ago figured out that business is fundamentally "about money," it's surprising that they are still in business.
As for the corporations not having "permanent affiliations or alliances," companies that don't adjust to new circumstances don't last long.
During her short campaign, Kamala Harris raked in a record $1.5 billion though her campaign blew through all that and wound up in debt.The list of huge donors included all the usual suspects, including Bloomberg, Inc. and Alphabet [Google.] They all were presumably angling for favorable treatment in one form or another.
We don't remember the liberal media kvetching about that. No, they touted it as Kamala-mentum!
Here's the transcript.
CNN This Morning
12/26/24
6:13 am ETDONALD TRUMP: One of the big differences between the first term -- in the first term, everybody was fighting me. In this term, everybody wants to be my friend.
DANNY FREEMAN: It's gonna be one of the bites we're gonna hear quite a bit. Apparently, everyone wants to be Donald Trump's friend in his second term, but they're bringing their checks to prove it now.
A flurry of Fortune 500 companies, crypto firms, and individual billionaires, all racing to help underwrite Trump's inauguration on January 20th, pledging seven-figure donations. In return, they'll get an intimate candlelit dinner with the President-elect, and the First Lady, Melania.
Now, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Trump's inaugural fund is on track to break records. And also, they identified at least 11 companies and trade associations who are backing the inauguration, despite once saying they would not donate to him after the January 6th attack on the Capitol.
. . .
When the Wall Street Journal asked the companies why they're donating now, despite some of them swearing it off after January 6th, one company representative responded with this: "People just really want to move forward and move on. The election results were very clear."
Former Congressman, what's your reaction to that?
MAX ROSE: Look, God bless 'em: they're full of it, right? I mean, two years ago, you care about one thing, and now you obviously don't.
It's clear that what they're in it for is their shareholder interest. And maybe that had always been the case, but certainly that should be a message to Democrats, right? That none of these groups, corporate or otherwise, are in your camp permanently. Rather, the people that should be in your camp permanently and you in their camp are working people.
FREEMAN: Leah, what struck me interesting from this reporting is that it's not only different from four years ago, but also from President-elect Trump's first inauguration as well, right?
LEAH WRIGHT RIGUEUR: Absolutely. So I think part of what we saw during the first inauguration is that there was a real reluctance to associate with Donald Trump. There was really no interest from many corporate backers in taking him seriously. He was an unknown quantity for a large group of people, but also for many business people. It was important to be associated with his campaign.
I do think, and I would agree with Max on this here, I think one of the things, the lessons that a lot of these corporations have learned over the last four years is that it is about money. That there are no permanent friends, that there are no permanent affiliations or alliances.
And so when it became clear to them that Donald Trump was going to suffer very few, if any, repercussions for the behavior on January 6th, as well as other legal problems and allegations, it became very clear that this was going to be an opportunity for them to ply their case and make their trade with Donald Trump. We all know that he is transactional.
And so what we're seeing is an increase in that kind of transactional action. So we're seeing corporate giants like Amazon, like Facebook Meta, all these organizations, and they want something in return.
I would point, for example, to cryptocurrencies. Several cryptocurrency organizations and institutions have donated millions to Donald Trump because they want deregulation of the industry in a way that benefits them. And this is how they get it.
So, this is, I think, a dawning of a new day. But it's one that is very much about corporate interest and corporate payouts.
