BRIEF: Dethrone the self-dealers

Big thought, small step, deep breath — for March 27, 2025

Programming note: Today at 12:30 p.m. Eastern, Anand has a live with Zohran Mamdani, the progressive insurgent in the New York mayoral race. Don’t miss it. Details below.

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BIG THOUGHT

Absolute power corrupts absolutely

Bob Dylan wrote, way back in the Reagan era:

They say that, "Patriotism is the last refuge

To which a scoundrel clings

Steal a little and they throw you in jail

Steal a lot and they make you king

But nobody’s really put those concepts — “patriotism” and corruption — together quite like Donald Trump, who has not only turned the White House lawn into a Tesla dealership on the very day he took a $100 million donation from Elon Musk and pushed the Department of Justice to spend its time defending Musk’s private company from protestors, but had the Treasure secretary shill for Tesla’s stock.

We’re a long way from the Carter administration, when even allowing a president to directly own a private business while in office carried too much of a whiff of corruption. This is new territory — unprecedented, even, to return to a word folks used to throw around all the time back in the first Trump administration. “Presidents and their subordinates have long been cheerleaders for the economy as a whole,” said historian of the presidency H.W. Brands. “But I cannot remember a single instance when an administration endorsed a particular company.” Looks like Citizens United might have been an even worse decision than anybody realized.