Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has called out President Donald Trump and Wall Street for embracing “corporate socialism for the rich and powerful” while denying its benefits to average Americans.
“I didn’t hear [JP Morgan CEO] Jamie Dimon criticizing socialism when Wall Street begged for the largest federal bailout in American history—some $700 billion from the Treasury and even more from the Fed,” Sanders tweeted after Dimon attempted a dig at him during a Business Roundtable meeting on Wednesday. Nor did he restrict his criticism to the banking bigwig.
“Donald Trump hates Democratic Socialism because it benefits working people, but he loves corporate socialism that enriches billionaires,” Sanders tweeted.
Dimon had defined socialism as a system where “the government owns and controls companies,” using them “for political purposes, for jobs and votes,” adding that his definition differed from the one Sanders was using. So Sanders clarified exactly what he meant with the term, widening his focus to include a president who has frequently used socialism as an all-purpose bogeyman in his speeches.
Here is the difference between Donald Trump and me.
He believes in corporate socialism for the rich and powerful.
I believe in a #DemocraticSocialism that works for the working families of this country.
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) June 12, 2019
“Socialism is their name for almost anything that helps all the people,” he elaborated, quoting former President Harry Truman.
The candidate gave a speech on Wednesday to outline “What Socialism Means to Me,” offering his multi-point platform and attempting to nail down a term that has been weaponized by both parties to silence opposition.
In 1944, FDR proposed an economic bill of rights but died a year later and was never able to fulfill that vision. Our job, 75 years later, is to complete what Roosevelt started.
That is why today, I am proposing a 21st Century Economic Bill of Rights. #DemocraticSocialism. pic.twitter.com/VvEUjIyoNk
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) June 12, 2019
We see huge private monopolies operating outside any real democratic oversight and often subsidized by taxpayers with the power to control almost every aspect of our lives. they are the profit-taking gatekeepers of our healthcare, our technology, our finance system, our food supply, and almost all of the basic necessities of life.
Sanders also accused the “drug companies, fossil fuel industry, military-industrial complex, prison-industrial complex, and giant agribusiness” of encircling Washington with lobbyists and using their endless wealth to write the country’s laws.
Trump’s 2017 tax cuts slashed the corporate tax rate from 35 to 21.5 percent, and a 2017 executive order aimed at gutting the Dodd-Frank Act – one of the few regulations imposed on Wall Street in the wake of the 2008 financial crash – was issued at the behest of Dimon himself. Trump also hired former Goldman Sachs president Gary Cohn as his chief economic advisor, though Cohn’s tenure was short-lived.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
Comments are closed.