Dem
47
GOP
53
Donald Trump is definitely the first socialist president. He demonstrates that over and over. All the other presidents have left companies to make their own decisions based on what is best for them. Occasionally, something gets out of hand—like health insurance—and then the government tries to patch it up—for example by offering subsidies, as in the ACA, not by buying up health insurance companies. The government has never told companies how to run their businesses. Well, until Trump showed up. Here is a list of companies Trump has had the government partially buy.
Another area where Trump has deeply immersed the government in private companies' decisions is by "encouraging" them to do something he wants, with an implicit understanding that Bad Things will happen if they don't. Nice company you got there. It would be a pity if something happened to it. Getting the Ellisons to buy CNN is the poster child here. And now, Trump is back at it again. This time he wants TikTok to fork over $400 million for D.C. "beautification," including construction of the Arc de Trump, which he—alone—thinks is beautiful. His "argument" to TikTok is that if it ponies up, he will drop the lawsuit against the company. The lawsuit is about TikTok's pushing inappropriate content to young children. Normally, when the government wins a lawsuit of that type, the proceeds go to trying to right the wrong, not to building a giant monument to the Dear Leader.
This is not the first time Trump tried to get something from TikTok. When he took office in Jan. 2025, a federal law required TikTok to sell its American operations to some American firm or consortium. Trump ultimately brokered a deal in which the Chinese parent company, ByteDance, sold part of its U.S. operations to a consortium led by Oracle and also including other investors. ByteDance will have about 20% of the stock in the joint venture. Trump's interest in the deal had nothing to do with protecting children. It was all about who gets the profits from TikTok's U.S. operations. Now much of it will go to his cronies in the U.S. and some foreign investors, including the U.A.E. The model here is Russia. Vladimir Putin doesn't have a personal stake in all the companies his wholly owned oligarchs run, but the oligarchs are well aware that the deal is this: They support Putin and in return he arranges for them to become very rich. Friends help friends. It's natural. (V)