Former President Bill Clinton's Labor Secretary says big business and Wall Street need to stand up to President Donald Trump because they "have the power to constrain the most dangerous, divisive, and anti-democratic president ever to occupy the Oval Office."
Robert Reich, the Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies, was secretary of labor under President Clinton and also served in the administrations of former Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.
He writes on his website that Trump, who he refers to as the "mad king," has "grown even more erratic and unhinged," yet says today's CEOs will not take a stand against him.
Consider JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, he notes.
"Dimon has gone out of his way not to criticize the mad king," Reich wrote. "While he 'strongly disagreed' with Trump's equating white supremacists to protesters in Charlottesville last summer, he also counseled 'not to expect smooth sailing' in the first year of a new administration.
"Now well into Trump's second year, with the sailing more treacherous than ever . . . Dimon is even more conciliatory. Asked last week how Trump is doing, Dimon gushed. 'Regulatory stuff, good.' The potential summit with North Korea, a 'great idea.' He regrets his 2017 prediction that Trump would be a one-term president, telling Fox Business 'I wish I hadn't said it, I was talking probabilistically.'"
CEOs are reluctant to stand up to Trump because of the money they are making, Reich said, but adding Trump's "looniness" could make them "big losers."
"Let them try to sustain corporate profits as America slides toward authoritarianism," Reich wrote. "Try to maintain comfortable lifestyles as America descends into angry populist tribalism."
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