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" "But Trump’s instincts did not arise in a vacuum. Like all Americans, he inherited a tradition that conveys the norms that have enabled us to flourish. A lifetime as an entrepreneur taught him more about economics — and about the threat posed by an intrusive regulatory state — than is known by a fashionable socialist such as Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, despite the pride she takes in her economics degree. He has lived in New York City at times of comfort and times of rampant crime, and he understands the importance of preventing violence, whether from Latin American drug cartels or radical Muslim terrorists. Most Americans understand that it is those profoundly decent impulses, not xenophobia, that inspire his sometimes harsh-sounding rhetoric about the need to protect our borders and crack down on real threats. He understands the failings of the media because he was a media star. He understands the evil nature of some CEOs because he went to Wharton and has rubbed elbows with those people ever since. The scariest thing about him to the elite is that he has been inside with them, and he’s exposing their secrets to the outside.
Charles James Kirk (October 14, 1993 – September 10, 2025) was an American right-wing political activist, author, and media personality. He co-founded the conservative organization Turning Point USA (TPUSA) in 2012 and served as its executive director. In 2025, he was shot and killed while speaking at a public event.
Biography information from Wikiquote
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Republican senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa put it well in the New York Times when he wrote, “Over the past few months alone, the Defense Department has had to explain why it’s been paying $14,000 for individual 3-D-printed toilet seat lids and purchasing cups for $1,280 each. These are just the latest examples on a long list of unacceptable purchases made by the department, including $436 for hammers in the 1980s, and $117 soap dish covers and $999 pliers in the 1990s.
The willingness of, for example, generations of the elite to fight those devastating wars over oil-rich regions is a perverse side effect of the mingling of private interests and public power. Just as government subsidies for pharmaceutical purchases start looking like a great idea if your family is in the pharmaceutical industry (or, like Medicare Part D architect and former senate majority leader Bill Frist, the hospital management industry), your family being in the oil business just might make you more willing, on a subconscious level, to tolerate great sacrifices (on the part of others, including taxpayers) in the name of keeping the black lifeblood of industry flowing.
It is hard to imagine someone like Harris becoming a merciful president, if American citizens find themselves running afoul of overly harsh regulations. As for Biden, he’ll shift with the political winds as he always has, talking like a champion of desegregation today but opposing busing of students to integrate racially homogeneous school districts four decades ago.