Jonah Goldberg: In Praise of Hippie Punching

"I’m going through one of these moments in which a lot of people have decided that they know my motives better than I do. We don’t need to get into the weeds on that (spoiler: you don’t). But it does make me feel obliged to explain my motives upfront. I want the Democratic Party to get its act together for a few reasons. For starters, it’d be good for America. Second, it’d be good for the Republican Party. Last, if the Republican Party doesn’t get its act together and instead keeps going in a statist, protectionist, price-fixing, big spending, direction with an utterly amoral approach to foreign policy, it’d be good if the Democratic Party offered a (better) alternative to that. 

So, here’s what I think the Democratic Party needs to do: Punch a whole lotta of hippies. 

From what I can tell, the phrase hippie punching emerged about 15 years ago, in the last days of the Golden Age of the lefty blogosphere. It was used in a pejorative way to describe the way moderates or centrists demonstrated they weren’t too radical. I think it’s a pretty brilliant phrase, in part because it’s great spin. The image of a harmless hippie, maybe holding a “Vegetable Rights and Peace!” sign, getting unfairly clobbered in the mug puts the villainy on the puncher. “Hey, man, what did you do that for?”

Phrasing like “Bolshevik smacking,” “Whackjob whacking,” or “Radical slapping” takes away some of the suggestion that it’s unfair and unprovoked to attack the lefty fringe of the party. But “hippie punching”? That’s sort of like “Amish kicking.”

Of course, this is wrong on a whole bunch of levels. For starters, we’re not talking about literal violence—I’m against literal punching in politics generally—we’re talking about arguments and, well, politics. Second, the lefty fringe of the Democratic Party punches rightward all the time (in much the same way the righty fringe of the GOP punches leftward). I mean Bernie Sanders and AOC denounce the dwindling band of moderates in the Democratic Party whenever it suits them. This dynamic is not new; it’s the way the parties have worked at least for a century. 

One last point on the wrongness of the alleged wrongness of hippie-punching: Fairness is overrated in politics. Or rather, fairness is misapplied in all sorts of contexts. If, for example, a Democrat thinks the government should nationalize the health care industry root and branch, it’s not “unfair” for another Democrat to say, “I disagree. I think that guy is nuts. And, I don’t think my party should have anything to do with such nuttery.” Whether it’s good politics to draw such distinctions is a prudential question. And, in this moment, I think it’s pretty obvious that the Democratic Party needs someone to do a whole lotta punching leftward...

Source:The Dispatch co-founder Jonah Goldberg.

From The Dispatch

I sort of got into what Jonah Goldberg was talking about myself, about people that I sort of call Hipster Democrats, back in April: 

"I think especially in politics and government when someone tries to look or seem "cool'... to "go viral" on social media, they look like the 45-50 year old dad, who has 3 kids, who is bored with himself and his life, so he decides the way to "fix his life" is to:

grow a goatee, 

wear their heir back with an entire bottle of gel, everyday  

speaks exclusively in pop culture references and catch phrases

is always seen staring at his phone and with a coffee cup, etc... they don't look real. They look like someone who is suffering through a middle age, pop culture crisis. They look like they're trying to be something that they're not...

From The New Democrat

And as Ederik Schneider said about this a couple weeks ago: 

"And I agree with the point that both Matt Lewis and Rik Schneider we're making. I think the left-wing of the Democratic Party, looks like a real-life, Hollywood political film, or "or reality TV show", where everyone else is trying to "out viral" the other person and use that to jumpstart whatever career that they want to have for themselves. 

But could you imagine if Socialists, even in the Democratic Party ever came to power in America? I mean their whole lifestyle, their culture, their way of life, is dependent and completely subsidized by the American capitalist and liberal democratic system. And most of them know that. Most of these folks are educated. Most of these folks make good livings for themselves, even millionaires. 

Representative Alexandria O. Cortez couldn't even afford to pay her own rent in Washington, when she moved here in 2019. Now she's worth $30 million dollars. That's what can happen to you become famous and have a large following of young hipsters, who think you are the coolest thing since skinny jeans and smartphones and you write a book or 2. 

So 1, I don't see Socialists ever coming to power in America, even if they're "Democrats". Because once people start thinking about what it would mean to have a socialist government in America, voters stop being impressed by all the hipster catch phrases and other fashion statements that these folks make and start thinking about how much a socialist government would cost them. 

And 2, the left-wing in America, when the rubber meets the road, when everyone is at the starting gate, when the 2 warriors meet in the ring, etc... when it's time to get down and do some business... they don't want a socialist government either, because that would destroy their way of life and ability to joy life and afford all the high-end things that consumes them. But it's cool to sound like a militant hipster, (especially with young people) who wants to "take down the man" and wipeout poverty, disease, bigotry, etc. But when it gets down to how you do those things and how you pay for them, not even Socialists are interested in doing that in America." 

From The New Democrat

Bill Maher talked about what Jonah Goldberg is talking about here, but referring to Occupy Wall Street, which was a very young, Millennial, left-wing, hippie/hipster, political movement, back in 2011-12. But he didn't call them Hippies: 

"Yes, they're peeing outdoors and having sex in sleeping bags, or, as Bristol Palin calls it, 'dating,' but they're not hippies," Maher said on Real Time Friday. "The hippies are all gone."

From Business Insider

Yes, anytime either of the 2 major political parties have a fringe in it, (or in this case both the Democrats and Republicans) that can obviously pose as a problem... especially when the fringe of 1 of the parties wins The White House and controls both chambers of Congress. Well, The White House and House. The Senate is run by Majority Leader John Thune... and he really isn't anyone's definition of a radical... except for course for the far-left of the Democratic Party. 

But have 2 points here: 

1. The reason why both major parties have their own fringes, is because of the two-party system. And I'm saying this as a lifelong Democrat, who comes from a German-American Democratic family, in Maryland. Which obviously isn't unusual in this state.

I'm not saying I want a parliamentary, social democratic, form of government, because I don't. But you let the Green Party have universal ballot and polling access, the Greens in the Democratic Party, would probably move over to the Green Party. 

There isn't a far-right, third party in America, because all the far-rightists are in the Republican Party right now. The Republican (whether this was intelligent or not) consolidated the entire right wing (center to far-right) in the Republican Party. Some Socialists are Democrats, but a lot of them are in the Green Party, or other far-left third parties. 

2. As I talked about last month and as Ederik Schneider talked about here 2 weeks ago, we actually don't see the left-wing of the Democratic Party as a political movement. More like cultural movement of very young hipsters, (or Hippies) who think it's cool to look and sound antiestablishment, even in the Democratic Party. Not that different from what was going on in the late 1960s and early 1970s in the Democratic Party, with the original New Left. But most of those folks were Boomers, who grew up, got lives, and mainstreamed themselves in American society. 

And you go up almost 15 years from 2011, a lot of Millennials are doing the same thing as the Boomers did. A lot of them, as well as even some Gen-Y people, voted for Donald Trump in all 3 elections. 

And to remind you of what Ederik said 2 weeks ago: 

"So 1, I don't see Socialists ever coming to power in America, even if they're "Democrats". Because once people start thinking about what it would mean to have a socialist government in America, voters stop being impressed by all the hipster catch phrases and other fashion statements that these folks make and start thinking about how much a socialist government would cost them...

Republicans won't like hearing this, including mainstream Republicans, (you know, the Conservatives) but 1 of the major differences between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party... the adults don't sit at the table in the Democratic Party. They own the table and the kids sit in the other room... except when the adults need their votes for something. 

The reason why "The Squad" and other left-wing Democrats, are always struggling to even get a major committee assignment, especially in the House, because they're seen as too radical and the House Democratic Leadership doesn't want to be put on the record speaking about their interesting (to be nice) statements, or actions that they take. Most left-wing Democrats can't get elected anywhere statewide in this country. Bernie and Liz are the exceptions to that in Vermont and Massachusetts. But that's out of 100 U.S. Senators in Congress. And none of these left-wingers are governors, either.  

And as The New Democrat has said before, as well... 2025-26 is not about rebranding the image of the Democratic Party. Each Democrat running for elected office in this cycle, will control whatever their "brand" might be for that election. This cycle is about reminding voters that we still have a two-party system and why Republicans shouldn't be allowed to have a unified government, with almost no political checks on their power, going into 2027. 

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Jonah Goldberg: Don't Call This Conservatism

"If you spend any time following the most vocal defenders of Donald Trump or various populist causes generally, some version of this question may have occurred to you. If you find yourself listening to defenders of a supposedly extreme right-wing Republican president’s signature policies, and then wondering aloud, “Wait, I thought conservatives were in favor of free markets?” you have an idea of what I am getting at. If you’re perplexed by the way many on the right celebrate and lionize a rogue’s gallery of libertines, scapegraces, sybarites, caitiffs, roues, abusers, and cads, you might wonder why you didn’t get the memo explaining that the right no longer cares about “moral rearmament,” or “family values.”

In short, if you’re a lifelong conservative, you might be struggling with the question of whether “the right” is where you belong. If being a principled defender of the constitutional order, limited government, free markets, traditional values, and an America-led world still makes you a conservative, are you still on “the right” when the loudest voices on the right reject most or all of those positions?  

I ask these questions full of trepidation about getting sucked into what I call the paradox of labels. It is simultaneously true that labels matter a great deal and that arguments about labels can often be a pointless distraction.  

So let me make a brief case for the importance of labels. Labels matter because we use labels—terms, constructs, categories, words—to understand reality and chart our course through it, both individually and collectively. If you think labels don’t matter, tear off the labels on all of your cleaning supplies, canned goods, insecticides, prescription medicines, etc. Eventually, you’ll change your mind—or die in the pursuit of making a point. 

At the same time, if you invest too much significance in labels, they end up doing your thinking for you. The words become separated from the thing, and arguments about reality become fodder for logical legerdemain and semantic games about terminology. British philosopher Antony Flew popularized the “No True Scotsman” fallacy: If “no Scotsmen put sugar on their porridge,” then a Scotsman’s identity is held hostage to an opinion.  

There’s a long history of this fallacy in politics. Pas d’ennemis a gauche, pas d’amis a droit—no enemies to the left, no friends to the right—was a credo for Popular Fronts (more on those later) in 1930s France and Europe generally. A similar spirit has infused the right in the last decade. Highly partisan Trump supporters will routinely insist that no true conservative would oppose him—and suddenly the definition of conservative (or right-wing) is held hostage to support for him. Or even take Trump out of it: In the 1980s, support for a strong national defense against the Soviets was a point of conservative consensus. So promoters of a particular weapon system would try to argue that members of Congress must fund it or be stripped of their conservative insignia, like a cowardly officer being stripped of his epaulets.

The only reliable way out of the paradox of labels is to define your terms. In Kantian terms, the task is to make the phenomenon—for our purposes, the labels—correspond as closely as possible with the noumenon, the thing-in-itself. Specifically, are right-wingers conservative? Or have the once overlapping circles in the Venn diagram parted from each other, like two celestial bodies following different paths after a long eclipse... 

Source:AEI columnist Jonah Goldberg. Now he's a real "Conservative".

From AEI

I completely agree with Jonah Goldberg here. If you look at The New Democrat's WordPress page, we never tag Donald Trump or anyone is his MAGA movement as "conservative", or that post as "conservative", or having anything to do with "conservatism". Why? 

The only thing that Donald Trump believes in conserving, (which is what Conservatives actually believe in) is himself. And he'll conserve his allies, but only to protect himself. And the only things, or people that his "MAGA" movement believes in conserving, is Donald Trump and themselves. Perhaps their way of life, but to do that they would amputate their hand because their thumb is sore. And what I mean by that is that they would: 

Destroy the Constitution

Destroy the rule of law

Give up their brains, their sense of decency, character, moral values, even their religion, to defend anything that Donald J. Trump, or any of his allies does or says. Nothing "conservative" about any of that. 

So if you really are a "Conservative", you believe in: 

The U.S. Constitution

The rule of law

Tradition

Moral values, decency, character

"Free markets", private enterprise, property rights, individual rights, limited government, fiscal responsibility. 

But if you are 'MAGA";

Free trade destroys jobs and the American way of life. 

All those individual rights that Conservatives talk about, they only belong to the "real Americans". Who are the "real Americans"? "MAGA", according to "MAGA". 

And the Constitution only protects "MAGA" (according to "MAGA") and only restricts what non-"MAGA" people can do when it comes to government. Or deficits don't matter when they're in charge. It's not big government when it's "MAGA" government. 

You could say that "fascist" or "nationalist" is a better way to describe "MAGA". The problem is, Fascists and Nationalists actually believe in things. They don't just make up their beliefs and policies as they go along, or to meet the current political circumstances. 

So what is "MAGA"? Well, it's not "Make America Great Again". They don't believe that. Maybe they want to make their own corner of the store, their own neck of the woods, their own playgrounds, (to use some country cliches that "MAGA" would be familiar with) "great again". 

To me, at this point the Mass Army of Gigantic Assholes, (that The New Democrat calls MAGA) is nothing more than Donald John Trump's personal, political cult, and his latest financial piggybank, that he uses to financially support himself, with all the merchandise and everything else that comes from this movement. It's just his latest Don The Con venture for himself, that 50 million (give or take) Americans have taken a long, national, ride, to support him.

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Kevin Williamson: Donald Trump is a Socialist

"Donald Trump is a socialist. 

When I write “socialist,” I do not use the word the way most right-leaning commentators use it, meaning: “bad.” If you want to get a feel for exactly how insipid and repetitious the contemporary online right is, do a search for “cackling socialist”—you don’t even need to include “Kamala Harris.” You’ll be hip-deep in stupid in two clicks. 

The thing about socialism is, it stays socialism—whether you like socialism or dislike it. It is a word that means something, and what it means isn’t every dumb thing you don’t like up to and including publicly funded sex-change operations for currently incarcerated illegal-immigrant felons. 

Socialism doesn’t mean high taxes or an expensive welfare state. You don’t need socialism to have a portfolio of social-welfare programs. Japan has an extensive social-welfare apparatus, and it is far from socialist. Singapore is super-capitalist, and it offers my favorite kind of welfare: direct money payments to poor people. Even the big-spending Scandinavians have long abandoned the experiments in socialism that wrecked their economies in the postwar decades: In the high-tax European countries that so many of our progressive friends profess to admire, the trend for a generation has been away from state enterprise and central planning and toward privatization, trade, and investment. American progressives say they envy European health care systems they generally know nothing about; their European counterparts sincerely envy an American entrepreneurial ecosystem that they understand all too well but remain unable to replicate. It’s a funny old world. 

Socialism does not mean government-funded education and retirement benefits and health care subsidies—those things are simply welfare, and there are better and worse ways to go about doing such things. Socialism means a centrally planned economy, one that is dominated by state action irrespective of whether it is dominated by formal state enterprises. Food stamps are welfare—socialism can mean state-owned farms and grocery stores, but more often it means a state apparatus that runs the farms and grocery stores as though it owned them, setting prices, negotiating the terms of employment, and determining how business is to be done—a little more of this crop, a little less of that commodity, etc. 

V.I. Lenin described his ideal society as one managed as though it were “one big factory.” The Leninist view, it is worth keeping in mind, was profoundly influenced by some of the big ideas and most influential and prestigious thinkers of late 19th-century and early 20th-century capitalism, especially the mania for “scientific management” associated with Frederick Winslow Taylor. 

Karl Marx was right about one thing: The means of production really do shape the intellectual landscape in profound ways, and the advent of standardized, interchangeable, mass-produced industrial parts made by power machinery—machines making other machines, an innovation that owes much to Samuel Colt—suggested a parallel vision of social organization: rational, standardized, uniform, efficient, subject to constant refinement and improvement under the benevolent gaze of engineers and scientists and professional managers. We Americans still talk about society that way, e.g., as though the job of schools were not to educate human beings but to “produce workers” or, better still, “produce workers custom-trained for employers’ needs.” 

The push toward cartels and monopolies in the age of the so-called robber barons was not exclusively rooted in self-interest—there also was a sincere belief that this was the way to make production more efficient, by eliminating wasteful duplication of work and products, “destructive competition,” and “overproduction,” sentiments that one can still hear today when Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump complain that American children have too many toys and school supplies or too many choices of deodorant. (I have been to Sanders and Trump campaign events, and I can attest that the splendiferous overproduction of deodorant is not a pressing American problem.) Lenin did not dream up the idea of society as “one big factory” on his own—American capitalists got there before him, swerving, as they still do, far outside of their lanes. 

Donald Trump does not know the first thing about how a factory operates, of course, and neither do most of the private-equity dorks and middling media figures with which he has stocked his administration, a veritable museum of minor Fox News figures. But he has been inside Macy’s, and even had a product-licensing deal with the department store once upon a time—ghastly shirts and ties with a predictable Gordon Gekko meets Liberace aesthetic. 

And so Trump’s version of quasi-monarchical Leninism is no surprise. It’s not one big factory: It’s one big Macy’s, with him leading the parade. 

We are a department store, and we set the price. I meet with the companies, and then I set a fair price, what I consider to be a fair price, and they can pay it, or they don’t have to pay it. They don’t have to do business with the United States, but I set a tariff on countries. … What I’m doing is I will, at a certain point in the not too distant future, I will set a fair price of tariffs for different countries. These are countries—some of them have made hundreds of billions of dollars, and some of them have made just a lot of money. Very few of them have made nothing because the United States was being ripped off by every, almost every country in the world, in the entire world. So I will set a price, and when I set the price, and I will set it fairly according to the statistics, and according to everything else.

… 

I am this giant store. It’s a giant, beautiful store, and everybody wants to go shopping there. And on behalf of the American people, I own the store, and I set prices, and I’ll say, if you want to shop here, this is what you have to pay.

President Trump’s vision of the U.S. economy in a global context, then, is that of a giant department store … run by a guy who doesn’t know how a department store works. 

If you ask the president what the U.S. balance of trade with Eritrea should be (and if you then explain to him that, unlike “Nambia,” Eritrea is a country), he’ll give you a dumb answer, of course. But the problem won’t be that the answer goes off in one direction or another but that he—and people like him—think there is an answer, and that it is the job of the president of the executive branch of the federal government to provide one and act on it—that the president can somehow determine this “according to the statistics and according to everything else.” 

It’s the “according to everything else” that gets you, of course. Never mind a big department store—take a simple grocery store, which typically has something like 40,000 to 50,000 unique products. If you want to determine what the “correct” price of each product should be, even within a fairly narrow range, and how much product “should” be stocked relative to current inventory, again within a fairly narrow range, throw in a few other important variables, and then consider all of the possible permutations, you end up with a number of possible distributions expressed by a number that has about 200,000 digits. If you took one second to consider each possibility—because you, a responsible central planner, are considering every option!—it would take more time to run the numbers for a single suburban grocery store than has passed since the Big Bang: All the time in the world, literally, wouldn’t be enough. 

Trump can’t put names to faces for half of the people who work directly for him and invents imaginary countries from time to time. But, somehow, he knows what imported bananas from country X absolutely should cost relative to those from country Y—because neither a sparrow nor a drop of rain in Ecuador falls without his knowledge. 

Yeah. 

Donald Trump’s vision of the economy is classic socialism. And if you want to say that what it really is is classic nationalism, fair enough: As Jonah Goldberg observes, at the level of practical economics nationalism and socialism are the same thing: nationalized industries are socialized industries, socialized industries are nationalized industries, nationalized medicine is socialized medicine, etc. Bernie Sanders thinks and speaks as a nationalist, as do left-wing writers at places such as Dissent magazine—see J.W. Mason’s “A Cautious Case for Economic Nationalism.” Barack Obama’s economic views were explicitly nationalist. Trump’s view of a man at a desk moving pieces of the economy around like rooks and pawns on a chessboard is what socialism is all about—though the old tyrants in Moscow at least had the humility to assume that a committee of experts would be necessary to manage the economy according to “scientific” principles or at least the guile to pretend that they believed it, whereas Trump apparently has swallowed his own silly god-man horsepucky, being, as he is, an ass of exceptional asininity. 

It’s as though somebody rewrote The Road to Serfdom as a third-tier Monty Python skit:

“These policies are going to make it more expensive to buy Christmas presents for my kids.” 

“Well, maybe your kids don’t need so many presents.”

“But wasn’t your plan supposed to make us all rich?”

“It will. Think of all the money you’ll save when you can’t afford to buy ANYTHING!”

The same people who used to laugh at the Russians and their five-year plans for wheat production now prostrate themselves before the Committee of One, confident in the knowledge that Comrade Trump knows where the Hallmark Channel should be filming its next Christmas-themed rom-com and what percentage of the subcomponents for the flux capacitors should be manufactured in Canada. But, no, we didn’t elect the cackling socialist. Trump, to my knowledge, doesn’t cackle. But he is economically more in Lenin’s camp than in Adam Smith’s and Milton Friedman’s and Ronald Reagan’s. He already imagines himself as a kind of royal figure—any guess who the serfs are going to be when we get to the end of this road?" 

Source:The Dispatch columnist Kevin Williamson.

From The Dispatch

From Bakari Sellers: 

"Bakari Sellers joins Abby Phillip and a panel of commentators on CNN NewsNight to dissect Donald Trump’s chaotic approach to the economy. From ration-style messaging to sweeping tariffs and unchecked control over pricing, Bakari challenges the idea that this is bold economic strategy—calling it incompetent, authoritarian, and deeply out of touch with working Americans. The group discusses whether Trump’s rhetoric aligns more with socialist or strongman regimes, the real-life impact of tariffs on everyday goods, and why conservative outlets like The Dispatch and National Review are raising red flags." 

Source:Bakari Sellers on Newsnight With Abby Phillip.

From Bakari Sellers

This is what I wrote about this on Monday: 

"So when MAGA's Dear Leader President Donald J. Trump, tells Meet The Press Anchor Kristen Welker: 

"I don't think a beautiful baby girl that's 11 years old needs to have 30 dolls. I think they can have three dolls or four dolls ... they don't need to have 250 pencils. They can have five."

The President doesn't even sound like a Republican. He sounds more like a Communist, because he's telling everyone what he personally thinks, every American needs to live well... at least on this issue. And that's what Joe Walsh was congratulating (I'm sure sarcastically) MAGA and I'm sure everyone else who voted for Donald Trump last year: "Congratulations! You voted for a Communist for President!"

If Americans wanted to spend more money for less, tax hikes would not just be popular in this country, but all the Socialists in America would be emptied out of their closets... all the Socialist closets would be emptied, because leftists would no longer fear about being outed as Socialists." 

From The New Democrat

This is what Kire Schneider wrote about this yesterday: 

"So there's this new anti-MAGA term going around on social media, that The New Democrat has been promoting as well: it's called MAGA Communism. Which I'm sure sounds like a luxury economy car, or a cheep yacht, small mansion, short sky scraper, skinny elephant, etc. But that's what MAGA is talking about and promoting now... 

"Yes, Communists believe in sacrifice, though the definition and context of "sacrifice" can vary within communist ideology. Communists often believe that individuals must sacrifice their personal interests for the collective good and the advancement of the revolution. This is often seen in the context of social and economic equality, where individual wealth and possessions might be seen as a hindrance to the collective goal of a communist society. 

Communists frequently call upon individuals to sacrifice personal comfort and even their lives for the cause of revolution and the establishment of a communist state. This idea is rooted in the belief that the existing capitalist system is unjust and requires a fundamental transformation.

Communists believe that the collective good, including the well-being of all members of society, should take precedence over individual desires and possessions. This can manifest as a willingness to work for the collective good, even if it means sacrificing personal time or resources.

Some communist ideologies, particularly those rooted in Marxism, advocate for the abolition of private property and the sharing of wealth. This can be interpreted as a call for individuals to sacrifice their own possessions for the common good.

Communists emphasize the importance of collective action and working together towards a common goal. This often requires individuals to set aside their individual interests and prioritize the needs of the group.

In essence, the concept of sacrifice is central to communist ideology, with the form and extent of sacrifice often depending on the specific political context and goals of the communist movement or state." 

You can find all these comments about communism by searching "Do Communists believe in sacrifice" on Google... 

From The New Democrat

One of Kevin Williamson's key points here is quoting President Trump himself about how he sees the American economy: 

"We are a department store, and we set the price. I meet with the companies, and then I set a fair price, what I consider to be a fair price, and they can pay it, or they don’t have to pay it. They don’t have to do business with the United States, but I set a tariff on countries. … What I’m doing is I will, at a certain point in the not too distant future, I will set a fair price of tariffs for different countries. These are countries—some of them have made hundreds of billions of dollars, and some of them have made just a lot of money. Very few of them have made nothing because the United States was being ripped off by every, almost every country in the world, in the entire world. So I will set a price, and when I set the price, and I will set it fairly according to the statistics, and according to everything else.

… 

I am this giant store. It’s a giant, beautiful store, and everybody wants to go shopping there. And on behalf of the American people, I own the store, and I set prices, and I’ll say, if you want to shop here, this is what you have to pay.

President Trump’s vision of the U.S. economy in a global context, then, is that of a giant department store … run by a guy who doesn’t know how a department store works...

And Kevin Williamson's quote from President Trump, matches up pretty well with Mr. Williamson's description of socialism: 

"Socialism does not mean government-funded education and retirement benefits and health care subsidies—those things are simply welfare, and there are better and worse ways to go about doing such things. Socialism means a centrally planned economy, one that is dominated by state action irrespective of whether it is dominated by formal state enterprises. Food stamps are welfare—socialism can mean state-owned farms and grocery stores, but more often it means a state apparatus that runs the farms and grocery stores as though it owned them, setting prices, negotiating the terms of employment, and determining how business is to be done—a little more of this crop, a little less of that commodity, etc. 

V.I. Lenin described his ideal society as one managed as though it were “one big factory.” The Leninist view, it is worth keeping in mind, was profoundly influenced by some of the big ideas and most influential and prestigious thinkers of late 19th-century and early 20th-century capitalism, especially the mania for “scientific management” associated with Frederick Winslow Taylor...

I could give you old cliche to talk about whether or not Donald Trump is a Socialist or not, by saying: "If it quacks, like a duck, walks like a duck.. but hopefully you want to hear something more interesting than that. I sure as hell want to say something even more original and interesting (ha, ha) than that. 

I think what's going on here, is the President and The White House know they're in trouble: 

House Republicans are freaking out about not just losing the House in 2026, but getting blown out and not having much of an opportunity about winning it back in 28. 

Senate Republicans are even worried that maybe even their majority will be at risk in 26, because of what House Republicans are worried about as well, which is who unpopular the President is, especially as it relates to his economic policy. 

And The White House is out of believable, positive spin, The Donald himself has even run out of decent lies in how to spin his bad economy, (I guess the Trump tariffs have even hurt TrumpLies.Inc) so they're desperate and are trying to come up with anything that they can think of at the time, to try to justify (because they can't spin) the weaknesses in the American economy right now. 

So Donald John Trump: the Manhattan real estate mogul, the self-proclaimed billionaire, the "king of reality TV", sounding like a Socialist, because he's talking about sacrifice and the need for Americans to cut back. When no one in his White House, including himself, would ever even consider cutting back anything that they enjoy in life, to benefit someone else who isn't doing as well... I don't think there's anything more to it then what I just laid out. Donald Trump is not a Socialist... but he's a desperate politician, to the point if sounding like a Socialist is what he needs to do to improve his political fortune, that's exactly what he will do. 

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