To contextualize a chaotic first 10 days for the federal government in President Donald Trump’s second term, some have pointed to Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter. The comparison is apt: The email offering federal workers “deferred resignations” shared a title (“Fork in the Road”) with a November 2022 email Musk sent Twitter employees demanding their loyalty or their resignations. But there’s a broader parallel to consider: The Trump administration is taking a “vulture capitalist” approach to government.
If the phrase “vulture capitalist” sounds faintly familiar, that’s because it was a term used in the 2012 Republican presidential primary. Front-runner Mitt Romney came under attack from fellow Republicans for his time as founder and CEO of Bain Capital, one of the world’s biggest private equity firms. Under Romney, Bain helped lead an explosion in private equity firms buying out businesses and restructuring them by slashing jobs and cutting costs. Or as Newt Gingrich, who was running for the Republican nomination, put it: Bain’s executives “loot companies, leave behind broken families, broken towns, people on unemployment.”
We know what usually comes next in the business world: The new owners’ “efficiencies” don’t fix anything.
Under Trump, we are now seeing similar looting underway, but on a far larger scale. The first step in the process took place last year: Wealthy investors (in this case, campaign donors) buy a distressed company (the U.S. government). Three billionaire donors — Musk, Timothy Mellon and Miriam Adelson — by themselves gave almost as much money to Trump as presidential candidate Kamala Harris received from all her small donors combined.
Now, we are in the second phase, where the new owners push a flurry of steep cuts — except to their compensation. In addition to the push for so-called deferred resignations, the new administration and congressional Republicans are hunting for ways to slash government spending — including up to $900 billion from Medicaid alone — to pay for more tax cuts for the wealthy.
While the details of that bill are hashed out, Trump has doubled down on his plan to impose massive new tariffs that would hit low- and middle-income Americans the hardest. He reversed Biden-era efforts to lower prescription drug prices for Medicare and Medicaid enrollees. He ordered an evaluation of a “national digital asset stockpile,” moving closer to a federal bitcoin reserve that would massively benefit his major crypto donors. And, just for good measure, he fired 18 inspectors general, since why would looters want anyone but their own people minding the store?
Of course, we know what usually comes next in the business world: The new owners’ “efficiencies” don’t fix anything. Rather, they reduce the quality of the product and/or service, leading the company’s value to crater (Twitter, now known as X, has declined between 70% and 80% in value since Musk bought it). To make up shortfalls, executives cut even further, creating a doom loop until the company declares bankruptcy. And the people who drove the company into the ground walk away with their inflated fees and golden parachutes. They move on to prey on more workers, while demanding the rest of the country treat their carelessness as genius.
Encouragingly, the list of Democrats espousing these attacks spans the party’s ideological spectrum.
But as the 2012 election showed, in politics we can write a different ending to this story. President Barack Obama made the “vulture capitalist” attacks central to his campaign. One Obama super PAC even cut an ad composed entirely of other Republicans attacking Romney’s record at Bain. The GOP nominee was never able to escape the negative associations with Bain, and Obama won re-election comfortably.
Since the 2024 election, some Democrats have argued that the party should ditch arguments about Trump’s threats to democratic governance and focus on “kitchen table” issues. But as the backlash to the president’s (now-rescinded) funding freeze showed, Democrats don’t have to choose between these arguments. They can argue that Trump is asserting powers he doesn’t have to help billionaires no one voted for to hurt the rest of us.
Encouragingly, the list of Democrats espousing these attacks spans the party’s ideological spectrum. On Saturday, Rep. Pat Ryan, D-N.Y., who won a purple district by 14 points, wrote, “Trump’s first week was great if you’re a mega-billionaire or Oath Keeper.” The next day, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, also D-N.Y., said Trump was “lining the pockets of himself and the billionaire class.” The more Democrats who espouse these messages, the better.
As for translating rhetoric into action, Democratic state attorneys general are already filing lawsuits. But there’s more that can be done, especially in the Senate. The strategy is simple: no votes for the looting of America. That means no courteous bipartisanship for Cabinet appointees who will kneecap government. No polite negotiations over giveaways to the wealthy few. And no niceties for a White House that’s all too happy to send this country to the junkyard.
In his farewell address as president, Joe Biden issued an overdue warning about “the dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a very few ultrawealthy people, and the dangerous consequences if their abuse of power is left unchecked.” Trump and the GOP are doing everything they can to cement that dark world order. Only disciplined, united opposition can stop them.
