'Return on investment': Robert Reich explains why Trump 2.0 will make billionaires even richer

17 December 2024

During the United States' 2024 presidential race, Donald Trump repeatedly attacked President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris (the Democratic nominee) on the economy and blamed their policies for inflation. And that messaging worked: Trump narrowly defeated Harris, winning the popular vote by roughly 1.5 percent and picking up 312 electoral votes compared to Harris' 226 (according to the Cook Political Report).

But Trump's critics have been arguing that for someone who campaigned on making life easier for the working class, the president-elect is proposing a high number of billionaires for his incoming administration — including Tesla/SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who would lead a new agency called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) along with MAGA businessman Vivek Ramaswamy.

One of those critics is liberal economist Robert Reich, who served as secretary of labor in the Clinton Administration.

During a Tuesday, December 16 appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," Reich told hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, "I think the biggest problem with having so many billionaires at the top of government is that billionaires don't exactly know how normal people live. But secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the way people get to the top of the Trump Administration is by providing a lot of money. I mean, Elon Musk contributed — the latest data I've seen say that Elon Musk contributed something in the order of $277 million to getting Trump elected. And…. he has increased his net worth by $170 billion since the Trump election."

Reich continued, "Now, that's a pretty good return on investment. And the reason that is such a high return on investment — and a high return from many of the other billionaires and multimillionaires in the Trump Administration — is that they are no longer, and the markets assume they're no longer, going to have to be worried about as many regulations, as many lawsuits."

Reich noted what Justice Louis Brandeis, who served on the U.S. Supreme Court from 1916-1939, had to say about wealth inequality.

The former labor secretary told Scarborough and Brzezinski, "He was reputed to have said, 'Look, America has a choice. We can have great wealth in the hands of a few people, or we could have a democracy. But we can't have both.'"

Reich argued that if Musk, with DOGE, succeeds in getting "$2 trillion cut from the federal budget," the cuts will come from programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

"Those are the big places where you go," Reich told Scarborough and Brzezinski. "There is no other place. Of if you want to get rid of regulations, you try to get rid of health and safety and environmental regulations. Those are the ones that you, as a billionaire ,are really up against in terms of your business. But those same regulations may be extraordinarily important to the average working person in America, because they protect that average working person."

Watch the full video below or at this link.

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