I'd like to second @ed3d.net question and ask what exactly is the rationale for this from the administrations perspective. What influence exactly does the government gain from non-voting shares like this that they cant already have by virtue of being the fucking federal government.
This is the way it’s being presented to the public but in Trumps words from last week “I told intel to pay us 10% of their company”. It kind of just sounds like extortion.
The rationale is that Donald Trump is the Physical Embodiment of the State
Like, Donald Trump is an idiot and has shit business sense beyond extorting ppl, I get that, but what is the story the admin is telling itself & the public about why this is useful for the country beyond "Donald Trump is both greedy & dim so doing this makes him feel even more important"
Everything really comes back to "these guys are dumb and don't know what they are doing" along with such brilliant plans like "tariffs are free money"
They give them to patrons to build their oligarchy.
They literally aren't, is the thing. The admin's had a strong Imperial Mode where their only argument is "Trump's the President and SCOTUS hasn't explicitly said this is illegal for the President to do yet" from Day One.
As of the past month they've just given up on trying to make other arguments on like 90% of issues, it's just "He's the President until 2028, cope more, libtards!" Just a total rejection of the value of persuasion, something even dictators understand.
I wonder if they see acquiring a $10B stake in intel as “intel gave us $10B”, in the same way they see tariffs as “china paying us for trade”, it isn’t true and doesn’t make sense but it would explain the behavior
I think it’s this more than anything. Everything is optics for that crowd of losers and they have their very own, very weird set of optics that they really believe everyone else shares, I think?
update: i think i'm right bsky.app/profile/kair...