Donald Trump indicted the Biden-Harris economy when making his case to voters; and it proved to be a winning message. Now it’s time to deliver. President Trump should first seek to undo the damage caused by the Biden administration’s trustbusters in light of disturbing new revelations that Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) allegedly weaponized the media to harm American companies.
Contrary to Biden’s progressive agenda, his administration made few notable changes to tax policy, spending policy, or monetary policy. Where they did inflict serious harm was the regulatory side – where his administration undertook significant regulatory actions through the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Department of Justice (DOJ) to crack down on any business deemed “too big.”
The Biden-Harris actions included cracking down on meat processors, blocking airline mergers, and demanding price controls on gas and groceries. They did so while delivering lawsuits to break up key players in our entertainment, finance, and technology space including Live Nation, Visa, and Google, to name just a few.
Such attacks on America’s businesses across the board raises concerns – still warranting investigation – these actions may have been undertaken in coordination with prominent liberal outside groups who appear in White House visitor logs, and had aggressively pushed their networks to support the Biden breakup of big business.
These concerns grew more serious in recent weeks when Senators Mitch McConnell and Tom Cotton, among others, penned a letter to the FTC and DOJ inspectors general, inquiring about a disturbing pattern of leaks that appears to have emerged from their respective offices. The letter noted:
“Since 2023, Bloomberg News has broken the news in at least twelve instances that DOJ or FTC was “preparing” or “poised” to take legal action before a lawsuit was filed. Indeed, the same journalist reported on eleven of these cases. This pattern strongly suggests that certain officials at DOJ and FTC are intentionally publicizing legal action days or weeks before filing. These leaks result in negative headlines about the administration’s targets while the targeted companies have no way to respond, as they haven’t yet seen the potential lawsuits. Both DOJ and FTC have ethics rules that prohibit leaking civil cases before the cases are filed.”
The lawsuits Bloomberg appears to have received advanced notice of included those to break up Visa, Google, and Live Nation – all of which had been made targets of progressive outside groups.
Senator McConnell’s letter warns that such leaks are illegal. Understandably so, as it suggests the Biden administration sought to chill or intimidate those they were preparing to litigate against. Was its purpose to pressure businesses to accept any redress the government deems fit — including outright breaking up their company? Rather than hold these industry leaders as innocent until proven guilty, Biden appears to have sought a trial by media.
To paraphrase the McConnell letter’s conclusion, these leaks do not appear to be the first time the Biden administration weaponized the administrative state against political opponents and critics. The FTC similarly targeted Elon Musk and Twitter for allegedly not doing enough to censor conservative free speech.
Now Donald Trump is once again a President-Elect and Elon Musk is poised to lead a commission tasked with eliminating redundancy and rolling back bureaucratic “mission creep” to statutory limits. It is frequently cited by Trump’s supporters as one of the policies they are most enthused about. For that effort to succeed, it cannot overlook the economic damage the Biden-Harris trustbusters inflicted.
Musk intuitively seems to understand this. During his latest appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast, Musk likened the current business climate to attempting to play a football game with countless referees dominating the field. One of the clearest examples of this bureaucratically is how Biden’s FTC and DOJ have gone beyond both statutory authority – as well as historical precedent – to push for corporate breakups.
Let’s hope President Trump and Elon Musk will clear the decks concerning the Biden-Harris trustbusters, and deliver the economic growth that won them the election.
