CNN Anchor Confronts Trump Econ Chief With Searing Slam From Right-Wing Pundit

CNN anchor John Berman confronted White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett on Wednesday with a blistering slam from conservative New York Times pundit Bret Stephens.

Stephens is among a raft of conservative figures who have torched President Donald Trump over the federal government’s purchase of 10% of Intel and similar such plans. Trump has lashed out at critics of the deal as “stupid people.”

On Wednesday’s edition of CNN News Central, Berman read off a sampling of Stephens’s piece — entitled “Donald Trump’s Assault on Capitalism” — which Hassett called “a real overreaction”:

JOHN BERMAN: You know what the criticism is of all of this, right? I mean, we’ve heard from people on the right who say, this isn’t conservative, this is anathema to conservative principles.

Bret Stevens, I could have picked a number of editorials or op-eds. Bret Stevens wrote this morning, “American conservatism under President Trump is changing into something unrecognizable, at least to those of us silly us who thought the movement had guiding principles beyond getting, wielding, and abusing power.

Umpteenth case in point, the federal government becoming an equity partner. Shareholder in Intel.

If a Democratic president did this, Republicans would call it political shakedown, an assault on capitalism, a loser for taxpayers. They’d be right.”

TRUMP NEC DIRECTOR KEVIN HASSETT: Yeah, that’s a real overreaction.

So the bottom line is that if Intel doesn’t succeed– and we need Intel to succeed for national security reasons– then equity has no value.

The bottom line, is every now and then, if there’s a national security matter and the government is doing something to try to, for example, get a COVID vaccine, throwing tons and tons of money at companies in case they get a COVID vaccine.

Then helping reduce the cost of that program by letting shareholders be taxpayers is something that makes a great deal of sense.

And it’s certainly not socialism because in a socialist country what happens is that a government owns the capital and orders it around and makes five-year plans to say what we’re going to do.

These are publicly traded companies that are getting some help from the government because we need our chip industry to be there in case of a national emergency and we’re putting some equity into it as a whole.

JOHN BERMAN: It remains to be seen how much involvement the government takes with some of these companies.

Watch above via CNN News Central.