Some perhaps believe that he’ll be business-as-usual, a transactional politician who plays nicely in the D.C. lobbying ecosystem despite his public bluster. They’re wrong, of course. Trump and Steve Bannon, in particular, see the business class as the enemy. They see corporate CEOs as either peers or foes, and the peers fall under the Machiavellian “enemies closer” rule. Those confident they can buy, flatter, or avoid Trump are playing a game, unlike anything America’s corporate world has seen before.
They’re not reading Trump’s history. Once Trump has “won” a feud (or an election) the normal rules of politics would be to return to the status quo ante. Not Trump. He continues to attack, belittle, and torture his victims long after there’s any political utility to it. It will be the same with his thug populism and attacks on American businesses. The fight won’t be over; capitulation isn’t enough. He demands abject humiliation. (Take a look at the dead eyes of Mitt Romney during this secretary of State charade and tell me he hasn’t suffered enough.)
This behavior isn’t without precedent in the hands of authoritarians. In the early days of Vladimir Putin’s reign, a number of billionaire oligarchs like Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev of the massive Yukos oil concern crossed the Russian strongman. Putin first turned the Russian media and propaganda machine against the men, then the power of the Russian courts, which—handily enough—he controlled. At first, this was greeted as a populist new leader draining the swamp (where have I heard that lately?) and teaching the hated oligarch class a stiff lesson.
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