Corporate Monopolies and Backroom Deals During Trump's 1st Term

I haven't heard the term antitrust, in nearly ~25 years - when it was in vogue and there was a movie, by the same name.

Since then, however, the guard-rails have been systematically removed. We truly live in an age of crony capitalism, where pay-to-win within policy and government is the norm. Just look at the Trump Gold Card, or TrumpRx.gov, for instance. Yes... you've read that right: TrumpRx.gov. This means that Trump is using the federal .gov Top Level Domain, which is reserved for governmental use. This obviously goes against the emoluments clause, of a president to not make money off of their position as an appointed federal official.

And yet, Trump has for years been saying, he's going to reduce the cost of prescription drugs. Now he has teed-up for 2028, to issue a blanket 100% tariff for all imported medication (which is nearly all of it). Do you see where I'm going with this?

Weakening Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security and all entitlement programs, opens up the possibility of privatizing all of these socialist programs. Similarly, the war in Iran isn't so much about the story and what he and his regime has to say about it; instead, it has more has to do with oil and how he - much like Venezuela, can control it.

This should be alarming to Americans for a litany of reasons. Not only do we have a government captured: save for individual state's autonomy, lower courts, we the people choosing to not offer our inferred consent, and selectively the actions of military members and them upholding their oath to the constitution. They have SCOTUS, the DOJ, congressional majority, and the records on all of us - exfiltrated from the IRS, thanks to Elon. Likewise, this administration probably intends on using this same information, along with the ballots in 4/5 swing states, to interfere in the upcoming 2026 mid-terms. Additionally, we already know that the Trump-regime previously worked with Cambridge Analytica, in the digital-space to influence voting behavior in the 2016 presidential election. Moreover, Elon assisted between obtaining access to the voting tabulation computers, "helped individuals in swing states register to vote" while harvesting PII, and contributed some 250M+ in ads and canvasing to net a win for Trump in the 2024 election. Collectively, you must recognize when presidential elections are tight races. In the past 5 presidential elections, the difference came down to in 2008 9.5M vote difference (7.2%) and 2.28M in 2024 (1.5%) of difference in votes between winner and loser in these presidential runoffs.

That's not even beginning to mention the litany of 20+ other gambits they are actively pursuing, no one is talking about, and we're only 4 months away from the 2026-midterms. I hope to elucidate and raise awareness to the public that unfortunately, ever since the SCOTUS decision on Citizens United (2010), we have lost our democracy to to the ultra-wealthy. They have changed the rules, and ever since FDR taxed the rich upwards of 95% - which lead to the rise of the middle class, post WWII - the ultra-wealthy "old money" and "new money" have been fighting viciously to claw it back. Likewise, this is also why the wage gap decoupled from productivity between 1973-1979, and wages have not remained in-line to the associated reward of "trickle down economics". Now we live in an age of "siphon up" economics, especially with monopolies Blackrock. This better explains why the wealthy and those after becoming wealthy, often set their sights on the government, through: governmental contracts, and shape governmental policy in their favor - avoiding paying taxes and leaving the bill to hard-working Americans. Likewise, because of the lack of taxation, we are the ones subsidizing the roads (commerce), the electrical grid (data centers), and a myriad of other infrastructure.

Finally, when it does come to taxation and Trump's supposed "tax breaks" for hard-working Americans, in 2017 - while the law did offer some temporary relief for a 5 year period to Americans, lowering the corporate taxation was what the law was really about. Additionally, the more recent cuts to taxation likewise disproportionately benefitted the rich, yet again - with only offering a meager relief of "no taxation on tips". Thus, a rekurrent pattern emerges.