On today’s show, Allen Ruff speaks with David McNally about the first few months of the Trump Presidency. They talk about Trump’s real estate plans for Gaza, the attacks on universities, Tesla Takedown, and the model organizing of Ella Baker.

McNally has written about the “grifter capitalist,” a new iteration of the classic American figure of the con man. Grifter capitalists like Donald Trump tend to be connected with real estate and finance; they’re wheelers and dealers, self-promoters, and they don’t actually understand the modern global economy, says McNally. 

For instance, Trump’s tariff offensive is inappropriate to the reality that most imports to the US are “intra-company transfers” of US multinational corporations. And because the grifter capitalists don’t understand the global economy, there are more fault lines in the Trump presidency than we realize. 

McNally will be part of a national day of action on April 17 organized by the American Association of University Professors.

David McNally is a radical socialist activist and award-winning scholar. Authoring over 60 research manuscripts, seven books, and countless public lectures and articles, he currently holds the Cullen Distinguished Professorship of History & Business at the University of Houston, having recently moved from Toronto, where he taught and organized at York University for over thirty years.

Featured image of a protest sign at a Tesla Takeover event in Brooklyn via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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