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Dear Leader dissatisfied with the fealty of his corporate subjects




President Donald Trump is doing so much for fossil fuel companies, what with
retooling the whole of the energy mix to explicitly block renewables in favor
of extraction, but apparently Chevron has not been expressing enough gratitude
to Trump about it.

So, in a totally normal and not at all problematic move, Trump went on his
personal for-profit social media network to yell about how Chevron’s CEO, Mike
Wirth, didn’t call out how amazing and precious and perfect Trump’s policies
are when Wirth appeared on Fox Business to tout how Chevron is going
gangbusters these days.

Trump whined that what Wirth “conveniently forgot to mention is that, without
the genius foresight, strength, and stability, of the TRUMP Administration, the
Oil Industry, and our Country itself, would be DEAD!”

Those ingrates! How dare they not attribute all their success to Donald Trump
personally! Though, to be fair, Chevron could send Trump a little thank-you
note for screwing up his war in Iran so monumentally that oil prices are going
to stay stratospheric for forever because the Strait of Hormuz remains mostly
blocked, guaranteeing high gas prices all around.

Trump is mad at Chevron specifically because they also stand to make money,
should he deign to allow them to do so, from his misadventures in Venezuela.
Chevron is the only American oil company operating there, and Wirth has spent
years trying to keep Venezuela open for oil extraction, hobgoblinizing about
how if we wouldn’t do it, China would.

Now, Chevron doesn’t even have the grace to say thank you that Trump deposed
President Nicolas Maduro for their benefit, grumbles Trump: “They threw Mike
and Chevron out of Venezuela, but now their [SIC], far bigger and stronger than
ever before, expecting to make a fortune!”

Hmm. Maybe Chevron happened to notice that since Trump took over Venezuela,
functionally, the administration has indeed sold a bunch of that country’s oil
and collected $13 billion for doing it. That amount is just, per Secretary of
State Marco Rubio, sitting in a Citibank account somewhere, because sure, why
not.





 

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Perhaps Chevron will be able to get in Trump’s good graces again if they
shower him with cash, which is what companies do on the regular, in the open,
all the time now.

Last week, the Wall Street Journal ran a huge piece on Trump’s favorite
griftraiser, Meredith O’Rourke, who we learned last year was instrumental in
getting cash for Trump’s big bribe palace ballroom, shaking down companies who
want Trump’s attention and approval.

The Journal piece really brought home how much the White House is openly for
sale: “Trump asks O’Rourke which companies and donors have cut checks and which
haven’t, and for how much. He often asks her to make much larger financial
requests than she was planning—for some donors the ask is $5 million, for
others it is $50 million.”

That seems bad, right? Worse, in some calls, O’Rourke apparently really leans
into the whole mob boss protection racket thing Trump has going on here,
telling donors “the boss wants this money.”

Despite the story being a five-alarm fire of impeachable offenses, the
Journal can’t quite commit, pretending to take at face value that having the
president shake down corporations to fund his personal projects is just fine:
“No laws prohibit presidents from raising unlimited sums of money for
nonprofits, like the ones used for the ballroom and his presidential library,
his super PAC or political issue committees.”

Pretending that giving money to the bribe palace ballroom or settling sham
lawsuits with eight-figure bribes for the never-to-be presidential library is
the same as raising money for a PAC is ridiculous, and the Wall Street Journal
knows it.

Both the Journal story and Trump’s sadness that Chevron is such an ingrate
highlight that no amount of money, no fealty, no sucking up is ever enough for
Trump.

Look at ABC, which was so eager to bend the knee they didn’t even wait for
Trump to take office before “settling” a sham defamation lawsuit he had brought
in his personal capacity while not even in office. Paying $15 million has not
protected them one bit from being in Trump’s crosshairs constantly.

In recent weeks, Trump has threatened to sue them over their entirely
accurate reporting on the Reflecting Pool debacle. At the same time, Federal
Communications Commission Chair and top Trump toady Brendan Carr is using the
might of the government to threaten ABC’s local station broadcast licenses if
the network doesn’t fall in line and only report Dear Leader Approved News.

That’s the problem with a mob boss and a protection racket. The boss always
wants this money and always wants you to know he holds your company’s fate in
his hands. Chevron better make nice to the most corrupt president imaginable if
it wants to continue stacking its billions.




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