Chris Hayes had fellow MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle as a guest on Wednesday’s episode of “All In,” where at one point the two of them discussed how in recent weeks several CEOs from major companies have indicated they’d be fine with Donald Trump winning a second term in November.
Ruhle had a simple explanation for why, despite everything, they would be. First, “they don’t want to be a target” of right-wing harassment campaigns the same way Disney has been. But, “they’re also egotistical, and they like to be called,” she added.
The overarching topic of discussion was the economy under Joe Biden, which as Hayes explained at length is by the vast majority of measures basically excellent. At the same time, Hayes talked about how the conversation about the economy under Biden has for the last three years been uniformly negative — until this year. And now, he noted, Republicans are trying to take credit for it despite not having been in charge of the government since January 2021.
Ruhle dinged the Biden administration for how it communicates with the public on this matter.
“They’ve got all this great economic data, they need to do a better job messaging,” Ruhle said. “Trump does such a great job lying about it and convincing people. Democrats need to do a better job talking about it.”
At this, she and Hayes discussed the specific fact that U.S. oil production is at an all-time high, speculating that the Biden administration isn’t talking about that because “they don’t want to anger” the left wing of the Democratic Party.
“Democrats should talk about a lot of economic wins; they’re often concerned about the people who are left out. And I get that, but they have got to start running a victory lap because, word about those people left out, they’re going to be really left out if Trump wins.”
Further into the conversation, Ruhle made her point about CEOs.
“After Davos, my head was spinning,” she said. “You kept hearing more and more CEOs kind of, like, open to this idea of Trump, and I’m mad dialing people, like, is this for real? And I learned two things: They have to play ball, because there’s no CEO of a Fortune 500 company out there right now who wants to be the next Bob Iger, CEO of Disney with a politician gunning for them. And they know there’s the possibility it could be Trump and they don’t want to be a target.”
Ruhle was of course referring to Disney’s ongoing battle with the state of Florida, which actually began under previous CEO Bob Chapek, who was fired in 2022.
“But they’re also egotistical, and they like to be called,” Ruhle continued. “And President Biden, while he has lots of winning policies, does not parade CEOs around the world.”
“I’m not saying that he should,” Ruhle said. But, she told Hayes she spoke to one such CEO, who “gave me this line that I thought was really interesting … He said to me, you can tell a person’s priorities based on their schedule. Joe Biden doesn’t call us. I’m not saying that he should, by the way, but I’m telling you, that’s the situation.”
You can watch the whole segment in the video at the top of the page.
