Besides lifelong friendships and political views, one of the things that Donald Trump shares with Hillary Rodham Clinton and Harry Reid is a loathing for Charles and David Koch, the libertarian political activists who loom so large in the imagination of the Left. Trump, aware that his political stances — against free trade, against free enterprise, against property rights, against free speech, in favor of the ghastly totalitarians in Beijing — are likely to put him at odds with the Koch brothers, did what he always does: He attempted to substitute an insult for an insight.
In this case, Trump sneered that the Koch brothers are “in big financial trouble.” Coming from Trump, a habitually bankrupt real-estate heir, this is kind of hilarious. Charles and David Koch are worth nearly $90 billion between the two of them; Koch Industries is, depending on the year, either the largest or the second-largest privately held firm in the United States. (Hello, Cargill!) Unlike Trump, who makes his money renting his name to manufacturers of low-end consumer goods and playing a businessman on television, Koch Industries actually makes things: food, fuel, fiber, chemicals, minerals, industrial products, and the stuff that makes your car go forward.
Charles and David Koch could buy and sell Donald Trump and his empire of kitsch out of their pocket change. So could Michael Bloomberg, whose $37.2 billion dwarfs even Trump’s hilariously inflated account of his own wealth — a fact that will be of some interest to the “Vote for Me Because I’m Rich” candidate should Bloomberg, who doesn’t usually drive his businesses into bankruptcy, get into the race.
Donald Trump insists that he should be taken seriously as a presidential candidate because he “built a great company,” as he puts it. Charles and David Koch built a much greater company. So did Michael Bloomberg. Perhaps we should take their advice, not that of the founder of Trump University, that dopey tangerine from The Apprentice, the habitually bankrupt casino fumbler, etc.