I'm John Batchelor. I welcome my colleague and friend, Veronique DiRigee, of the Mercatus

Center at George Mason University, writing most recently of,

The businessman comes to Washington, and what is to be done.

Veronique, a very good evening to you.

The example is the Trump administration made up of bottom-line thinkers.

I spent more than 50 years in Manhattan, and I learned that in Manhattan,

you think bottom line. It's not what you've done today. It's what you're going to do for me

tomorrow. And if you're going to make me money, that's why I keep you around. If you're not

going to make me money, see you. That's Manhattan. When I come to Washington, that doesn't

make any sense. And I never figured out Washington

other than that status is everything. When businessmen come to Washington and when these

businessmen come to Washington, what did they see? How have they interpreted it for the Trump

administration? Good evening to you. Good evening, John. So this is one of the

strangest, and I guess we're expected development of the second administration is all these

tech investors, innovators, former Wall Street people, very successful private sector people, whether it's private equity

or whether it's banking, whether it's like, who come to Washington and think that somehow

their success in the private sector and in finance in particular is going to actually

make it possible for them to take government

money and invest it for the government on behalf of taxpayers and just make money for the,

for the for taxpayers. There's this kind of, like, behavior that somehow, you know, the U.S. now is a business, you know,

like the administration is taking shares in companies. They have a line of money to invest.

They're going to take their tariff revenue and invest it in sovereign wealth fund.

...