In the most brazen attempt at co-opting a political movement in, perhaps, world history, the New York Post would have MAGA-land believe that none other than BlackRock CEO Larry Fink is their knight in shining armor, the champion of all things America First.
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Via New York Post (emphasis added):
Larry Fink: MAGA Hero
Yes, you read that right. The BlackRock CEO fat cat the political right had loved to hate has suddenly become the darling of the MAGA movement...
After being the bane of conservatives everywhere for years, largely for his support of lefty Environmental Social Governance investing, Mr. ESG has become Mr. MAGA in the eyes of the Republican faithful. GOP critics, who tried to cancel BlackRock contracts in Red State America, are looking to back down....
He and the now-president remain close, an important plus in their Panama Canal dealings. Recall, it was Trump during his first term, meeting with bankers at the White House, who spotted Fink and said “Larry did a great job for me. He managed a lot of my money. I have to tell you, he got me great returns.”
Trump is the kind of guy that tosses out compliments like that to business leaders from whom he thinks he can extract future favors or deals. He’s always been that guy, since the real estate days in New York. Extracting from the quote some undying devotion to Fink is, to put it mildly, a stretch.
I looked and looked in vain for the proof for the claim that Fink is now a MAGA superstar, aside from a nice word once spoken years ago by Trump. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, after all. No such evidence was ever presented.
Fink deserves MAGA accolades, according to the Post, “following his $22.8 billion purchase of ports from Hong Kong-based CK Hutchison, including, very importantly, two in the Panama Canal zone”:
The deal is big in size and significance since those Panama Canal ports are now no longer run by a Hong Kong company and under Chinese control; they are now in the hands of a US corporation*, something President Trump demanded upon taking office just weeks ago. “China is operating the Panama Canal. And we didn’t give it to China,” the president said in his inaugural address, no less. “We gave it to Panama, and we’re taking it back.”...
The Panama Canal connection is key, given its importance to the US economy and trade. The shipping lane was created around the turn of the last century by the US government; it slices through the five-mile isthmus to connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. You didn’t have to go around South America to get to China and Japan, just through the Panama Canal.
The US controlled the canal until 1977 when it turned it over to the government of Panama, and ever since, the relationship between the countries has been fraught. Panama was run by a drug trafficker, Gen. Manuel Noriega, whom in 1990 the US military arrested after a land invasion.
More recently, the Panama tension surrounded the Chinese, increasingly our global nemesis, with canal access a means to exert its economic and military power.
*The mere fact that the Panama Canal is now under the control of multinational corporation BlackRock does not make it “American.” BlackRock, although nominally American, is not run for the sake of American national interest. In fact, multinational nature of BlackRock is the major source of MAGA’s antipathy toward it and Larry Fink in the first place, which apparently has gone right over this New York Post ditz’s head.
Larry Fink is the guy — if there can be said to be one guy — who engineered the global Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) scam. He’s still a key player in the World Economic Forum, as one would expect the leader of the single largest investment firm worldwide to be.
Larry Fink, for the record, chameleon that he is, was singing a wildly different political tune right up until it became obvious to anyone watching that Trump was likely to win the November 2024 election.Via Fox Business, 2023 (emphasis added):
Larry Fink, CEO of investment firm BlackRock, is facing backlash over a 2017 comment admitting his company would “force behaviors” on inclusion efforts, amid a rise in pushback against companies making environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) investments on behalf of everyday Americans.
While sitting alongside former AmEx CEO Kenneth I. Chenault in a resurfaced 2017 New York Times interview, Fink revealed BlackRock would “force behaviors” on “gender or race” and threatened impacts to compensation if diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) standards weren’t met.
