In part 2 of Paul Jay’s discussion with Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, they examine Trump’s push for a new missile defense system—a step toward the weaponization of space that heightens the…
This article was originally published on February 24, 2025, on CounterPunch. Jeffrey Sommers explores how Elon Musk could become the world’s first trillionaire through the “Mother of All Privatizations” (MOAP). He traces Musk’s rise from under $1 billion in 2011 to over half a trillion during Trump’s presidency, fueled by post-2008 policies and COVID-19 stimulus. Reaching a trillion would require massive public-to-private wealth transfers—privatizing Social Security and Medicare, tax cuts for the rich, increased government funding for Musk’s firms, and public sector cuts. Sommers sees this as the final dismantling of the New Deal.
Is the U.S. heading toward a Mussolini-style corporate fascism? Colonel Larry Wilkerson joins Paul Jay to expose the power struggle shaping America’s future. From Trump’s influence to billionaires pushing for a CEO-run government, they break down the real coup happening in plain sight.
Trump’s inaugural speech avoided direct war rhetoric with China but signaled dangerous trends: a growing alliance between corporate elites and government, imperialist ambitions, climate denial, and authoritarian overreach. With tech CEOs at the forefront and Musk in a key government role, the fusion of state and corporate power mirrors Mussolini-style corporatism. From threats to seize the Panama Canal to deploying emergency powers domestically, Trump’s vision risks U.S. democracy and global stability. This analysis unpacks the implications of a presidency rooted in power, profit, and peril.
In part two, Petra Molnar, anthropologist and human rights lawyer, speaks about the dangers of high-risk AI systems and state efforts to sabotage its regulation, as seen in the recent watering down of the European Union’s AI Act. Molnar explains how Israeli and U.S. surveillance tech firms market their drone technology and other AI products as “solutions” to state “problems.” The lucrative border and surveillance tech sector has grown exponentially as a result of governments deploying these technologies to experiment on the world’s most marginalized populations – from Palestinians in Gaza to migrants at the U.S. and EU’s deadliest land and sea borders.
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s promise to deport millions of people draws attention to longstanding practices of tracking and intercepting migrants using artificial intelligence and high-risk surveillance technologies. Petra Molnar, human rights lawyer and anthropologist, underscores how border surveillance tech firms drive and profit from the U.S., Canada, and the European Union’s criminal migration policy agenda. Yet the application of these insidious technologies, largely developed by Israeli tech firms and billionaire Peter Thiel’s Palantir, is not limited to borderlands and has dystopian human rights impacts in everyday life.
In part two, journalist Jonathan M. Katz discusses the financial elite and fascist sympathizers who were conspiring to undo FDR’s economic reforms in what is known as the foiled Business Plot of 1933. Retired U.S. Marine General Smedley Butler, who outed the coup plotters in Special House committee hearings in 1934, subsequently published War is a Racket, a pamphlet critiquing the monied interests behind America’s imperial war machine. Katz describes Butler’s transformation from “racketeer for capitalism” to anti-war critic and underscores the political salience of working-class issues in the Great Depression’s aftermath, as demonstrated in the Bonus March of 1932 and in FDR’s New Deal.
Col. Lawrence Wilkerson and Paul Jay analyze Trump’s 2024 victory, attributing Harris’s failure in part to a campaign that avoided progressive policies that would lower the cost of living –…
Above is our short documentary film, “Trump’s Unholy Alliance.” Generous individual donors funded it. It is not associated or aligned with the Democratic Party. It is released for educational purposes because mainstream media mostly ignores these critical issues. We are not suggesting how, or even if, you should vote.
Paul Jay is a veteran independent journalist and filmmaker. He is best known for his film “Hitman Hart, wrestling with shadows,” which Jordan B. Peterson called “one of the best documentaries about anything I have ever seen.” Terry Bollea (Hulk Hogan) said the film is “brutally honest. A must see.” This is not to suggest that either gentleman endorses “Trump’s Unholy Alliance.” On the contrary, we expect they would both disagree with most of what you will see. Watch and judge for yourself.
Donald Trump called himself a “self-funder” in 2016 in an effort to show Americans he could not be bought off like the rest of Washington. Eight years later, Trump has yet to pledge even a dime of his own money to his campaign, instead relying heavily on the big-money donors he said could never influence him as president.
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