Not that they're praising Democrats: Former Trump acting AG Matthew Whitaker, at left in photo with attendees after antitrust panel.
Milwaukee — Amid another day of Biden-bashing here at the Republican National Convention, a little-noticed breakout session Tuesday afternoon featured discussion of emerging common ground between some MAGA Republicans and liberal Democrats.
The panel, hosted by the DC-based bipartisan boutique lobbying firm ACG Advocacy, was entitled, “Antitrust, Regulation and Intellectual Property in the Next Trump Administration.” It took place inside the Olympia Ballroom of the Milwaukee Athletic Club on the second day of the four-day RNC.
It was one of numerous official convention issues-oriented panels taking place at different spots around town during the afternoon before the main-event evening speeches. Topics ranged from GOP election “self-defense” “protection” efforts and “Israel and the Path to Peace” to a Moms for Liberty session on “Giving Americans a Voice,” which was fully registered and had to turn people away.
By contrast, only 20 people gathered for the anti-trust session. But the subject was equally central to debates taking place on the future of party politics and government regulation of business.
The session came a day after the naming of U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance as former President Trump’s vice-presidential running mate. Vance has helped lead the charge to redefine the Republican Party’s stance toward big business, including switching from opposing regulation to embracing aggressive federal oversight of corporations. Vance, who otherwise has consistently criticized the Biden Administration, has publicly embraced the Biden appointee most opposed by corporate America, trust-busting Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Kahn. Vance has also joined with liberal Democrats like U.S. Sen Elizabeth Warren and U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown to cosponsor legislation seeking clawbacks of executive pay for CEOs of failed banks and rail safety in the wake of a toxic train derailment in Ohio.
CNN Commentator David Urban moderated Tuesday’s discussion. Panelists included Matthew Whitaker who served as acting attorney general in the Trump Administration; former Trump US Patent and Trademark Office Director Andrei Iancu; Thomas DeMatteo, council to U.S. Sen. Mike Lee, ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee’s Antitrust Committee; and FTC staff attorney Gustav Chiarello. Urban pumped them with questions about global competition, technological innovation and government intervention against American monopolies.
The panel kicked off with Urban questioning the significance of Vance’s praise for FTC Chair Khan, who was nominated to the position by President Biden in 2021. It concluded with a reporter asking panelists about the likelihood of continued alignment between the emergent corporate-skeptical wing of the Republican Party and anti-corporate Democrats on anti-trust policy should Trump and Vance prevail in November.
In response, the panelists did take care to credit Trump and avoid applauding Biden.
“He’s asking good questions about the appropriate scope of anti-trust,” Chiarello said of Vance, while adding that “I’m not here to advance the current administration.”
Chiarello pointed to big tech as an example of a “common enemy” of both Republicans and Democrats, albeit for different reasons. Conservatives like Vance, he said, are interested in breaking up Google, for example, because of their belief that the search engine has a liberal bias and censors conservative ideas. So Vance’s support of Kahn should not be interpreted as a broader interest in increasing government regulation, but rather as a pinpointed problem with certain virtual platforms and companies, he argued.
“I don’t think he’s leaning as fully into the administrative state as far as those on the left,” DeMatteo echoed.
“Kahn does get a lot of attention” for challenging big tech, he added. But a lot of that positive attention, he argued, should be saved for Trump, whose administration filed lawsuits against Google, Twitter and Facebook.
Whitaker agreed that both parties are concerned with better enforcement of anti-trust law. But he said that more and more individuals identifying as Democrats might be attracted to the Vance embrace of using anti-trust enforcement as a tool to promote more innovation and competition. Trump’s success in stealing working class voters, he argued, has seen the Democratic base shift to include more “Latte-drinking coastal elites who have a different interest in all of this.”
“You cannot ignore the politics of how this plays to the base,” he said.
Nora Grace-Flood and Fred Noland are in Milwaukee covering the Republican National Convention for the Independent.