MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace spoke to the former head of the National Economic Council on her show Tuesday to discuss a recent piece he wrote for The Washington Post detailing President Donald Trump's mistakes with the economy.
Gene Sperling wrote Monday that American business leaders who supported Trump overlooked his threats to the economy because they wanted tax cuts. He argued that it isn't merely tariffs that have harmed the U.S. economy for a generation, but Trump has also destabilized the brand of America.
"One reason the United States has long been a magnet for long-term investment is the knowledge that, though policies can change over time, our fidelity to blind justice, institutional integrity and the rule of law does not. No more," wrote Sperling.
He told Wallace on Tuesday that a "whole lot of people are going to think twice in a way they've never had to. And, I think, that a lot of business leaders, a lot of investment leaders, are having buyer's regret when it comes to President Trump."
Wallace recalled recently that at one point in the past several months, business leaders were able to change Trump after he threatened to fire Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. Sperling wrote that the president's phone was blowing up with complaints, and they succeeded in scaring him away from it.
The Economist's executive editor, Charlotte Howard, said many business leaders "thought they could get Trump tax cuts without the chaos, and that his rhetoric would be more bombastic than his policy. And I think what you see this time around in Trump 2 is Trump pursuing a much more ideological set of policies, which add up to fundamental incoherence in his management of the economy."
"I think what you're seeing this time around in persuing polices because he says they're right, even though all economic evidence is that they're fundamentally wrong," Howard said.
Wallace brought the conversation back to the millions of Trump voters.
"I don't know that there's a greater betrayal in modern presidential politics than Donald Trump saying literally until Election Day, 'I'm going to make the grocery less expensive on Day 1,' and then getting into the transition and saying, 'no, it's actually going to go up,'" she recalled.
Former George W. Bush strategist Matthew Dowd described U.S. business leaders as buying their way "onto a pirate ship" when they thought Trump wouldn't "storm my beach" or "he's not going to come into my cove and destroy my business. If I'm there, I'll get on. I'll get the booty that I can get out of it."
What they didn't realize, Dowd said, is they're still joining a pirate ship, and ultimately the pirate king will turn on them.
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