“Capitalism Is a Lot More Important Than Democracy,” Says Donald Trump’s Economic Adviser

Among the members of Donald Trump’s recently announced team of economic advisers is Stephen Moore, a distinguished visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation and co-founder of the Club for Growth, which supports candidates who advocate slashing the tax rates of the top 1 percent.

Moore is particularly notable because he’s entertainingly honest about prioritizing money over Americans. In the 2009 documentary Capitalism: A Love Story, Moore said on camera that “Capitalism is a lot more important than democracy. I’m not even a big believer in democracy.” (I was research producer for the movie, which was directed by Michael Moore — no relation to Stephen.)

Stephen Moore is also, like Trump, a charlatan. After a guest op-ed under his byline in the Kansas City Star contained glaringly false statistics, the paper’s editorial page editor vowed that she would never run anything by Moore again, and that any other submissions by Heritage Foundation staff would be fact checked by the Star. (Moore’s errors were discovered by Star columnist Yael Abouhalkah, who is my cousin.)

But of course Trump won’t pay any price for choosing Moore as an adviser, since their mutual distaste for democracy and affection for general chicanery are shared by many other people at the top of the U.S. political system.

Here’s the transcript from the movie, with the segment below:

MOORE: Capitalism is a lot more important than democracy. I’m not even a big believer in democracy. I always say that democracy can be two wolves and a sheep deciding on what to have for dinner. … Look, I’m in favor of people having the right to vote and things like that. But there are a lot of countries that have the right to vote and they’re still poor. Democracy doesn’t always lead to a good economy or even a good political system.