Steven Rattner, a New York Times columnist who was also the Obama administration’s “auto czar,” has a piece out Thursday morning defending the auto bailout. This being the New York Times, the piece can’t just make an argument about the bailout: It also has to serve as a rebuke of Donald Trump. And so, the headline is “What Trump Doesn’t Know About Detroit.”
The premise of Rattner’s piece is that Trump opposed the auto bailout. Right off, Rattner’s contention struck this reader as odd. Trump, for whatever he is, is hardly a lodestar of free market conservatism, after all. He supported TARP, for one thing. And sure enough, back in 2008, Trump said, “I think the government should stand behind [the car companies] 100 percent. You cannot lose the auto companies. They’re great.”
