Commentary tonight from Lawrence O’Donnell, transcribed. 

Well, the Stock Market closed at an all-time high once again today, proving, once again today, that Republican businessmen don’t know what’s good for them. And yes, I am using the antiquated term “businessmen” deliberately because the thinking of the people I’m referring to is antiquated. The last time it made any sense at all for Republican “businessmen” to vote Republican was back when they all really were men, no women allowed, in the 1920s. Back when the Stock Market crashed in 1929 under Republican President Herbert Hoover and then the country sank into the deepest depression it has ever suffered. 

There wasn’t a single Republican politician who had any idea what to do about that. Then came Democratic President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, elected in 1932 in the depths of the Depression, and that Democratic President created the policies that saved the American economy. If your business survived the Depression, it was because of the policies of the Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt. Those policies helped your business survive the Depression. 

Franklin Delano Roosevelt held the banking system together by himself. In the first days of his Presidency, when the entire American banking system was on the verge of collapse, the whole thing, what did Republican businessmen do? They opposed President Roosevelt. They have never known what is good for them. And what is good for them is a Democratic Presidency that knows how to get things done to help their businesses keep running. The economy does better under Democratic Presidents. That is a simple fact of American economic history. And there are many businessmen and businesswomen who understand that and vote accordingly, they vote in their own self-interest, for Democratic Presidents. But Republican “businessmen” remain the dominant voice in American media. 

And it is a voice that is almost always wrong. 

And, so, there are noisy Republican “businessmen” who are now voicing their support for Donald Trump without ever thanking Joe Biden for helping them get richer than they have ever been during the Biden Presidency. Those people never thanked President Obama for getting the economy back on track after the financial crisis of 2008, when Wall Street investment banks collapsed. Those Wall Street investment banks collapsed in the final year of an eight-year Republican Presidency. Those Wall Street bankers got fabulously wealthy beyond their wildest dreams during the eight years of the Democratic Presidency of Bill Clinton, and then, some of them lost everything under the Republican Presidency of George W. Bush. And, many of them still enthusiastically vote Republican. Because they are uneducable. 

We do not send our best to Wall Street. We send our greediest. And many of them are too ignorant to understand how competent Democratic Presidents enrich the economy and always make the rich people who vote against them richer. 

Not all of them, not all of the people in business are too dense to understand that. Democratic Presidential candidates get plenty of contributions and support from investment bankers and business owners and business executives who actually understand how the economy works, and the government’s essential position in the economy. 

Infrastructure spending is one of the simplest illustrations of this, the Trump White House cartoonishly scheduled and rescheduled “infrastructure week” for four years and never passed a single bill providing a single improvement in America infrastructure. Not. One. Brick. Donald Trump built nothing. 

Joe Biden passed an infrastructure bill and signed it into law, and he did it with bi-partisan support in the Senate. Many of the Republicans who voted against that bill in the House and the Senate now step forward to take credit for the infrastructure improvements that that bill is delivering in Republican Congressional districts and Republican states. Infrastructure improvements are usually planned carefully for years before the first day of work on a project begins. 

But this year, we saw a case of emergency infrastructure work like we have never seen before, when 112,383 metric tons of a container ship crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge across Baltimore Harbor and instantly closed all shipping in and out of Baltimore. 

That was not a problem for Baltimore businesses. That was a problem for the world. 

Grain harvested in the Great Plains is shipped to countries around the world through the Port of Baltimore. That means there were businesses large and small in places like Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, that would be hurt by the closing of the Port of Baltimore. 

The first stage of the story was tragedy: For the six men who lost their lives working on the bridge when it collapsed in the middle of the night, 35-year-old Alejandro Hernandez Fuentes and 24-year-old Carlos Daniel Hernandez from Mexico; 26-year-old Dorian Ronial Castillo Cabrrera and 35-year-old Jose Lopez from Guatemala; 38-year-old Maynor Suazo from Honduras; 49-year-old Miguel Luna from El Salvador. 

The second stage of the story had to immediately be the re-opening of the Port of Baltimore, and then the third stage, the re-opening of the bridge. Re-opening the Port meant clearing the bridge debris so that a clear, unobstructed channel could be established through the Port that is 700 feet wide and 50-foot deep to accommodate those huge container ships that use the Port. Until that Port was open, every ship on the oceans of the world headed for the Port of Baltimore to deliver imports to the United States had to be re-routed or wait, and that would add costs to the exports and the imports involved, which means it would add inflation in the same way that the broken supply chain during the COVID pandemic created inflation around the world. And every ship that was in the Port of Baltimore ready to leave that night and deliver America’s exports around the world was then stuck. Couldn’t move. Stuck. None of those ships could leave until that channel was re-opened. None of them. That meant that every business that had goods on those ships for export around the world was losing money every day, every American business that was shipping exports on those ships lost money every day that those ships could not move. The only thing that was going to be able to get those ships out of the Port of Baltimore was competent government in action. And the American economy is lucky, and American businesses are lucky that everyone involved at every level of government that needed to coordinate on this emergency infrastructure project is a Democrat. 

Democratic President Joe Biden. Democratic Governor Wes Moore. Democratic Mayor of Baltimore Brandon Scott. 

Anything less than full emergency speed in response to this infrastructure emergency could have meant that it would take a year or years just to re-open the shipping channel in the Port of Baltimore. 

11 weeks. 11 weeks led by Joe Biden. The emergency infrastructure project in the Port of Baltimore took 11 weeks and this week, the Port re-opened. 

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There’s another version of this story that could have happened. President Biden goes to Baltimore, promises to do everything that he can to re-open the Port as fast as possible, and then, he fails. Then, the resources cannot be coordinated with the highly-skilled workers needed immediately to do the work of dismantling the bridge and dredging the channel. The workers and equipment ready to do this kind of specialty job aren’t just sitting around waiting for emergency phone calls. Failure was more likely than success in this mission in this timetable. 

Just ask Donald Trump, who did not build or rebuild anything during his Presidency. 

If Joe Biden failed at re-opening the Port of Baltimore, Republicans would be campaigning against him in November saying he failed to do that. And Donald Trump, of course, would be promising to re-open the Port of Baltimore on his first day in the White House again. And Trump voters would of course believe that nonsense because they have proved they will believe anything. 

But that is not the way it happened. Joe Biden delivered on his promise. And, when he did, he makes it look easy. 

And no Republican “businessman” is gonna say “thanks, Joe.” 

This is what winning and good government looks like. And, most voters will never realize, most voters in the country will never realize how important Joe Biden’s governing skills, including his emergency governing skills, are in solving a problem like this that no President before him has ever had to face. Joe Biden couldn’t turn to anyone in the White House and say “how did Lyndon Johnson handle this,”  “how did Ronald Reagan handle this,” Joe Biden had to use all of his experience in government and his understanding of the region, and the Port’s importance to the American economy to quickly figure out how to handle this. 

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Being a Republican “businessman” means you never have to say “thank you” to the Democrats who save your business.