The strangest political convergence of 2026 just got stranger. Donald Trump said Friday that the U.S. government may take direct equity stakes in AI giants like OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI — essentially endorsing the populist logic that Sen. Bernie Sanders articulated just days earlier, and validating the fears that have been building inside his own MAGA base for months.
The question neither the White House nor Capitol Hill answered Friday is the obvious one: a stake in companies burning tens of billions of dollars a year is not a sovereign wealth fund — it’s a bailout in a blazer. Sanders’ proposal would at least collect equity before the cash burn continues, via the stock tax.
“We have to be very careful to be more disciplined on the corporate side,” Karp said. “Like if you run around saying AI allowed you to fire two-thirds of your workforce and you did it because maybe your competitor’s kicking your ass … you might as well just go sign up for Bernie Sanders’ manifesto.”
“These things are very, very explosive,” he added. “The American people sense that there is something dangerous here.”
