One of House Speaker Mike Johnson’s principal goals for the 2026 midterm elections is trying to tell voters that Democrats — or more to the point, candidates affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America — are somehow further from the American mainstream than Republicans.

To that end, the Louisianan brought his pitch to the Faith & Freedom Coalition conference late last week, where he started reading portions of the DSA platform.

The Republican wanted conservative activists to know, for example, that some DSA candidates hope to “establish public ownership of the largest corporations and essential industries to ensure democratic control and accountability to the people.”

Johnson delivered the comments with a tone that suggested he found the idea to be sinister, if not utterly absurd.

The trouble is, I can think of another politician who hasn’t just talked about public ownership stakes in large corporations and essential industries, but who’s actually taken concrete steps to implement the idea.

His name is Donald Trump.

Indeed, it was earlier this month when the Republican president told reporters about his plans to create government ownership stakes in artificial intelligence companies, adding that he envisions “the American public essentially becomes a partner” in the growth of AI.

Asked which private AI companies he was eyeing, the president replied, “All of them.”

This was hardly out of character. Late last year, after the government became the largest shareholder in a company developing extreme ultraviolet lithography tools that are seen as key to the development of semiconductors, my MS NOW colleague Ja’han Jones noted that this extended the Republican administration’s “socialist — if not blatantly authoritarian — trend of making the government a stakeholder in supposed ‘free market’ enterprises.”

There’s no reason to assume the list won’t keep growing. The president, by his own admission, isn’t just eyeing stakes in AI companies; he and his team have also raised the prospect of seeking ownership stakes in oil companies, pharmaceutical companies and, in one recent instance, the rare-earth metals industry.

Trump has even told reporters that when it comes to this issue, there’s some overlap between his economic vision and that of independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont — the Senate’s only self-described socialist.

The question for the House speaker is simple: If the public should be scared of DSA candidates who envision public ownership stakes in private enterprises, why is it fine when Trump pursues the same vision?

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

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