(LifeSiteNews) — The Trump administration is preparing an executive order to penalize institutions that “debank” Americans over their political views, a practice the president says he was personally subjected to.
The Wall Street Journal reports it has seen a draft of the order, which has not been finalized, that tells federal regulators to review financial institutions for potential violations of federal laws by dropping customers or denying service for “impermissible factors” such as political views and review and rescind any policies that might have played a role in doing so. “Violators could be subject to monetary penalties, consent decrees or other disciplinary measures,” or potentially even referred for prosecution in extreme cases, the Journal reports.
President Donald Trump recounted his own experience with the issue earlier this week during an interview on CNBC, during which he said that Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan “was kissing my a– when I was president, and when I called him after I was president, to deposit $1 billion plus and a lot of other things… ‘no, we can’t do it.’ That’s because the banks discriminated against me very badly. And I was very good to the banks. I had the greatest economy in the history of our country when I was president. They discriminated against many conservatives.”
“The banking regulators do everything you can to destroy Trump. And that’s what they did. And guess what? I’m president. How did that happen?” he boasted.
When asked about the president’s comments, Moynihan said his company “has been working with the Treasury administration today in this administration trying to figure out how to get these roles balanced so that we’re not subject to this swinging back and forth” and insisted “we bank everybody,” but did not specifically address Trump’s claims about their interaction.
Over the past several years, there have been numerous instances of banks, credit card companies, and crowdfunding platforms cutting off services to conservative individuals and groups, thanks in large part to the influence of left-wing groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center and Anti-Defamation League and corporate trends such as ESG (environmental, societal, governance) scoring.
The Biden administration’s interest in centralized digital currency further intensified fears of a future in which Americans’ basic economic freedoms are tied to conformity with the views of those in power. Thanks in part to such overreaches by the previous Democrat administration, the United States is now widely perceived as being in the midst of a widespread political and cultural backlash against so-called “woke” ideology.
