Wall Street fears Trump will toss execs in jail if they speak out: 'There's no winning'

Wall Street executives are staying silent on the need for gun laws in the wake of the shooting in Manhattan this week, in part because they fear President Donald Trump would find a reason to throw them in jail for it, New York Times columnist and "Sqawk Box" co-host Andrew Ross Sorkin told MSNBC's Ari Melber on Thursday evening.

The revelation came amid a broader discussion about how Trump is adopting a "command economy," the Republican Party long claimed was un-American, bullying companies, academic institutions, and law firms and using threats to make them change diversity and hiring policies he opposes.

"You know, Tom Wolfe, the Bible of Wall Street, at one point talked about these 'masters of the universe' ... in terms of concentration of wealth, and the added layer of the tech control tech power only proliferated," said Melber. "So I ask you, because you are one of our whisperers to this world, how do you square thinking you're a master of the universe, making multibillion-dollar international deals that control multiple economies on continents and running a tech company like an Altman or Bezos, and then and then do what you just said, which is shirk, and say, well, my god, this is just the world we're in?"

"So I, like you and probably many of the viewers, believed that if you had a certain amount of money ... for example, $1 billion, that that would insulate you from just about anything, and therefore it would create this sort of independence, this remarkable independence, where you could come out and speak your mind and say whatever it is you want," said Sorkin. "So if you disagreed with the president, you could come and say that if you disagree with, you would have that independence to do that."

That is no longer the case under Trump, Sorkin said.

"After this horrific shooting that happened in Midtown Manhattan earlier this week, I wrote something in The New York Times about how business leaders, this is one of those opportunities to have a reasonable conversation about gun violence in America," said Sorkin. "And a couple of CEOs called me up — by the way, mostly Democrats, but a couple of Republicans, too, who said, yeah, we should be having that conversation, but I can't have that conversation because right now I'll lose that conversation. There's no winning in that conversation. And I said to them, 'Well, what happens if you spoke out on this issue, really?' And one of them said, 'Well, the president, if he wants to put me in jail, he can put me in jail."

"Now, I think some of them don't think they're going to go to jail, but they think they're going to make my life difficult with the business," Sorkin added. "They're going to make my life difficult with this or that or who knows what."

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