In other words, speak softly and carry a big checkbook.
Which brings us to Mr. Trump’s target du jour, Ms. Powell Jobs, who is employing a varied and perhaps more creative approach to distributing her vast wealth.
Ms. Powell Jobs founded the Emerson Collective, an umbrella organization for her philanthropy and businesses focused on social change across many areas, like education, immigration rights, media, health and social justice.
That includes policy programs and, perhaps most interestingly, funding a number of artistic efforts. The Emerson Collective, for example, backed “Carne y Arena,” an immersive virtual reality show about the immigration experience of crossing the border, right down to letting the audience touch the actual shoes of migrants.
In 2017 I interviewed Ms. Powell Jobs along with Senator Kamala Harris. Ms. Powell Jobs talked about her willingness to work with all sides on the immigrant issue, including having a closed-door meeting with Mr. Trump about the plight of the so-called Dreamers.
“We have enormous talent and ingenuity and I.Q. dispersed throughout this world; we do not have equal opportunity dispersed throughout this world,” Ms. Powell Jobs said at the time, stressing the need to avoid partisan sniping.
But it is in impact investing in media that she is perhaps becoming best known. That includes majority ownership of The Atlantic, the well-regarded magazine that published a devastating piece last week about Mr. Trump’s disdain for military service members. The article said that Mr. Trump called those who died in battle “losers” and “suckers.” Much of the report has been confirmed by a wide range of other outlets, including Fox News.
Thus, the Trump tweet at Ms. Powell Jobs, in response to another about her political donations, also showed that he does not seem to understand that she is not guiding the editorial coverage of the magazine. (That would be the article’s author and The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg.) Still, as he does with Mr. Bezos and The Washington Post, Mr. Trump cannot conceive of owning a media entity without making use of it as a score-settler.