Industrialist and Republican mega-donor Charles Koch is none too happy President Donald Trump's temporary ban on immigrants from Muslim countries. In fact, he likes it so little that he compared the Muslim immigrant ban to something Adolf Hitler would have done back in Nazi Germany.
According to AP, however, later went on to be a bit kinder in their wording, calling it "the wrong approach" that took us off the path of a "free and open society." The Koch brothers and their conservative network are however optimistic about the future of the Trump administration, due to the fact that the Koch brothers have many allies within the White House, thus effecting change from the inside.
One of these allies includes Vice President Mike Pence himself.
“Many former network staffers that are in the White House now remain good friends of ours. So we're in constant contact with them,” said Koch spokesman James Davis. “Conversations have been open and continue to be.”There is perhaps no bigger Koch ally than Vice President Mike Pence, whose staff and ideology has been in close alignment with the Kochs for years.
Charles Koch spoke directly with the vice president on the phone days before his inauguration as Pence considered hiring a Koch communications staffer, Stephen Ford, to serve as his chief speechwriter. Ford was soon hired, along with former Koch chief Marc Short, who now serves as the White House legislative director.
While the Trump administration and the Koch's are of similar mind when it comes to shrinking government, and doing away with the current government healthcare fiasco, they tend to split ways on immigration and infrastructure spending. With these two things being a large part of Trump's campaign, the Koch's will likely be butting heads with the president quite a bit in the years to come.
