A proposal by Donald Trump’s commerce secretary that tech industry giant Intel should hand over an equity stake to the U.S. government in exchange for CHIPS Act funds set off laughter and incredulity on MSNBC on Thursday morning.

On Tuesday, Trump appointee Howard Lutnick made the suggestion during an appearance on CNBC, where he proposed, “We should get an equity stake for our money. So we’ll deliver the money, which was already committed under the Biden administration. We’ll get equity in return for it.”

That had MSNBC host Joe Scarborough laughing and co-host Willie Geist piling on the Trump administration for suddenly finding socialism appealing at the same time the administration has been attacking Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani who is on a path to be New York City’s next mayor.

With Geist reporting that longtime conservative Erick Erickson went on a rant on Wednesday about the move, telling his followers, “This is actual socialism happening by a Republican administration,” Scarborough burst into laughter and talked over his co-host.

“Is this Great Britain, 1971?” he joked. These are the raging capitalists, the masters of the universe,” Geist smirked.

Scarborough, undeterred, continued, “Is this like socialist Britain? Pre-Thatcher? Oh, my god!”

“So Erickson so accused the administration of, yes, embracing socialism,” Geist continued before sharing a clip of the podcaster.

“You have a guy from Wall Street [Lutnick] in a Republican administration constantly accusing everybody of socialism. Never, never mind the corporate socialism that they practiced day in and day out and day in and day out, for oil companies and for monopolies, etc. etc. etc. But they're running around worried about lettuce in New York City grocery stores and Mamdani’s plan, which won't work,” Scarborough exclaimed. “And they're talking about taking one of the key American companies from like 1988, ‘89 onward in the whole IT age and taking it over. This is socialism, this is what Margaret Thatcher was elected to stop.”

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