Why can’t these companies get low-interest loans from big financial institutions? They are run by the brilliant billionaire buddies of guys like Trump. It turns out that their businesses are considered far too terrible to invest any good money in. Of course, taking American taxpayer money to provide welfare for corporations is just one side of the equation. The Post reports that a “major GOP donor” has said that these same oil company barons are warning the Trump administration away from providing paid sick leave policies to workers facing the pandemic.

People such as Trump-supporting fracking billionaire Harold Hamm say that they have tried to contact the White House but have not spoken “directly” to the president. Maybe that last part is true, or maybe it’s like most things billionaires tell news outlets: half-true. Hamm lost $2 billion after his energy company stakes plummeted with Monday’s oil price news. Hamm’s defense of corporate welfare is that Trump’s White House should be protecting “American interests at this time from being unfairly disadvantaged by whatever government — and we’re talking governments here, whether it be Russia or Saudi Arabia.” Hamm is probably best-known for being a climate denier, making a ton of money drilling up Oklahoma for natural gas—and creating literal earthquakes in the process.

This news comes a day after Mike Sommers, the CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, told the Washington Examiner, “We are not in discussions with anyone in the administration at this time on any type of program for the industry.” Who to believe? The Post explains that the oil and gas industry has $40 billion in debt coming due in 2020, and investors don’t like any of that. At all. So where is this dying industry looking for money if not from banks and not from investors? The math doesn’t add up in Sommers’ statement.

Say what you will about the Democratic Party, its offerings so far during this public health crisis have been attempts to make sure American citizens are protected, especially the healthcare workers charged to take care of us all. Its plans would use our collective money to help all of our country’s communities, Republicans and Democrats and independents alike.

Trump and the Republican Party came into the White House selling pipe dreams to their base, while producing nothing in the way of real jobs. Instead, they expanded fossil fuel production while ignoring the threats to our planet’s health and made rich dinosaurs of business richer. Those wealthy men want Trump’s team to keep them in the corporate welfare racket.