In recent years, General Electric (GE) has supported liberal policies like the health care reform law and cap and trade, received roughly $25 million in government-backed stimulus funds, and was a major donor to the Obama’s presidential campaign. But on February 9, GE will host an event in Washington D.C. for disabled American veterans called “A Return to the Reagan Era.”
The event will be hosted in the Reagan building in downtown D.C. and will feature speakers including Tom Brokaw of NBC, Mike Allen of Politico, and of course, GE CEO Jeffery Immelt. They will speak on “how today’s media would cover the challenges of the 1980s.”
Reagan, of course, served as spokesperson for GE from 1954 to 1962. Ironically enough, it is those years that many credit as having transformed Reagan from an actor to a politician and from a liberal to conservative. He began his tenure at GE as a self-described New-Dealer. But shortly after he left the company, he gave a stump speech for 1964 Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater.
Sixty years later, GE is a much different company. It now owns, among many other things, the left-leaning MSNBC which employs Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and Chris Matthews.