"East Tennessee was built by socialism."
That was the audacious claim made by Corbin Trent, an Appalachian factory owner turned political strategist, a cofounder of Justice Democrats, and a former communications director for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, during a heated exchange over whether the Democratic Party is confronting a real socialist movement within its own ranks.
Scott Jennings wasn’t buying it, rightly noting that the existence of government is not the same as socialism, a distinction Democratic Socialists routinely blur, underscoring a broader lack of understanding of the system itself. But the exchange also raises a question conservatives should be able to answer clearly: what, exactly, did the government build in East Tennessee, and was it actually socialism?
🚨 LMFAO! Scott Jennings is flabbergasted at a Democrat claiming socialism BUILT AMERICA 🤡
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) July 19, 2026
DEM: What, we're fighting socialists now?!
SCOTT JENNINGS: Yes. Communists, socialists, very antithetical to the American system.
DEM: Socialism, TVA, Tennessee, was built by socialism!… pic.twitter.com/WbXHquiMXR
"There is no question that the anti-fascism is also rising. And the fascists were on our shore back then. And what we're committed to now is fighting, what, socialists?"
"Yes, communist, socialist, very antithetical to the American system," Jennings said.
"Are they the same or are they different? Because I think socialism, TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority), where I'm from, East Tennessee, was built by socialism," Trent said. "The TVA was built by it. Oak Ridge was built by it. Factories were built by it. Alcoa was built by it. Government workers, 90 percent of the people that built those dams..."
"Having a government is not the same as having socialism," Jennings replied.
"So if it's not the government doing the work and the government building things for the people and then keeping ownership of it, if that's not what socialism is, then what is it?" Trent continued. "You tell me."
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"So you're saying any level of or any amount of government is socialism?"
"I think your guys are, actually. We're not the one running on it. You're the ones that label all this stuff communist."
"You have a whole faction of your party called Democratic Socialists of America who are running on things well beyond basic government services. They're running on total, radical ideas antithetical to America."
Government did build the TVA. Government subsidized labor built the dams. But what it built wasn't an economy, or a good business, it was a jobs program, one that put people to work during the depths of the Depression, then calcified into one of the least accountable institutions in American public life.
Nearly a century later the TVA has operated for decades with almost no meaningful oversight from Congress or from shareholders, and the result is exactly what free market advocates could predict. Costs and rates that regularly run higher than comparable private utilities in the very same region, and a management culture that pays itself like a Fortune 500 company while answering to almost no one.
As for Trent's broader point, that the TVA is proof of socialism building parts of America, the claim doesn't hold up on its own terms. What was built in East Tennessee was still a capitalist economy with a single large public-works project inserted into it, not socialism. The TVA operated next to capitalism in East Tennessee, it did not replace it. The workers who built it never owned it, and the local population has never had any real ability to exert control over how it's run.
What the government built in East Tennessee was never a durable, self-sustaining economy. It built exactly what government always builds: a service, yes, but an inefficient one, one that lags behind what a competitive market would produce, without the same drive toward innovation, cost reduction, or accountability that defines a private company forced to earn its customers every day. The story is the same wherever you look for it.
If anything, the TVA is better understood as an example of crony capitalism and monopoly power than of socialism, and it's a clear illustration of how such systems tend to arise in the first place: through government intervention.
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