While HBO‘s Industry is very hooked into the world of finance and skims a lot of real world ideas, it doesn’t usually tackle of-the-moment real-world politics, at least not directly. That is, except for 31 seconds in this week’s episode, “Dear Henry,” where the show absolutely obliterates President Trump while never saying him by name.
To set the scene, most of this season has focused around a banking app called Tender, whose rise has been assisted by the British government. In a brief scene inside the Tender boardroom, Labour Party Minister of State for Industry Jennifer Bevan (Amy James-Kelly) holds court alongside Lisa Dearn (Chloe Pirrie), the Secretary of State for Business and Trade. Bevan is a friend of Yasmin Hanini (Marisa Abela), the director of Communications for the company, while Dearn is there against her will: she spent a fair amount of Season 3 trying to take down Henry Muck (Kit Harington), Yasmin’s now husband who also happens to be the CEO of Tender.
Anyway, over to the scene, and start your clocks for a blistering half-a-minute of political satire.
“We all know that the President is a dealmaker,” Bevan tells the Americans across the table. “There’s nothing stopping us being dealmarkers, so long as said deal is good for all parties.”
“The President’s misunderstood by people in Europe,” says a representative for the American government, a blonde man wearing an American flag pin on his lapel, and talking like a vapid cornpone. “He wants less regulation and freer movement. A clean break with post-war terms.”
“Not sure anyone knows what the strategy is,” interrupts Dearn. “Some here think Americans got bored of having the best lives, so they elected a narcissistic dementiac to detonate it all so that their kids might earn factory workers’ wages building widgets pathetically stamped, ‘Made in America.’”
There’s a pause while everyone else looks at each other nervously over the table, before Bevan continues. But the thing that’s particularly wild about this scene is A) it comes out of nowhere, and B) does not get picked up on in any way in this episode.
Perhaps there’s more to come later in the season, but as is the only function of the scene seems to be to let Dearn systematically dismantle the last decade of American politics, and President Donald Trump in particular, with the show’s as usual precisely savage form of adversarial wordplay. Basically, Industry didn’t so much nuke Trump from orbit as execute a drone strike (metaphorical) at point blank range. It’s a razor sharp take that doesn’t mince words, and also doesn’t spare the American populace who voted for him in the process.
It also, more damningly, rings true: while the American economy is being made great again by ramming it repeatedly into a wall, the rest of the world is laughing at us. As an American, may I say: ouch, Industry. Ouch.
Industry Season 4 Premiere Dates And Episode Guide:
New episodes of Industry premiere Sundays on HBO and HBO Max at 9 p.m. ET. Here’s what we expect from the full list of episodes in Industry Season 4 with premiere dates.
- Sunday, January 11, 2026: Industry, Season 4, Episode 1 – “PayPal of Bukkake”
- Sunday, January 18, 2026: Industry, Season 4, Episode 2 – “The Commander and The Grey Lady”
- Sunday, January 25, 2026: Industry, Season 4, Episode 3 – “Habseligkeiten”
- Sunday, February 1, 2026: Industry, Season 4, Episode 4 – “1000 Yoots, 1 Marilyn”
- Sunday, February 8, 2026: Industry, Season 4, Episode 5 – “Eyes Without a Face”
- Sunday, February 15, 2026: Industry, Season 4, Episode 6 – “Dear Henry”
- Sunday, February 22, 2026: Industry, Season 4, Episode 7 – “Points of Emphasis”
- Sunday, March 1, 2026: Industry, Season 4, Episode 8 – “Both, And” *Season Finale*
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