There was a hidden agenda and JG knew it.
JG knew the only solution was to destroy the enemy, not save the enemy from himself.
JG had been preaching that throughout the book and was a man of principle.

simple
you cannot trust commie stooges

any sane person trust ANYONE in the biden admin??

l

as JG said in the movie (haven't looked but I think is the same in the book), NO ONE should have that kind of power. AR's vision of Laissez-faire capitalism does not lend itself to top-down control.

2. Thompson is desperate. He knows the collapse is coming and is willing to try ALMOST anything to stop it, as long as he retains ultimate control. The one thing he can't do is what JG tells him: "get out of the way".

I think Thompson operates like a gang thug. He is like the boss and is offering to make Galt his underboss. Thompson has the power to have Galt tortured or murdered, as a gang boss would, but it’s to his benefit to get Galt on his payroll. Galt responds that if he had power, he would eliminate institutions that operate like organized crime and replace them with a system of laws that respects individual rights. (This was my interpretation, anyway.) Thompson sees this as a snide insult because it goes without saying he meant Galt could do anything he wanted within the bounds of a despotic government with Thompson in charge.

I think Thompson is genuinely confused because he spent his life working in a corrupt government to attain political power. He’s surrounded by people seeking power. His main concern with making Galt his underboss is Galt might eventually challenge him for power. He can conceive that Galt wants to be left alone to make money for himself through honest work and investment.

I guess that's where JG and I would disagree. Given a chance to save the world by taking power, removing all regulations then resigning it, I'd do it in a heartbeat. I do see the point of not really trusting Thompson but as @VetteGuy said, Thompson was desperate so just maybe Galt truly held all the cards.

And this is where IMHO I disagree with the principle. The strikers were hurting the looters in no longer giving them the benefit of their minds, but they were also (arguably moreso) hurting common people, the Eddie Willers of the world were suffering too. Up until the final collapse, the looters were still doing quite well for themselves, while ordinary hard-thinking and hardworking people were struggling to survive. To purely insist that saving the world is "altruism" and against principles is, I'm sorry to say this but IMHO a technicality, and that's the one major thing I respectfully disagree with on Rand's philosophy, in that it's so rigid that while Galt's decision not to accept Thompson's offer was technically correct, it is applied so mechanically and robotically that there is no wiggle room whatever, even if thousands of innocent lives hung in the balance. There's always a "greater good" even if that good is just letting people live. If I'm a farmer about to starve, and I know I could have had relief but the guy who could have brought it refused to "on principle" I'd be more mad at him than Thompson. Everyone has their flaws, and Galt was not the "perfect man" he had liabilities too. I believe in the principles of rational self interest but I would also hope that rational thinking would say, "I can save the world now or wait a while and let innocent people starve and die first. Screw it, what's the right thing to do?"

And isn't accepting power what the strikers ended up doing anyway?? (Emphasis mine)

"When the looters’ state collapses, deprived of the best of its slaves, when it falls to a level of impotent chaos... then and on that day we will return. We will open the gates of our city to those who DESERVE to enter... we will move to reclaim this country once more from the impotent savages who never discovered its nature, its meaning, its splendor. Those who choose to join us, will join us; those who don’t, will not have the power to stop us"

Sounds like control to me, even if it's not a governmental-type of control. They will return and set things right. Only the way it played out in the novel, many more people had to suffer and die in the meantime. Poor Eddie Willers, Galt's unbeknownst confidant, left for dead in the middle of nowhere? Is that "rational self interest"? At some point I think you have to say, screw the rules there are mindful hardworking people DYING, maybe we need to make an exception this once.

Didn't mean to turn this into an essay, but I just feel strongly about that, even if it is only fiction.

He knew Thompson was lying. And it was against his principles. Case closed.