Sen. Bernie Sanders is ringing the alarm that the United States is “rapidly” becoming an oligarchy run by billionaires out to enrich themselves.
“We are moving rapidly into an oligarchic form of society. Never before in American history have so few billionaires, so few people, have so much wealth and so much power,” the senator said.
“Never before has there been so much concentration of ownership, sector after sector, power of Wall Street,” he continued. “And never before in American history — and we better talk about this — have the people on top had so much political power. We can't go around the world saying, 'Oh, well, you know, in Russia Putin has an oligarchy.' Well, we got our oligarchy here too.”
Sanders decried the influence of billionaires in the past election, saying that “billionaires spent huge amounts of money to elect their candidates.”
In a video released FridaySanders said, “In 2024, just 150 billionaire families spent nearly $2 billion to purchase candidates.”
Now Donald Trump is rewarding some of those billionaires who gave to his campaign with top roles in the federal government. The billionaires chosen by Trump to serve in his administration have a combined wealth of at least $383 billion — a number higher than the GDP of 172 nations.
Trump's vice president-elect, JD Vance, acknowledged the power of oligarchs in a 2021 speech where he complained that the right has “very few oligarchs on our side.” He added, “I don't mean just rich people. I mean people who are smart about deploying their resources in a way that advances the cause.”
Sanders' Democratic colleague, Sen. Chris Murphy, explained the concept of oligarchy and how the US is moving toward it in an interview last week on MSNBC.
“I think we talk a lot about the coming dictatorship, but I think what's really coming is what you would call an oligarchy,” Murphy said.
“What it means is that a handful of really rich people run the government, and they steal from ordinary people using their access to government in order to make themselves and their families even richer,” the Connecticut senator continued. “That is likely what we are heading for in the United States of America. I don't think it's a coincidence that Trump's cabinet is filled with billionaires.”
Trump undoubtedly used his first term to enrich himself and his family. He reportedly gained millions from China while in office, and his former hotel in DC was awash in cash from foreign governments, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar. He also forced the Secret Service to spend federal funds at his hotels and properties in the US and around the world, charging as much as $650 per room per night.
Trump's idea to create a new Department of Government Efficiency — led by billionaire Elon Musk, who benefits from federal funds to his companies like SpaceX, and billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy — could also bring tons of money to Trump and his allies by using federal power to benefit themselves and their businesses, a page straight from the oligarchy playbook.
