Picture-Illustration: by The Minimize; Pictures: Getty Pictures
After a 12 months of pseudo-populist blustering about empowering common People and taking up the globalist elites, Donald Trump’s inauguration Monday afternoon — which occurred to fall on MLK Day — featured a stage stuffed with beaming tech billionaires whose pursuits fly within the face of the working-class coalition that delivered Trump a slender victory within the 2024 election.
Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai have been among the many ultra-wealthy Silicon Valley elites who flanked Trump on the dais at his swearing-in. These males have been seated in entrance of Trump’s Cupboard nominees in the course of the ceremony after donating a file $250 million to the celebration. Tech baron and Republican mega-donor Peter Thiel had additionally thrown an inauguration occasion for Trump over the weekend at his personal mansion, which Zuckerberg attended. As well as, Mukesh Ambani, the richest man in India, and French billionaire and LVMH chief Bernard Arnault have been in attendance on Monday, with the latter positioned very prominently in entrance of the cameras.
The optics of the multi-day celebration made one factor abundantly clear: The broligarchy is right here. Somewhat than quietly utilizing their wealth to affect politics behind the scenes, wealthy tech bros now actually have a seat on the desk with the president of the US.
Trump even instantly acknowledged his billionaire buddies in his inaugural speech when addressing the devastating wildfires in Los Angeles, which have killed dozens of individuals and worn out traditionally Black neighborhoods. He lamented that the catastrophe is “affecting a number of the wealthiest and strongest people in our nation, a few of whom are sitting right here proper now.”
“They don’t have a house any longer,” Trump mentioned. “That’s fascinating.” He then introduced that his administration goes to “drill, child, drill,” failing to acknowledge the connection between world warming – which is being accelerated by the fossil fuels business – and the raging wildfires that he had simply lamented.
In one other weird second later within the speech, information cameras zoomed in on Musk manically dancing and making a thumbs up over Trump’s shoulder because the president introduced that American astronauts are going to “plant the celebrities and stripes on the planet Mars,” which is one in all Musk’s private life targets. Hours later, whereas talking at a rally for Trump, Musk did what positive appeared like a full Nazi salute.
Trump had already spent the months since his re-election packing his new administration with billionaires like Musk and absorbing their shows of fealty. He nominated an unprecedented 13 of them to his Cupboard, together with inventing a completely new “division” — the cost-cutting Division of Authorities Effectivity (DOGE), mockingly — for Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to steer. (Ramaswamy dropped out of DOGE over the weekend and now plans to run for Ohio governor.) Musk spent a whole lot of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} on Trump’s re-election, campaigned with him, and has since threatened to fund a major problem towards any Republican senator who votes towards any one in all Trump’s Cupboard picks.
Zuckerberg, missing a symbolic Cupboard appointment, nonetheless demonstrated his loyalty to Trump by altering Meta’s insurance policies per week earlier than the inauguration to as soon as once more enable hate speech towards girls, LGBTQ+ folks, and disabled folks on his platforms, in addition to transferring Meta’s content material moderation groups from California to Texas. (Notably, Joe Biden’s Federal Commerce Fee had been pursuing an antitrust case towards Meta, which is now unlikely to proceed.) For his half, Bezos, who owns the Washington Put up, spiked the paper’s deliberate endorsement of Kamala Harris within the remaining days of the election.
With these highly effective allies already in his pocket, Trump has began to return the favor by saying an insidious “pay to play” scheme, whereby any individual or firm who spends not less than $1 billion in the US “will obtain absolutely expedited approvals and permits, together with, however under no circumstances restricted to, all Environmental approvals.”
Even earlier than the inauguration, the broligarchy had grow to be so specific that Biden was moved to deal with it for the primary time ever in his remaining days in workplace. “At this time, an oligarchy is taking form in America of maximum wealth, energy and affect that actually threatens our whole democracy,” he mentioned in a speech final week. The assertion annoyed some progressives, who’ve been urging him to make use of this language for a very long time. “Now he tells us,” Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island wrote on X. “Biden speaks out towards darkish cash, for local weather motion, and for SCOTUS time period limits. I pressed 4 years for this speech.”
Numerous good that did. 4 days later, Trump stood on a platform subsequent to the richest males on the planet and basically launched us to our new overlords. These robber barons are positive to have a hand in making coverage selections that may promote out the very working-class those who put Trump again within the White Home; a lot for reducing the worth of eggs.
Correction: A earlier model of this story misstated the quantity of Trump’s inauguration fundraising. Donors raised $250 million.
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