Is there any question that Trump and his billionaire allies want to turn the country into an oligarchy, not unlike the one Putin created for himself in Russia? The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) should be called the “Oligarch Brigade.” Forget about the old Republican donor class, the Oligarch Brigade is now leading the charge for Trump. It’s possible that Trump’s willingness to turn our country’s governance over to the whims of two unelected billionaires, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, is an even greater threat to American democracy than his intention to use his office for retribution and personal gain.
In a country that’s already teetering on dysfunctionality based on its skyrocketing economic inequality, Trump makes no secret of his desire to make the situation even worse by lowering taxes for big corporations and the wealthy (never mind his plan to levy tariffs that are likely to raise prices for middle-class consumers). He should, of course, be doing exactly the opposite—not only closing the myriad tax loopholes the corrupt brigade already enjoys, but aggressively increasing IRS enforcement.
Elon Musk has branded himself as the ultimate capitalist entrepreneur, but a substantial portion of his wealth has come from U.S. taxpayers. The U.S. government bailed out his struggling Tesla in 2021, and Space-X has received over $20 billion in government contracts since 2008. Most importantly, for all the talk of Trump’s failure to get the debt ceiling raised, last week’s final budget bill eliminated the “outbound investment” provision that restricted American technology investment in China. Well surprise surprise—Musk is building factories in China, including an AI data center, even though it’s a risk to U.S. security. Make no mistake, Musk’s complaints about the budget bill were nothing but cover for his real objective—his own profit!
By His Own Admission, Trump is the “King of Debt.”
During his real estate career, Trump’s businesses declared bankruptcy six times. By his own admission he loves debt, sees nothing wrong with debt, and has often used it to enrich himself. So, not surprisingly, he doesn’t care how much debt he saddles the country with; he just wants to be a short-term hero for his MAGA base while enriching himself and his brigade in the process. At the risk of sounding like a Republican of yesteryear, our current national debt (now almost $36 trillion and growing at a rate of over $6 billion a day) is insane and needs to be gotten under control, big time. There’s a broad consensus, however, that the Oligarch Brigade cannot possibly cut $2.5 trillion from the current budget without cutting entitlements like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, programs much of Trump’s base depend on to survive. Realistically, the only way to cut the deficit is to increase revenue, and the only way to accomplish that is to increase taxes on the likes of the Oligarch Brigade.
Trump and the Oligarch Brigade are clearly out for themselves and couldn’t care less about the welfare of the American people. If anything, this humble spirit fears they want to put the middle-class in even worse straights than they are now; the more desperate people are, the more likely they are to submit to the brigades wishes. The only thing the bottom 99% has to defend itself is democracy, and Trump and his brigade are well on the way to eliminating it for their own advantage. And unfortunately, as I’ve said before, the American middle-class is so desperate, they’re ready to give up democracy.
The Oligarch Brigade is Out to Restrain Democratic Self-government for the Sake of Capital and Hierarchy.
Once again, let me quote what Jamelle Bouie said in the New York Times in the fall of 2022:
Trump is the chosen candidate of reactionary billionaires and fanatical opponents of racial and gender equality for a reason. Strip away the thin veneer of “populism,” and what you have in the Trumpified Republican Party is an old-fashioned movement to restrain democratic self-government for the sake of capital and hierarchy. . . It’s not that Trump and the Republican Party are opposed to voting and elected office in and of themselves; it’s that they are opposed to a more equitable distribution of wealth and status, which a robust democracy — and only a robust democracy — makes possible. They are opposed to anything that might undermine the domination over others by people like themselves.
It reminds me all too much of the time and place from which I come, the “Cotton Kingdom” of the 19th century, its evil slavocracy and the Confederate States of America that it spawned. A small group of extremely wealthy and powerful slave owners started a war in the name of power and greed, the result being at least 750,000 dead soldiers, the majority being poor Southern whites who were suckered into believing the cause was their own.