Evan Osnos

One, I think we're living through a time now where the fusion of economic power and political power has never been as obvious.

We all saw that scene on January 20th, the inauguration of the second Trump presidency, in which the crowd was full of billionaires.

front and center at president trump's inauguration a lineup of billionaire tech titans of the ceo of google sundar pichai who's there as well as bezos the founder of amazon and tim cook the ceo of apple and elon musk from x many of his biggest political supporters were the richest people in the country and the richest people in the world in fact so many

were on that stage beside him that there wasn't even room for the leaders of Congress who were relegated to the audience.

That was a new thing.

We hadn't seen that before.

Trump went on to then staff his administration with at least a dozen billionaires.

We've never had a moment in which the actual levers of government have been handed over to some of the richest people in the world.

This is not an abstraction.

It's just a literal fact.

And you see that then reflected across the decisions that the government makes.

So, for instance, the big fiscal bill that passed earlier in the year known as the one big beautiful bill.

was often characterized and calculated to be the single largest transfer of wealth ever in American history simply by the way that it closed off avenues for subsidies and support for poorer Americans by, in fact, creating opportunities for the wealthiest Americans to hold on to more of their money.

So that fact is – it's just no longer an abstraction in the background.

It feels to people like it's right there front and center –

on stage, for lack of a better term.

For a long time, politicians would try not to look like they were too wealthy.

Trump obviously goes in completely the other direction.

He luxuriates in the idea that he is surrounded by money.

You look at the fact that he threw a great Gatsby party at a time when a lot of Americans were struggling with the fact that SNAP benefits, nutritional assistance, had been cut off because the government was shut down.