Evan Osnos

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.

Or he's posting photos on social media of renovating his bathroom in the White House or of building a giant ballroom.

So in some ways, it feels like Trump is still reading from a cultural playbook from the 1980s in which.

We were all kind of cheering for these emblems of big wealth when in fact the public attitudes as shown in polls are pretty clear that people are not laughing along with him.