They say a picture is worth a thousand words. This one is worth nearly a trillion dollars.
The image of three of the world’s wealthiest men – (from left) Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk – seated together in the second row in front of Cabinet members at Trump’s inauguration quickly captured the fascination of the globe. “Billionaires’ Row,” as it’s now being called, will go down in history. We’ve known that America has been an oligarchy for some time – where a wealthy few have politicians’ ears and call all the shots – but this image makes it plain to see for the whole world.
For this week’s Closer Look, we want to do a deep dive into what these three oligarchs have done since Trump’s election to undermine American democracy. They all had frosty relations with the president in the past, but as Trump has regained power, they are now singing a very different tune and giving a free master class for the rest of us on the dangers of extreme wealth.
Jeff Bezos
Let’s start with Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and owner of The Washington Post, who, at this writing, is worth $221.5 billion.
Bezos and Trump sparred publicly in the past. At one point in 2019, Amazon complained that it lost a $10 billion contract with the Pentagon because of Trump’s personal dislike for Bezos. But it’s safe to say that their relations have thawed since then. Besides donating to and attending Trump’s inauguration as a VIP, schmoozing with him at Mar-a-Lago, and showering him with public praise, Bezos has arguably used the newspaper that he owns, The Washington Post, to boost Trump and Republicans’ standing.
Just eleven days before the November election, the Post announced that it would no longer endorse presidential candidates. It was then revealed that the paper had drafted an endorsement of former Vice President Kamala Harris, but that Jeff Bezos had intervened to nix it. Bezos later justified the paper’s decision in an opinion piece, arguing that presidential endorsements from media outlets like the Post “create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence.”
Two months later, Ann Telnaes, a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist for the Post, resigned from her position after a sketch that she drew of Bezos and other tech billionaires bowing down to Trump and offering him bags of money was rejected. It’s unclear whether Bezos was personally involved in this decision, but it was still striking and unprecedented.
Bezos and the Post’s worst offense against free speech arguably came last week though, when Bezos announced that the newspaper’s opinions section would, from then on, be writing every day in support of “personal liberties and free markets.” Bezos defended his decision to exclude opposing viewpoints from publication because, as he claimed, the internet now provides such a platform.
No one’s denying that personal liberties and free markets are an important part of the American ethos, but given that it’s a favorite catchphrase among Republicans, it’s not beyond reason to think that Bezos is trying to transition the Post into a conservative outlet in the style of The Wall Street Journal. Opinion sections should present a variety of arguments and viewpoints, especially at papers with large audiences like the Post; otherwise, it’s easy to mistake them as mere propaganda machines. Bezos said in October that he wanted to avoid creating any perception of bias at the paper, but is bound to do just that with this decision.
The Post’s motto is “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” Free speech is a central component of a healthy and thriving democracy. With his recent actions to stifle speech at the Post, Bezos himself is bringing about the darkness that will spell the downfall of our democracy.
Mark Zuckerberg
Mark Zuckerberg – the CEO of Meta who, at this writing, is worth $223.6 billion – also had an icy relationship with President Trump in the past. After the January 6th Capitol riot, Zuckerberg banned Trump from Facebook and Instagram. In his 2024 book Save America, Trump accused Zuckerberg of plotting against him during the 2020 election and threatened to imprison him.
In recent months though, their relationship has seemingly done a complete 180. We all know Zuckerberg attended Trump’s inauguration as a VIP guest in Billionaires’ Row, in addition to donating to his inauguration and hosting a pre-inaugural ball for the president-elect. But shortly before Trump was sworn in, Zuckerberg also made substantial changes at Meta that will undoubtedly help Trump and conservatives’ crusades.
For one thing, Zuckerberg and Meta have intentionally established a more right-leaning leadership team. In early January, Joel Kaplan, a prominent Republican political operative, was appointed as Meta’s Chief of Global Affairs, and Dana White, a staunch Trump ally and the CEO of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, joined its board. That will certainly make a difference when it comes to making key decisions for the platform in the political climate under Trump 2.0.
In a stunning move, Zuckerberg also announced that Meta would eliminate its fact-checking system and replace it with user-generated “community notes,” similar to how Elon Musk’s X platform operates. The shift is a clear concession to Trump, as it follows years of accusations from conservatives that Meta’s third-party fact checkers were politically biased and censored right-wing voices.
Misinformation is a serious problem in the modern digital age. It played a significant role in promoting Trump’s “Big Lie” that the 2020 election was fraudulent. During the COVID pandemic, false information about the safety of vaccines, masks, and antidotes like hydroxychloroquine spread almost as quickly as the virus itself on social media, and undoubtedly was a driving factor behind the high number of cases the US ultimately experienced.
To his credit, Zuckerberg admits that shifting the responsibility to fact check onto Meta users will “mean that we’re going to catch less bad stuff,” but we can’t help but think that there has to be a better way to balance freedom of expression on digital platforms with the need to protect the health and safety of the public against blatant misinformation – especially from political actors like Trump who have proven themselves willing to bend the truth whenever it suits them.
Elon Musk
Last but not least, there is Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and X who is currently worth $350.9 billion.
In 2016, Musk suggested that Trump was not fit to be president. Six years later, Trump called Musk “another bulls*** artist.” But they’ve clearly been able to mend fences, as Musk is now Trump’s self-proclaimed “first buddy” and the de facto leader of the new cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The White House has been adamant that Musk does not run DOGE – we learned last week that someone by the name of Amy Gleason does – but we’ve drawn a different conclusion from how public Musk has been with the agency.
It is hard to overstate all of the damage that Musk and DOGE have done to the federal workforce over the last few weeks, and it would be even harder to cover all of it in this newsletter. But here are some of the highlights:
- Offered two million federal workers a buyout to resign, which closely mirrored an email that Musk sent to Twitter employees after he purchased the platform in 2022. Similar emails were later sent to National Security Agency, Central Intelligence Agency, and Education Department employees
- Has cut staff or has announced plans to cut staff at key federal agencies, including the United States Agency for International Development; the National Institutes of Health; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; the Office of Community Planning and Development; the Internal Revenue Service; the Food and Drug Administration; the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; and the Social Security Administration
- Sought access to sensitive data at the Social Security Administration, Treasury Department, and Internal Revenue Service
- Sent federal workers an email demanding that they list five bullet points of what they did in the last week to justify their jobs or face termination
- Received power from the president to approve federal hirings and new regulations for federal agencies
It’s important to note that many of these moves have been temporarily blocked by judges or may soon be as they are likely unconstitutional. After they learned hard lessons about the good that federal workers do for the country, officials in the Trump administration have also rescinded many of these orders: at agencies like the Centers for Disease and Control and the Food and Drug Administration, workers were fired and then quickly reinstated.
Elon Musk believes that the millions of Americans who benefit from the critical work of federal agencies are the “parasite class.” But judging from his own record, it’s safe to say that he’s projecting. According to one report, Musk and his various businesses have received no less than $38 billion in government funding over the years through loans, contracts, subsidies, and tax credits. And while America is souring on DOGE and the idea that its frenzied cost-cutting initiatives are helping them, there’s no doubt that DOGE’s work is helping Musk personally, as officials have been fired at no fewer than eleven agencies that have open investigations into his companies.
Conclusion
So there you have it: your free master class from Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk on why extreme wealth is so dangerous.
To be clear, we have no problem with people being rich like us. As our Chair, Morris Pearl, likes to say, being rich is great and we recommend everyone try it. What we do, however, have a problem with is people like Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk being so insanely rich that they have the power to do what they’re doing now. Extreme wealth, by definition, translates into extreme power and control, and the power and control that these three oligarchs are wielding will eventually cost us our democracy.
This is why we want to tax the rich. Ensuring millionaires and billionaires pay what they owe in taxes and putting a check on extreme inequality is the only sure-fire way to reclaim our democracy and save our country. And with Trump back at the helm, there is too much on the line to wait to do it.
In the end, we’re fine with pictures being worth a thousand words. Just not a trillion dollars.