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American oligarchy

Billionaires control the message like never before. Thank Citizens United

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Just days before Donald Trump took the oath of office this past Monday, now former-president Joe Biden used the bully pulpit of his office to warn Americans that the democracy we’ve known since the enactment of the U.S. Constitution in 1787 is under threat like never before.
“Today,” said Biden, “an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead.”
It was probably only a matter of time. Oligarchy, which is rule by a small group of individuals, usually people of wealth, has been increasingly undermining America ever since the U.S. Supreme Court paved the way with its 2010 Citizens United decision. In its highly controversial and legally imaginative 5-4 ruling, the high court effectively ruled that money is speech, which means those with money have the biggest megaphone in our elections.
Citizens United opened the floodgates to unlimited dark money from virtually any source, and 2024 was the year when the high waters breached the levee, in the form of Elon Musk, a South African who struck it rich in the U.S. and poured nearly a quarter billion dollars of his own money into the election of Donald Trump. Musk’s vast sums, along with his heavy-handed control of the social media platform X, almost certainly made the difference in the 2024 election.
Musk, who has since taken up residence at Mar-a-Lago, has been likened to a shadow president since Trump’s victory, weighing in on virtually every major decision. That’s how oligarchs operate, of course. Their money gives them access to power, and the more money the more access, until, as in Musk’s case, the power almost seems to rest with them. And Musk has billions of dollars in federal contracts, virtually guaranteeing that he’ll use his newfound power to further enrich himself.
Musk, of course, wasn’t the only oligarch to see the potential of a Trump presidency. Trump is a man largely free of political principle, who stands for anything that seems to advance his personal or electoral goals at the moment. He views the use of power in purely transactional terms, all of which creates a void that the suddenly Trump-fawning Silicon Valley billionaires hope to fill with their own agendas— namely tax cuts and a free hand as they reshape society to their whims and profit.
Trump and his GOP allies plan to extend the 2017 Trump tax cuts, which overwhelming benefit the wealthy, and Trump has put Musk in charge of determining how to gut the social safety net and many other important functions of government to pay the estimated $4 trillion price tag of those tax cuts over 10 years. It’s the hallmark of oligarchy, in which the working class and the poor pay the cost to further gild the lilies of the uber-rich.
The fact that many of the billionaires now running our government own major media outlets will further advance the interests of the oligarchs in a new kind of authoritarianism. Taking control of the media was one of the first key steps in the transition of Hungary from a democratic system to autocracy under Viktor Orban and his Fidesz Party.
Here in the U.S., right-wing media sources, from Fox News to X, helped to spread Trump’s seemingly endless false narratives throughout the campaign, serving not as the check on power that our nation’s founders envisioned, but as propagandists in service to the would-be autocrat. Even once-respected newspapers, like the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post, saw their billionaire owners nix both papers’ planned endorsements of Trump’s Democratic opponent Kamala Harris. The oligarchs are clearly gathering at the foot of the throne, hands extended with their bags of cash and promises to further Trump’s interests. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced recently that he’s ending fact-checking on his platform, virtually guaranteeing it will become the same cesspool of disinformation now found on Musk’s X.
Authoritarians and their loyal oligarchs thrive when the public has limited access to accurate and fair reporting. Thomas Jefferson once wrote that an informed electorate is a prerequisite to democracy, which is why our nation’s founders enshrined freedom of the press in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The sunshine that the media can direct toward government officials is a threat to the oligarchs who hope to use the government to further their own interests.
A disinformed electorate, by contrast, is the plaything of demagogues, which is why Trump is threatening to sue or pull broadcast licenses from networks or newspapers that question or investigate his actions. The oligarchs surrounding Trump—whose power was vastly increased by Citizens United—now control the message like never before. They’ll make sure that message is pleasing to the man on the throne.