BY MATT BERG
& CROOKED MEDIA |
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Please stop pushing your political views onto Village People.”
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Donald Trump’s embrace of the Silicon Valley broligarchy is pushing the U.S. into uncharted territory, creating an environment ripe for unprecedented corruption and self-dealing — to the tune of billions.
- How much do you think a room full of President Donald Trump’s best buddies is worth? Answer: $1 trillion. That’s the combined personal net worth of all the tycoons who assembled to watch him get sworn into office in the Capitol rotunda this morning, according to a What A Day analysis. That absolutely bonkers number is largely thanks to the world’s three richest men — tech gazillionaires Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg — not to mention Trump himself, billionaire Miriam Adelson, and the CEOs of Google, Apple, OpenAI and TikTok. Man of the people! For context, that’s more than the entire economies of South Africa, Romania, Singapore, Belgium, Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates and Kazakhstan… or about 160 other countries.
- And so began Trump’s second term, with a small group of outrageously rich people huddled together indoors to escape the cold as if visiting a cursed hot cocoa bar at the world’s most abominable ski resort. In his inaugural address, Trump villainized Democrats, previewed extremist executive orders, and promised to usher in a “golden age” for Americans. It seems more likely to be a “golden age” for the gold-plated customers in that room — those who kissed Trump’s ring, bankrolled his presidential campaign, or donated millions to his inaugural committee.
- Those ultra-billionaires and tech moguls literally bought better seats, sitting in front of members of Trump’s own cabinet. If that doesn’t symbolize Trump’s domination over the communications platforms in the United States and his blatant disregard for corruption and self-dealing, I don’t know what does.
Trump, naturally, used the weekend before his inauguration to launch one of his wildest get-rich-quick schemes ever, a preview of his attitude toward his new job.
- Over the weekend, Trump launched a memecoin (a type of cryptocurrency) and its value exploded — pushing his own stake to a whopping $58 billion. That meant his new crypto holdings were suddenly 89 percent of his personal net worth, according to Axios, making him one of the 25 richest people in the world. But there’s nothing shady to see here! The memecoin “has nothing to do with any political campaign or any political office,” the coin’s website states, despite releasing it literally right before he took office. Right!
- It’s a cliché to point out that, before Trump, a scheme like this to make billions on the highest office in the land would have been completely unacceptable. After all, that’s the expert consensus of what just happened here: “It is literally cashing in on the presidency — creating a financial instrument so people can transfer money to the president’s family in connection with his office” Adav Noti, executive director of Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit ethics group, told the New York Times. (Note: It’s difficult to put an exact number on how much Trump actually made, but everyone seems to agree that Trump is grifting his supporters.)
- In the long run, Trump’s own public disregard for corruption might one day be a gift to Democrats, according to New York Times columnist Ezra Klein: “Most Americans do think it's wrong. The oligarchs literally lining up behind him may eventually wish they hadn't. Being the face of this is good business now. But in 4 years?”
If there’s one thing we’ve learned since January 20, 2020, it’s that you can’t predict what the U.S. will look like in the next four years. Tread carefully, broligarchs.
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- Close the southern border for migrants seeking asylum
- Declare an end to birthright citizenship (which is guaranteed in the Constitution)
- Officially recognize only two genders
- Remove protections for transgender prisoners and migrants in detention
- Order the establishment of an “External Revenue Service” to collect tariffs
- Declare a national energy emergency to help speed up the building of pipelines and power plants
- Roll back regulations that hamper domestic energy production, made it easier to drill for oil and gas in the Alaskan wilderness
- Scrap programs intended to protect poor communities who suffer from large amounts of pollution
He also promised to rename the Gulf of Mexico to be the “Gulf of America,” and to land Americans on Mars. Elon Musk is probably giggling and kicking his feet somewhere. Or maybe he’s just rolling his eyes around in his head, like he did at Trump’s inaugural today, and looking like he’s tripping balls.
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Many people online accused Elon Musk of making a Nazi salute during a speech at Capitol One arena today. Others said Musk was symbolically throwing his heart to the crowd, which seems plausible when you watch the clip. Still, it does look unnervingly like a Nazi salute, and anyone with that large of a platform should be more careful. Always just a “best practice” not to act in ways that make people think of the Third Reich!
China signaled that it’s open to ByteDance selling TikTok, its wildly popular video-sharing app, to keep it from shutting down in the United States. This reversal comes as Donald Trump promises to make a deal to save the app after Congress banned it due to national security concerns. Reminder: Trump wanted to ban TikTok years ago, so let’s not credit him with any deals here!
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The era of disinformation is upon us. Meta just announced they're moving to end their fact-checking program. On this week's episode of Offline, Lina Khan, Commissioner of the US Federal Trade Commission joins us to talk about her fight to break up Amazon & Meta. Tune into this episode now, on the Offline feed, or on our YouTube channel!
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