America’s new oligarchy: Inside Trump’s billionaire administration

Donald Trump, supposed champion of the working class, is stocking his Cabinet with billionaires. 

That’s a contrast with his first go-round, when he proposed only one billionaire Cabinet pick: Betsy DeVos, as secretary of education, who funneled public funds into private schools.

At the same time, Trump’s billionaire favoritism isn’t much of a surprise, since his campaign was largely funded by the billionaire class. Billionaires, on the whole, quickly forgave Trump after his attempt to overthrow the 2020 election. After all, he promised to further lower their meager tax burden while reminding them of the $1 trillion increase in their wealth during his mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Here’s a breakdown of the monied people who will likely soon be in charge of our government.

Linda McMahon: Secretary of Education

A former professional wrestling magnate and billionaire, McMahon is Trump’s pick to run the Department of Education—something she has even less of a background in than DeVos did. However, considering that Trump and other Republicans have called for the dismantling of the department, putting the former WWE CEO in charge does follow a perverse kind of logic. 

McMahon served in the first Trump administration’s Cabinet as small business administrator before joining the pro-Trump super PAC America First Action. 

Howard Lutnick: Commerce Secretary

A cryptocurrency enthusiast and investment banking billionaire, Lutnick is also a backer of Trump’s potentially disastrous tariff plans. He will oversee a department that includes the Census Bureau, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Patent and Trademark Office, among others. All of those agencies have been earmarked for destruction, slashing, or privatization by the authors of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s plan for a second Trump administration. 

Lutnick, a transition co-chair for Trump, claimed he would not “take a list from [Project 2025],” and Trump spent weeks pretending he had never heard of the wildly unpopular and fascistic plan during his campaign. But now, after the election, things have changed.

Scott Bessent: Treasury Secretary

A billionaire hedge fund manager who openly pushes for austerity measures to reduce the deficit, Bessent was tapped to lead the Treasury Department. That’s likely because he supports Trump’s ill-advised tariff plans, even if those plans are incongruous with his supposed goal of reducing the deficit.

Steven Witkoff: Middle East Envoy

Witkoff made his billions as a New York real estate developer and has ties to oil interests in the region he will likely become a liaison to. Can you say “conflict of interest”? 

Jared Isaacman: NASA administrator

Isaacman, a billionaire via a payment process firm he founded, is an advocate for privatizing space programs. He’s never worked for the government, much less NASA, which Trump tapped him to head up. But hey, he did pay an undisclosed amount of money to Elon Musk’s SpaceX to go to space twice, so that makes him an expert, right?

Warren Stephens: Ambassador to United Kingdom

Trump tapped Stephens, an investment banker and Republican megadonor (what a coincidence!), to be the next ambassador to the U.K. According to The Guardian, “Stephens held a 40% stake in a payday loan company, Integrity Advance, that the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB) took action against in 2015 for allegedly employing predatory lending practices.” Sweet!

Charles Kushner: Ambassador to France

Charles Kushner (family net worth of over $7 billion) is the father of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. Trump pardoned the elder Kushner, a tax fraud felon, and now gives the slumlord an ambassadorship—nothing corrupt to see here!

Elon Musk: Co-Chair of Department of Government Efficiency

What is there to say about the world’s richest mid-life crisis? Musk poured billions into buying Twitter, turned it into X, and made it a right-wing propaganda cesspool in service of Trump’s campaign. His wealth shielded him from meaningful consequences related to his unethical (and possibly illegal) voter-registration lotteries. 

Along with tech bro Vivek Ramaswamy, Musk will head the “Department of Government Efficiency,” which will not officially be part of the government but is instead a planned advisory commission. (In other words, this is not a Cabinet position.)

Vivek Ramaswamy: Co-Chair of Department of Government Efficiency

Ramaswamy made his money by tricking big investors into believing in his burgeoning drug company Roivant Sciences and its miracle Alzheimer’s drug, intepirdine, which he bought at a bargain price from another company after the drug failed four trials. He then sold people on believing the risky reward would be worth it—but it wasn’t. Ramaswamy was able to secure big buyouts, becoming uber-rich while failing, and was free to pretend he was a special kind of businessman. 

Ramaswamy does have one special talent that Trump cherishes: He’s a salesman. 

Many of Trump’s rich-as-hell picks have embraced austerity policies that have already failed western democracies. Their disdain for government projects to help the non-rich is likely to lead to more boom for billionaires and more bust for the American people.

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