Book: What The Wealthy Want With America

0:0050 years ago, Congress set out to protect coal miners from black lung disease. Today, it's back at rates not seen in half a century. These guys are being treated like disposable widgets, not human beings. On the Sunday story, why coal miners in Appalachia are getting sicker faster. Listen now to the Sunday story from the Up First podcast on the NPR app.

0:31One of the first rules of political journalism, maybe a top rule of nearly all journalism, is follow the money. But what if we have to say, follow billions of dollars to truly understand who controls this country's political culture, its technology, and even its future? Goj, perhaps you've heard of it, perhaps, which is headed by Elon Musk. Jeff Bezos was very nice. He was terrific. He solved the problem very quickly. How much are you spending, would you say, over the next few years? Oh, gosh. I mean, I think it's probably going to be something like, I don't know, at least$600 billion through 28.

1:17Working with President Trump on this, his commitment to seeing peace, to seeing the hostages return home, to seeing Israel secure and safe, and to seeing the entire Middle East stable and thriving. All familiar names and voices there, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Jared Kushner, the list goes on. Elon Musk dropped roughly$200 million on the 2024 election, then took a job slashing government spending, but not the billions in funding for his own government contracts. Today, he's regarded as the world's first trillionaire, on paper at least. Jeff Bezos' company paid$75 million to acquire and market a documentary about the First Lady.

2:00Mark Zuckerberg donated a million dollars to the president's inaugural fund and was appointed to the president's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology to help shape national innovation and policy on AI. And Jared Kushner has been a key player in the administration's foreign policy while doing billions of dollars in business, sometimes with the very governments he negotiates with, on behalf of the president. I'm Todd Zwilich, in for Jen White. You're listening to the 1A podcast. Today we ask, could the key to understanding the economic and political tides in the U.S. today come down to understanding the richest in this country?

2:38To put it another way, is America now an oligarchy? We'll get to those questions and a lot more right after this short break. Stay with us.

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3:34Follow Trump's Terms on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. The working class. It's a term politicians throw around a lot these days, but do we know what it actually means? Midterm elections are coming up, and on It's Been a Minute, we discuss who these candidates are really talking about. Watch the full It's Been a Minute episode on YouTube or listen in the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

4:04Welcome back to the 1A podcast. We're talking about the political and economic ties of the richest people in the United States today and whether America is now an oligarchy. Casey Mitchell says the rise of the billionaire oligarchy in this country does explain everything from widening inequality to the imperial ambitions of the second Trump administration. Casey joins me now. He's an investigative journalist and the author of the new book, United States of Oligarchy, How Americans' Wealthiest Ally with Dictators Weak in the U.S. and Destroy Democracy. Casey, thanks for being here. Todd, thanks so much for having me.

4:40You know, we've heard about the Gilded Age, robber baron capitalists who wielded immense outsized power at the turn of the century. Railroads, shipping, you know, oil, you name it. We're going to talk about them. Are we in a new Gilded Age now? Well, look, I don't think it's any surprise that a lot of folks looking for a historic parallel for what we're going through right now look to the Gilded Age as the one that is the most resonant with what we are going through right now. And for good reason, you know, you just listed, Todd, a couple of the realities that folks in the United States were dealing with in the late 19th, early 20th century.

5:18These titans of industry, tycoons or robber barons as they are remembered, right? The Carnegies, the Vanderbilts, the Rockefellers, and so on, and how they use that well for their own personal and, of course, corporate enrichment as well. And yes, there are plenty of parallels with what we're going through now versus what we went through then. There is one key difference, though, and that comes down to scope and scale. What we're talking about now in the 2020s is a matter of magnitudes more than what even those wealthiest figures in the United States were dealing with and had to their name. I mean, the one data point that comes to mind for me is John D.

5:53Rockefeller, who was, of course, the wealthiest of the bunch. When he died, he was worth about the modern equivalent of$30 billion, which, look, that's plenty of money, of course. I don't think I'm going to see$30 billion in my lifetime, at least not yet. But if you compare it to what an Elon Musk or a Jeff Bezos or a Mark Zuckerberg are worth these days, that's – unfortunately, that's pocket change. So the scope, the scale, the magnitude of the wealth inequality that we're facing now in the 2020s makes even the Gilded Age pale in comparison. So let's get a definition here. What's the difference between the super rich, the super rich with power, because the super rich have always had power, and an oligarch?

6:34What's special about that designation? So one of the tricky things about putting this book together was realizing that the definition of an oligarch, the definition of oligarchy, has been contested not just throughout American history but really going back millennia. We have one figure in particular to thank for that, a gentleman who goes by the name of Aristotle, who was the first one who popularized the term oligarchy. And as he saw it, it's not just the literal definition, the literal root of the term oligarch, which actually means rule of the few. You have to have that additional component.

7:07It's not just the number of people. It's also those wealthiest individuals. So those who have the most wealth brought to bear and are able to use that wealth to rule a state or a nation or an empire. So again, it's those fewest, yes, but also those wealthiest. So, Todd, the question is, where does a super rich and an oligarch begin? It's not a hard and fast definition. It can be in the eye of a beholder. But if you want to talk about the 2020s and the United States of America, certainly as I define it and others have defined it, it is that wealthiest class of individuals, those five or seven or 10 centibillionaires, of course, in Elon Musk's case, trillionaire.

7:48I mean, I think the thing that comes to mind that you and I'm sure plenty of others remember is Donald Trump's second inauguration in January of 2025. When you had, of course, not just Trump and his family in the inner circle there, the U.S. Capitol, but you had Elon Musk, you had Jeff Bezos, you had Mark Zuckerberg and a small number of other mega donors, those supporting Donald Trump's rise, really lining up oligarchy right there front and center. It's few times that you get moments like that that encapsulates what an oligarchy actually looks like right there in the United States. Now, all of those captains of industry, those oligarchs as you designate them, were in the shot because Donald Trump wanted them there.

8:28He put them there. Why do you think so? What was the advantage for him in staging that shot? What did he want us to see? Well, for him, there were certainly political considerations. There's plenty of ego considerations as well. But I think taking the political dynamic first and foremost, this was him illustrating that he stood atop this oligarchic cast. He was, if you'd like, the kind of first among equals. And of course he is, right? He's the man who's the actual president. He's no longer just a private sector billionaire or real estate investor or reality TV mogul. He is the one that has been able to claw his way to the top not only of the American political establishment but American oligarchy itself.

9:07So that was a way of him illustrating where true power lay. And of course, at the end of the day, who his oligarchic allies were and who he could turn to for that much more wealth or financial support should he need it. And of course, you do then, as you mentioned earlier, Todd, have the intersection of those private corporate interests and public policy, which these oligarchs themselves are all too happy to take full advantage of so long as it benefits them and their companies. Nancy from Buffalo says basically the concept of oligarchy isn't new. It's been the model of this country since day one.

9:39It's basically what the Europeans had as monarchy, but here it's based on money, not genetics. This isn't a new concept, as you've made clear, Casey. Jeffrey Winters, the political scientist, maybe this is controversial, he's written that the founding fathers themselves were oligarchs. They were the robber barons of the Gilded Age. We've mentioned them. We've had Vanderbilts. We've had Carnegie's. You mentioned Rockefeller's. And you say the difference now is scope and scale. What else about Elon Musk and the other oligarchs in that shot at the inauguration makes them stand out? Well, look, of course, you're talking about the magnitudes of wealth.

10:19As much work as I put into this book, as much time as I've spent, of course, working on wealth and equality. Todd, I will say I was still somewhere between surprised and shocked at the fact that we now have, at least as of recently, the world's first trillionaire here in 2026. Again, we're talking about magnitudes of difference between what we've seen before. There's another element, which I think Nancy gestures at in her question or her comment, in that, yes, of course we've seen oligarchic elements throughout American history. And yes, there's absolutely an argument that the founding fathers themselves, who were some of the wealthiest individuals of those colonial states, those could qualify as oligarchs.

10:56But you also have this tension, this through line throughout American history of forces and figures pushing against these kinds of oligarchic networks and this kind of oligarchic consolidation, right? It goes back to not only the initial efforts at implementing things like income taxes and inheritance taxes, but even figures like Teddy Roosevelt. Think of reformers in the mid-20th century. And of course, you see the rise of this kind of anti-oligarchic rhetoric here in the 2020s. So you have these two parallel tracks throughout American history that seem to kind of crest and fall in tandem with one another.

11:28And what we're seeing now is simply the biggest of the bunch, the furthest that things have been pushed before. And, of course, an administration in Washington that is more open to these oligarchic alliances than anything we have seen in American history. Well, so many of the oligarchs of the past who we've mentioned, they've drilled and sold oil or they've built and operated railroads or shipping or finance. That's the past. The oligarchs of today, at least the ones that we've mentioned, all seem to have something in common. It's tech. Listen to billionaire and Palantir founder Peter Thiel, what he had to say about technology and democracy last July.

12:08He was on the conservative news talk show The Rubin Report. One of the ways our society works, one of the ways liberal democracy or representative government works, is that you have a scientific technological progress going on in the background. You have growth. The pie is growing. If the pie grows, we can find creative ways to shift the pieces so that everybody gets more. And the pie stops growing when there is no progress. Then you end up with this polarized world with these zero-sum politics. Peter Thiel is an example, Casey, of one of the tech. I don't know if he qualifies as an oligarch in your view, but he has a view of the future of tech and democracy and concentration of power among tech titans that really stands out.

12:58And he's starting to scratch around the edges of it there in that commentary. What's unique about the current combination of the super rich and the technology that they're building and increasingly control? Well, you know, there are elements that are old in what they're talking about, this kind of tension that Peter Thiel highlights over and again between capitalism, as he sees it, and freedom, as he describes it. This idea that his personal net worth should never be subject to any kind of taxation, any kind of democratic checks, and should only be used by him and his other elite oligarchic allies is something that we have seen dynamics of throughout American history.

13:36Of course, this has been a tension among America's wealthiest class in the past. who've always been opposed to increased taxation. But we're seeing now, again, as you said, Todd, is the intersection of this new emergent, not only tech oligarchy, but this tech vision for an anti-democratic future, doing anything and everything they can to use this emerging technology, whether it's crypto, whether it's AI especially. You could even extend that, I suppose, to things like the expansion of prediction markets to corrode and corrupt American democracy, to grind the gears of American statecraft and to eventually do whatever they need to to implement a kind of anti-democratic, even authoritarian governance structure in which as they see themselves, they are then rightfully ruling over.

14:22Again, this kind of bleeds into the ideological elements. It's not just financial. It's not just their own net worth. They have this underpinning ideology that they, among everyone else, are the rightful rulers or should be the rightful rulers because of their wealth themselves. They see themselves as these great men athwart history. And who are we to get in their way? I want to talk about some of the direct links between the oligarchs that you describe and the administration currently running the country. Let's go through some numbers real quick. Earlier this month, The Washington Post reported that 15 companies with investment from Donald Trump's sons have scored$3.2 billion in federal contracts, investments in loans, most coming after Trump took office for the second time.

15:07According to another analysis by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee as of January of 2026, digital schemes like cryptocurrency project meme coins run by President Trump and his companies have contributed to an estimated$2.25 billion in realized profits for President Trump with as much as$600 million coming from foreign interests through the world of technology. The Trump brothers have said that their investments in companies seeking defense contracts are aligned with patriotic goals, create jobs. Oligarchs and captains of industry often make that argument that what they do creates jobs.

15:48What about the nexus of power and money now between the administration and some of the oligarchs you describe? Is it new because the super rich, the guys building the railroads, they had access to the Oval Office too. So what's different? Well, look, there's, again, a couple key differences. One being the fact that we have never seen an administration that is this public, this almost gleeful in how it portrays its ability to mix both public and private interests. Of course, that being with the Trump family itself. We have never seen the levels of self-enrichment from a president and his family any time in American history.

16:24Yes, there have been corrupt administrations. Yes, there have been corruption scandals under the Nixon administration, the Hartigan administration, the Grant administration. You could go on. But we've never seen it placed this front and center, and we've certainly never seen it direct policy in the ways that it has. Simultaneous to that, yes, we've also never seen, again, the kind of rise of the oligarchic class mixing with an administration. Trump being one of their own, Trump being open to business with them, and they knowing exactly how to turn American policy to their benefit. The White House has never been this open for the kind of corrupt crony capitalism that, of course, is benefiting these figures, the Musks, the Bezoses, the Zuckerbergs, and the Trump children.

17:04Again, you mentioned earlier, Todd, that previous oligarchs, the current crop of American oligarchs, they at least have some kind of skill set, whether it is in managing companies, whether it's in coding, whether it's whatever it might be, even the kind of creation of new industries. When it comes to, certainly in this case, the second generation of the Trumps, figures like Jared Kushner, who have themselves become significantly more wealthy than ever before. And again, kind of joining this oligarchic class, there is no skill set to speak of. It's simply access to power, proximity to the White House that has generated all of this staggering and, yes, corrupt wealth for themselves.

17:40Well, you mentioned Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of the president. I want to talk – he takes up a lot of real estate in your book. I want to talk more about him after we go to a break in just a minute here. And we're going to talk about the curious case of Jared Kushner because he's been in the news lately, some of his business interests overseas and in places like Albania. What about Citizens United? Let's just touch on this real quickly. People are familiar with it. It broke down a lot of the walls of private super PAC spending on campaigns. Somebody like Elon Musk can't really drop$200 million on a campaign without Citizens United.

18:18What's been the effect there? So we were talking earlier, Todd, about how one of the key differences being the scope and the scale, the sheer magnitude of both wealth inequality and, of course, the amount of wealth pooling around the oligarchs in the 2020s. And that's absolutely true. But there is one key shift, one key difference between the current crop of oligarchs and any kind of previous examples in American history. And that is the collapse of American campaign finance regulations. Over the last century, even going back to the mid-19th century, there have been efforts to corral political donations into the United States.

18:49But right now, the collapse of Citizens United, the decision of Citizens United and collapse of campaign finance has opened the floodgates in ways we've never seen before. We're going to talk more about it. Here's a number to take with you to the break on that topic. topic. 2025 analysis from Americans for Tax Fairness found that just 100 billionaire families poured a record-breaking$2.6 billion into United States federal elections in 2024. One out of every six dollars in that campaign. Hold that thought. We're going to come back to that kind of influence. Stay with us.

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20:18Let's get back now to our conversation with investigative journalist and author Casey Michelle. His new book is called United States of Oligarchy, How America's Wealthiest Ally with Dictators Weak in the U.S. and Destroy Democracy. We got this question from Frank. I just got a copy of Casey's brilliant book. Frank says, my question, should there be legislation to curb the excessive political influence of the richest Americans? Before the break, Casey, we were just talking. about Citizens United and the destruction of campaign finance strictures, especially at the federal level, Frank says, do we need a law?

21:00Look, Frank, first things first, of course, thank you for buying a copy of the book. Very much hope you enjoy. And to answer your question, yes, absolutely. There has to be significant legal reform. There have to be efforts to overturn Citizens United. Maybe that's through an amendment process. Maybe that's through something else. And of course, beyond that, there has to be efforts to patch up all of the rampant loopholes in America's campaign finance architecture, both at the federal level as well as at the state level. Of course, the book has more details about how that can be done. But if you're not dealing with campaign finance reform, putting that front and center, then all of these other efforts at beating back corruption, all of these efforts at, frankly, beating back oligarchy, those are going to be stillborn.

21:38Those are not going to be going anywhere. where it has to come down to first and foremost campaign finance reform in the United States. So let's talk a little bit more then about Jared Kushner, because he doesn't need campaign finance to influence policy in America. He's at the center of it. The president is his father-in-law. And even though he's not employed, as far as I know, by the U.S. government, he does traipse around the world negotiating on behalf of the president. Let's go back to 2021. Former President Joe Biden is sworn in. Jared Kushner launches his concern called Affinity Partners.

22:13Now, you write this, Casey, in the book. The pitch deck from a new investment fund called Affinity Partners was one of the most laughable presentations the potential investors had ever seen. Consisting of 20 black and white slides, the PowerPoint resembled something an undergraduate would have put together. That's an end quote. And yet, only one investor mattered, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, MBS Mohammed bin Salman. Pick up the story of Affinity Partners from there. How has it become a vehicle for Jared Kushner, not only to enrich himself, but what does it tell us about your overall critique of oligarchy in America now?

22:51Well, look, so Jared Kushner, he leaves office along with his father in early 2021. He sets up this new private investment vehicle, even though he has no prior experience in private investing. He suddenly starts going around the world and asking for foreign governments to plow billions of dollars into his new private equity fund. And he actually goes to Saudi Arabia and makes this pitch. And the Saudi officials that he talks to, they initially say no. They don't want anything to do with him. He has yesterday's news. He doesn't know what he's going to do with the money. But of course, there's only one person that matters.

23:21That's the crown prince, the dictator in Saudi Arabia, MBS, who overrules them and says, no, no, we are going to maintain this relationship with Jared Kushner. We're going to send him billions of dollars. He can do what he wants with it. But most importantly, we are going to keep him in our pocket. And it's not just the Saudis that say this. Eventually, the UAE says this. Eventually, Qatar says this. Other governments around the world realize just how open for business Jared Kushner truly is. And even if he's not in office in the early 2020s, who's to say what the next few years will hold? And of course, here we are in 2026.

23:55And Jared Kushner is now the most powerful, most important diplomat in the United States, overseeing everything from Gaza and Israel policy to Russia, Ukraine policy to, of course, Iran policy. And all the while, as you just said, Todd, acting as if he's not actually a public member and doing public service, a member of the federal government acting like he's only doing his patriotic duty. And it's funny how his private interests can so often align what he sees as his patriotic duty as well. Well, some of this, Casey, some of this isn't without precedent. In a sense, I mean, Jimmy Carter's brother, Billy, was problematic back in the day in a lot of ways, but he moonlighted as a lobbyist for Muammar Gaddafi of Libya.

24:36Hunter Biden, of course, attracted a lot of attention, got in a lot of hot water, especially with the right over his attempts to cash in on the family name in Ukraine and Romania. Major distraction for the Biden presidency, to say the least. What's fundamentally different here? If you're Jared Kushner or Donald Trump, you'd point and say, well, they did it. But one key difference is their fathers did not appoint them to oversee the single most important geopolitical hotspots to become the centerpiece of American foreign policy. For as much damage as Billy Carter or Hunter Biden may have done, they were never specifically appointed to oversee the most important portfolios in American foreign policy.