Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
Today, we’re chatting about this with Casey Michel, a reporter who covers lobbying and influence peddling and wrote a good piece for The New Republic on the coming resurgence of kleptocracy in the Trump era. Thanks for coming back on, Casey.
Sargent: In his rant, Trump said this, “It would be helpful if you would not send, or recommend to us, people who worked with, or are endorsed by ...” and then he listed a number of people. He cited Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney, and Mike Pence, of course, and “birdbrain” Nikki Haley and a bunch of others. He accused them of suffering from “Trump Derangement Syndrome” and so forth. Casey, everyone laughed at this, but it actually seems to send a pretty serious message: Criticize Trump and you might be on the outs forever, no matter how anxiously you suck up to him later and repent like Nikki Haley now. Is this a warning?
Sargent: Yes. On this weekend, Trump will have his inauguration where we’ll see D.C. absolutely overrun with the most obsequious loyalists you can imagine. We’re already learning some pretty awful stuff. The chief executive of TikTok has been invited to sit on the dais, and all these tech oligarchs will have positions of honor—Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos. All the parties for inaugural weekend are like a big coming-out moment for the tech oligarchy and the Silicon Valley elite. Lots of companies are pouring millions of dollars into Trump’s inaugural committee. What do you make of Trump openly giving a place of honor to these elites this way, Casey?
What we see is, for lack of a better term, truly an oligarchy emerging in the United States of America. And I don’t think it’s any surprise that that is really the term of art we have seen bandied about so much since Trump’s election victory. I wasn’t even necessarily surprised to see our current President Biden, in his farewell address, warn about the rise of this new oligarchic class, because that is really the key distinction for what we are seeing buttressing Trump this time around.
Michel: Yes, absolutely, there is. There’s a wide opening that’s getting bigger and bigger by the day. Again, much of that is related directly to the actions of the Mark Zuckerbergs, the Jeff Bezoses and, of course, the Elon Musks of the world, leading them wide open to the criticism that is right there for the taking if only Democrats lean in on it. The farewell address that we saw from Biden was right on the money, warning about this emerging class of oligarchs and the threat they pose to democracy in the U.S. and, frankly, around the world at this point as well. This was something that I wish we had seen from President Biden months, if not years, before, but I do think this is one of those speeches that folks are going to be talking about for a long, long time, especially as the threat of this oligarchic class only grows more salient, both domestically as well as internationally.
Michel: It’s a culmination of trends that were years, if not decades, in the making: the lifting of caps on things like campaign spending, the opacity surrounding so much political money swirling around Washington. It’s worth highlighting the fact, though, that it’s frankly not just these American oligarchs that are celebrating Trump’s return to the White House. This is part of a global cast of characters of generally authoritarian regimes with their oligarchic proxies that are now salivating at the prospect of a new administration. They will not be targeted with sanctions. They will not be prosecuted. They will not be investigated. And frankly, they can use their money as much as these American oligarchs are in terms of influencing and accessing the Trump White House. This is really what it portends: an opening to any deep pocketed individual, whether American or not, to the White House, to the highest rungs of American power.
Michel: No, Greg, and that’s a key point. We have never seen something like this before. Of course, the common refrain is that, yes, we have seen these plutocratic elements and things like the Gilded Age with robber barons in American history, but we have never seen such a singular cohort of so many deep-pocketed individuals with direct access to the White House. And beyond that, we have certainly never seen a president like Donald Trump who completely blurs and dissolves the lines between private interests and public policy.
Sargent: Yeah. I want to try to go back and go big picture in another way. In 2016, Donald Trump ran as the guy who knows that elites are corrupt. He ran as the guy who was a member of the corrupt elite. He had seen corruption from the inside. He understood how double-dealing worked. He would put his knowledge of inside corruption to work on behalf of the American people. It occurs to me that we’re not even hearing him say that now. At this point, what he’s basically saying is, We’re just going to have a big party and loot the place blind from top to bottom. There’s not any explicit declaration of why all this dealing with elites, all this deal making in public, why it will help the American people or the country. Is there?
Sargent: It’s funny, when we see the inauguration this weekend and we see Zuckerberg and Musk and Bezos up there on the dais—all of those three people have explicitly and obsequiously paid tribute to Trump. Musk spent $250 million or something like that to help him get elected; Zuckerberg recently just canceled fact-checking at Meta in keeping with what Trump wants, using Trumpian language about fact-checking; and Bezos canceled the editorial endorsing Kamala Harris and defended it with complete bullshit. They’re all just celebrating the fact that they’ve got their MAGA king, and they’re going to pay tribute to him in public. And it’s all good, everybody wins.
Sargent: There’s a history here. We’ve said this on the show before: In 2004, George W. Bush looked invincible. He looked a little like Trump does now. The Republican Party was in lockstep behind him; Bush seemed to have total control over the information environment with the Iraq War. But then after 2004, things started to unravel through a combination of incompetence and, importantly, corruption. A big part of the story of the 2006 midterm gains by Democrats was that they campaigned hard against corruption on the part of Republicans. And I don’t think Trump can actually tame the press here in the U.S. He can do them some damage—he can kill an editorial here, he can get a suck-up profile of Melania there. But we’re going to see some aggressive reporting on the emerging corruption, and that could start to really damage them.
Sargent: I want to talk a little more about what you said earlier, about how Democrats can really go hard at this. There’s basically a skepticism or cynicism on the part of a lot of people who say, OK, everybody’s corrupt in Washington. Trump is just doing exactly what’s been done there for years and decades and so forth. And there’s probably some reason to worry that the public tunes out a lot of it. But at the same time, the public hates corruption in Washington, and it turns on the party in power. It is going to require Democrats to keep up the heat and make the case, though, to keep the spotlight shined on this stuff. How would you advise Democrats to tell people that kleptocracy and oligarchy is bad, that it matters?
It’s also about Congress. We saw some of this actually in Trump’s first term as well as in the aftermath. It’s about congressional investigations highlighting the role and realities of what the Trump administration is doing to benefit Donald Trump himself—whether it is investigations into the Trump Organization or to some of the shell companies that are operating or whatever the actual manifestation of that is. I was always pleasantly surprised by the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations or the Senate Finance. Whatever it might be, congressional investigators really took the reins in guiding the American public to the corruption of the first Trump administration. They have to do that the second time around.
Michel: Absolutely. It is highlighting the relationship between oligarchy, wealth inequality, and day-to-day living expenses—things getting tougher, things getting more expensive, being unable to find childcare, being unable to find elder care. This is all part and parcel of a broader messaging that has to focus on just how unfair this economy now is for those Americans on the ground with those benefiting at the top surrounding Donald Trump.
Michel: Yes, 100 percent. And of course, there are other elements: national security concerns, intelligence concerns, so on and so forth. But it really comes down to the bread-and-butter issues that we know move so many American voters.
Michel: Yes. Look, it is worth folks reading up on the history of organized crime, both in the U.S. as well as elsewhere, and the internal governance structures and governance modes that we have seen in these mafiosi organized groups. That is an absolute indication of the leadership style and governance structure we are set to see here in the U.S., and, frankly, across many authoritarian regimes around the world.
Michel: The mafia state is basically exactly as it sounds. It is effectively state capture, the seizure of the levers of state power by those who either are or certainly appear to be members of organized crime groups. It is basically statewide racketeering all for the benefit of the rulers in power. Again, this gets back to the root of kleptocracy, which literally means rule of thieves. It is those in power that are the ones benefiting, while those on the ground, those voters around the country, are the ones that are suffering day in and day out without any way to actually get that government out of power.
Michel: I’m not comfortable saying the U.S. is imminently headed from mafia state status. But certainly in the longer run, if this is the governance style we are set to see for years, maybe decades to come, then folks are generally familiar with how things in Putin’s Russia currently look like: a one-party state, a dictator in power for years and years, benefiting him and the oligarchic class underneath him.
Sargent: To bring it back one more time to Nikki Haley and Republicans in Trump’s weird rant: He’s basically telling people that this is going to be a government for friends that punishes enemies, right? The warning is part of what you’re talking about. It’s part of this evolution toward this not mafia state but Orbán-esque government, right?
And again, as you said, Greg, it is a warning and further indication that there is nothing Trump prizes more than loyalty and fealty, not to any policies but to Trump the man, Trump the president, and Trump himself. The humiliation then really is the warning itself. It doesn’t matter what you say, it doesn’t matter even how much you criticize but then kiss the ring, you are still opening yourself up for public national humiliation at the end of the day.
Sargent: Well, this is going to be a real learning experience for all of us. And Casey, you’re pretty well-positioned to capitalize because you’ve covered this stuff a long time, and you’ve got books all about kleptocracy.
Sargent: Not only is it going to explode, it’s going to go into supernova mode now. Casey Michel, thanks so much for coming on, man.
Sargent: Folks, make sure to check out some great new content we have up at tnr.com: Kate Aronoff arguing that if the rich really did flee L.A. and the wildfire wake, rebuilding might actually be easier, and Matt Ford on the right-wing judge who’s on a mission to destroy ESG retirement plan. And check out the latest episode of Deep State Radio on the DSR Network as Jen Rubin and Norm Eisen join David Rothkopf to discuss the future of pro-democracy media as traditional outlets further bend the knee to Trump. We’ll see you all next week.
You’ve been listening to The Daily Blast with me, your host, Greg Sargent. The Daily Blast is a New Republic podcast and is produced by Riley Fessler and the DSR Network.
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