Entering his second term, President Donald Trump ripped the curtain off the myth of U.S. democracy being “of, by and for the people.” So far, at least 14 billionaires, including Trump, and several multimillionaires now have key roles in his cabal, making Trump’s second administration the richest in U.S. history.

Trump chose billionaire hedge fund manager Scott Bessent as treasury secretary and Linda McMahon, another billionaire, as education secretary. Billionaire Zionist Howard Lutnick was appointed as commerce secretary and Silicon Valley multibillionaire David Sacks as “White House AI and Crypto Czar,” a position without historical precedence.

While Trump has thrown open the doors for billionaires, he is bulldozing progressive programs that workers fought for and won under previous administrations, and he is eliminating regulations that restricted just how destructive companies could be in their drive for superprofits. 

He is targeting immigrants, transgender people, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs and historic Civil Rights legislation going back to the Lyndon Johnson administration. Trump has plans to target rights of people of color, women, unions, worker protection legislation, environmental protections and programs for low-income and disabled people, seniors, children and more.

Due to the weather, Trump’s inauguration was moved inside the Capitol building, limiting attendance. But he made sure to have the richest billionaires standing by his side. 

His guests included tech and social media billionaires Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Apple CEO Tim Cook, X and Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon. Musk, Bezos and Zuckerberg are the three richest people on earth, with a combined wealth of nearly $1 trillion.

In 2024, the world’s billionaires got $2 trillion richer — by roughly $5.7 billion a day. Trump benefited from this concentration of wealth as 44% of the $1.2 billion given to support his campaign came from just 10 individual donors. (Brennan Center for Justice, Jan. 21)

During the ceremony, Elon Musk was caught giving a Nazi-type salute twice. Musk, the world’s richest person, who gave over $277 million to two super PACs that supported Trump, was a leading figure among those who funded Trump’s campaign. Musk, who frequently appeared at Trump rallies, is now playing a pivotal role in shaping  his administration’s policy.  

Musk’s salute to would-be dictator Trump was not by accident. Trump has essentially given Musk the keys to the federal coffers, putting him in charge of the federal cost-cutting effort, as head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). This department was created to “modernize federal technology and software to maximize government efficiency and productivity” to reduce government spending.

During Trump’s presidential campaign, Musk said DOGE could cut the $6.75 trillion-dollar federal budget by $2 trillion — a 30% decrease. There is concern that DOGE will target federal spending for Social Security benefits, Medicare and Medicaid, but so far DOGE has focused on cancelling government contracts involving DEI programs and leases on empty buildings previously housing federal programs. Under the Constitution, only Congress can change the federal budget.

Capitalists’ intervention in government

In “Expanding Empire,” a pamphlet written in 1969 during the Vietnam War, Workers World Party founding member Vince Copeland noted that ruling-class dynasties historically did not openly intervene in government. Instead, they relied on using cabinet appointments to represent their business interests. Big Oil — the Rockefellers — usually picked the secretaries of state. The Morgan family dynasty determined the secretaries of defense. Major banking interests were behind appointees to the Federal Reserve.

However, during periods of capitalist crisis, members of capitalist families, particularly the Rockefellers, would assume government positions to ensure that business ran as usual.

As capitalism faced an increasing global crisis in recent decades, in 2010 the ruling class pressured the Supreme Court to pass Citizens United, eliminating any oversight of ruling-class financing for candidates in elections. In the years that followed, the American Legislative Exchange Council emerged to promote cookie-cutter legislation on state levels to push forward the ruling class’s agenda.

Yet for over a decade the U.S. ruling class has been faced with crisis after crisis challenging Washington’s global hegemony. War after imperialist wars have left the U.S. deeper in debt but no closer to achieving its goals of confining Russia or defeating socialist China. The emergence of the Global South — with BRICS (first Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa and now including other countries) and other financial developments challenging U.S. capitalism — has created yet another major crisis.

The $1.8 trillion additional federal budget deficit left from the first Trump administration, when the superrich were given massive tax cuts, now stands in the way of pushing through budgets promoting further tax giveaways to the superrich. Trump may feel he can establish a new dynasty where what he says goes, but he has the workers and oppressed to deal with.

If the Democrats had won the 2024 election, the crisis would be the same. It’s not an issue of the “bad” Republican Party taking these actions vs. the “good” Democrats. Both parties represent the interests of the capitalist class, and they always have. Under capitalism there are also no good billionaires.

The massive concentration of wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer billionaires only means more oppression and poverty for the workers and the oppressed. The only solution is for global solidarity to fight our common class enemy. The only real solution is for a socialist revolution.