President Donald Trump was sworn into office at the U.S. Capitol rotunda on Monday in an unusually quiet affair for a presidential inauguration. Gone were the roaring crowds of years past, which had reached into the millions at their height. In their place was a small inner circle of some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the nation’s history, who alone got to witness the transfer of power.
While wealth and power have never been out of place at an inauguration, the sheer concentration of it stood out on Monday. In one row alone sat Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg (with a reported net worth of $211.8 billion), Amazon’s Jeff Bezos ($239.4 billion), Tesla’s Elon Musk ($433.9 billion) and Apple’s Tim Cook ($2.2 billion). By means of comparison, the combined net worth of the lower half of the American population is just under $4 trillion; the combined net worth of these four men is a little under $1 trillion.
The tech industry has cleaved onto the new administration with the promise of increasing their already astronomical wealth, with Musk going so far as to take an administration job and reportedly work from an office in the White House. Other tech CEOs in attendance included OpenAI’s Sam Altman ($1.1 billion) and Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong ($12.8 billion).
However, they’re hardly the only representatives of the ultra-wealthy who’ve thrown themselves in with the former and incoming President. Other billionaire attendees include Israeli American casino owner and megadonor Miriam Adelson ($31.9 billion), media mogul Rupert Murdoch ($22.2 billion) and luxury goods magnate Bernard Arnault ($179.6 billion). Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, who appears poised to reach billionaire status soon, beamed as he shared friendly exchanges with his soon-to-be peers.
It’s not a new development for the ultra-rich to hold immense influence in American politics. The combined net worth of President Joe Biden’s Cabinet was roughly $120 million. That figure, however, is dwarfed by the roughly $20 billion combined net worth of Trump’s presumptive Cabinet, assuming they all get confirmed. It stands to be the wealthiest Cabinet in American history, yet it doesn’t include figures like Musk, who won’t require Senate confirmation.
Such a display at the inauguration makes clear that American oligarchy is stronger than ever.
In many ways, the relationship between the oligarch class and Trump is a two-way street. In exchange for access to their coffers and platforms, Trump has provided them with influence — and in the case of Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, direct access to the policy-making process through the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. Trump in turn has sought ways to cash in on the new tech gold rush, launching his own “meme coin,” or cryptocurrency token, in honor of the inauguration. The crypto holdings are worth — at the moment — roughly $58 billion.
IT’S EVEN WORSE THAN WE THOUGHT.
What we’re seeing right now from Donald Trump is a full-on authoritarian takeover of the U.S. government.
This is not hyperbole.
Court orders are being ignored. MAGA loyalists have been put in charge of the military and federal law enforcement agencies. The Department of Government Efficiency has stripped Congress of its power of the purse. News outlets that challenge Trump have been banished or put under investigation.
Yet far too many are still covering Trump’s assault on democracy like politics as usual, with flattering headlines describing Trump as “unconventional,” “testing the boundaries,” and “aggressively flexing power.”
The Intercept has long covered authoritarian governments, billionaire oligarchs, and backsliding democracies around the world. We understand the challenge we face in Trump and the vital importance of press freedom in defending democracy.
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IT’S BEEN A DEVASTATING year for journalism — the worst in modern U.S. history.
We have a president with utter contempt for truth aggressively using the government’s full powers to dismantle the free press. Corporate news outlets have cowered, becoming accessories in Trump’s project to create a post-truth America. Right-wing billionaires have pounced, buying up media organizations and rebuilding the information environment to their liking.
In this most perilous moment for democracy, The Intercept is fighting back. But to do so effectively, we need to grow.
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I’M BEN MUESSIG, The Intercept’s editor-in-chief. It’s been a devastating year for journalism — the worst in modern U.S. history.
We have a president with utter contempt for truth aggressively using the government’s full powers to dismantle the free press. Corporate news outlets have cowered, becoming accessories in Trump’s project to create a post-truth America. Right-wing billionaires have pounced, buying up media organizations and rebuilding the information environment to their liking.
In this most perilous moment for democracy, The Intercept is fighting back. But to do so effectively, we need to grow.
That’s where you come in. Will you help us expand our reporting capacity in time to hit the ground running in 2026?
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