January 16, 2025 - 8:00pm

In his farewell address, Joe Biden warned that the shadow of oligarchy was falling over the nation: “Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead”.

Biden’s whole presidency has been defined by the search for monsters at home who allegedly threaten “our entire democracy” or the “soul of the nation.” Two years ago, it was the “MAGA Republicans” who constituted an existential threat to American democracy. Now, it’s apparently oligarchy. Biden’s objection, though, may less be about the concentration of wealth and more about the political allegiance of the ultra-wealthy. After all, he awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to progressive billionaire George Soros earlier this month.

The outgoing President’s remarks come at a time of tech realignment. Biden entered office when progressive elites hoped to use Silicon Valley to construct a digital bulwark against populism. Social media companies censored damaging stories about Hunter Biden, for instance, and the Biden administration pushed tech companies to censor certain coronavirus-related posts, as Mark Zuckerberg recently recounted on Joe Rogan’s podcast. But this alliance has now broken down. Some tech titans have soured on the reign of wokeness and have grown frustrated with the policy status quo under Biden. As a result, Donald Trump has found new friends in the digital elite.

Democrats seem as though they would love to tilt against the GOP as the party of plutocrats. But these attacks are in tension with the reality that the Democratic Party is increasingly reliant upon affluent voters, and has billionaire allies of its own (as Scott Bessent pointed out to Bernie Sanders today). While Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan angered much of the business elite with her aggressive approach to antitrust policy, some in Kamala Harris’s inner circle were pushing her to find someone else to head the FTC if she won the presidency. Evidently, there remains a divide between populists like Bernie Sanders and Harris’s boardroom progressivism.

Republicans show their own tensions on tech. Along with other populists, J.D. Vance has praised Lina Khan’s record on antitrust enforcement. In addition, Trump’s new nominee to head the FTC, Andrew Ferguson, has pledged to “repeal burdensome regulations” but also to focus on “antitrust enforcement against Big Tech monopolies.” Mark Meador, another Trump appointee to the FTC, has also called for increased policing of corporate concentration. Trump’s new FTC might be more focused in its antimonopoly efforts than was Khan, but it might not ignore them completely.

This alliance with tech has opportunities and risks for the new Trump administration. Economic vitality and technological innovation — on space exploration, for instance — clearly fit into an American greatness agenda. The unwinding of speech controls recently proposed by Zuckerberg also addresses populist frustrations with the progressive attempt to transform American society through control of the technological commanding heights.

While these tech figures have become important stakeholders in his second presidency, Trump also faces political dangers if he becomes too estranged from his populist roots. A DOGE proposal that calls for a gutting of federal entitlements and subsidies for working-class families could threaten Republican standing with their blue-collar base. The multiple failed attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act in 2017 sent Trump’s approval rating tumbling when he was last president; fears that these reforms would not cover preexisting conditions and make health-care less affordable drove voters away. Populist Republicans can out-box Democrats on social issues, but only when the GOP has taken austerity economics off the table.

Both Republicans and Democrats have their supporters among the wealthy. Yet the populist concern with bigness and concentrated power (a concern seen on both the Left and the Right) taps into a deeper anxiety about a loss of agency. Restoring that sense of agency will be one of Trump’s most important tasks in the days ahead.


Fred Bauer is a writer from New England.

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