The Billionaires’ War

The ultrawealthy put Trump in power but other people will pay the price

It becomes clearer with each passing day that the people who took us to war with Iran had and have no idea what they’re doing — that they’re adolescents who think they’re playing video games while thousands die and the world careens toward economic crisis. The New York Times reports that Trump officials dismissed warnings that attacking Iran could disrupt world oil supplies. Among other things, the Times reports that

Mr. Trump, both publicly and privately, has been arguing that Venezuelan oil could help solve any shocks coming from the Iran war.

In 2024 Venezuela produced 900,000 barrels of oil per day; normally 20 million barrels a day transit the Strait of Hormuz. But arithmetic has a well-known woke bias.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports that the Pentagon has barred press photographers from briefings about the war after they published photos of Pete Hegseth that his staff considered “unflattering.” Priorities!

Amid the bloody shambles, one big question is, who put The Gang That Couldn’t Think Straight in power? In an immediate sense, Trump was put over the top by low-information voters — defined by G. Elliott Morris as voters who don’t know which party controls Congress. But the groundwork for the MAGA takeover was laid well before by the Roberts Supreme Court and by right-wing billionaires that the court enabled.

A few weeks ago I wrote about Billionaires Gone Wild, the extraordinary influence acquired by a tiny group of ultra-wealthy men. I shared this chart on campaign contributions, based on estimates from Americans for Tax Fairness:

On Monday the Times published a deeply reported story about billionaires’ influence that, among other things, found that the chart above somewhat underestimates their role in campaign finance: According to the Times, they accounted for 19 percent of contributions in 2024, not 16.5 percent.

The Times also pointed out that the big money swung hard right in the 2024 election. The magnitude of the largesse showered on Republicans is clear in OpenSecrets data on the top 100 donors in different cycles:

Moreover, the Times presents numbers that are even more extreme than the Open Secrets data:

In past elections, as ultrawealthy donors became more active, both major parties reaped rewards. But there was a stark divergence in 2024, with less money flowing directly to Democrats and a sharp increase in the amount donated to Republicans.

For every dollar donated by billionaires and their immediate families to a candidate or committee associated with Democrats, five dollars went to Republicans.

Much of that was a result of ultrawealthy people in the tech industry, who aligned with Mr. Trump’s tax and deregulation policies. More than a dozen billionaires were awarded roles in his administration.

And these explicit money flows don’t capture the immense effect of other deployments of billionaires’ wealth, notably the subversion of both conventional and social media. Elon Musk purchased Twitter in 2022 and quickly began converting it into the Nazi-friendly cesspool it is today — and no, that’s not hyperbole. How much did this contribute to the degradation of public discourse? Paramount, controlled by Larry Ellison and run by his son, has taken over CBS News — which is rapidly going downhill — and is on the verge of taking over CNN too. And Jeff Bezos is gutting The Washington Post, although kudos to the remaining reporters who are still trying to do their jobs.

There is, however, something that is still puzzling me: To a large extent billionaires bought themselves a government friendly to their interests. Trump and company have granted many items on the tech broligarchy wish list, from tax breaks to deregulation to promotion of crypto and unregulated AI. But why the abject incompetence? Couldn’t billionaires find political allies who wouldn’t plunge the country into a potentially disastrous and historically unpopular war without considering the risks?

I have two tentative answers.

One is that no, competent allies weren’t available. Money buys a lot of influence, but to actually take over the U.S. government requires more than money — it requires politicians who are utterly corrupt. In his first administration, Trump learned that hiring people who were even modestly competent eventually presented barriers to his authoritarian instincts – for example, his former Vice President Mike Pence. Hence Trump learned that in choosing his political hires the more incompetent, the more venal, the more bigoted, and the more cruel, the better.

You might think that presidential pardons for scammers, money launderers and outright crooks are unrelated to the ill-advised war on Iran. But corruption is a key feature of a billionaire-installed regime, and corruption and incompetence go hand in hand.

My second answer is that the vast wealth of tech billionaires has made many of them unconcerned with the little people’s lives — and deeply unpatriotic. If Americans are being brutalized and murdered by rogue ICE agents…well, that’s not their problem. If the Justice Department and the FBI are totally subverted and operate as Trump’s enforcers, they know that vindictive, unlawful tactics will never touch their lives. If Republican budget cuts decimate rural hospitals and deprive hundreds of thousands of health insurance…well, they have their own private doctors and clinics. If Trump starts an ill-conceived war that doubles the price of oil…well, they can certainly afford the higher gasoline bills for their limousines and yachts. And it won’t be their kids hunkered down in a bunker in the Middle East.

So if you want to understand how this country has degenerated to such a state, how we can be spending nearly $2 billion a day attacking Iran without a clear endgame in sight, while children go without healthcare, nursing homes are understaffed because their workers have been deported, home electricity bills skyrocket due to data centers, consider who benefits and who isn’t hurt.

This is a billionaire’s war, waged at everyone else’s expense.

MUSICAL CODA