Is the United States turning into an oligarchy? What scholars say about Joe Biden’s warning

When President Donald Trump took his second term oath of office, tech titans Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos had front-row seats — literally.

Before Trump’s speech, the Silicon Valley billionaires stood in front of many of Trump’s Cabinet picks, turning around to mingle with some of the incoming secretaries who will directly influence their businesses. Five days earlier, then-President Joe Biden warned Americans that a powerful “oligarchy” was on the country’s doorstep, “dangerous concentration of power in the hands of very few ultrawealthy people.” 

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 said in his Jan. 15 farewell address, saying that the consequences would be dangerous “if their abuse of power is left unchecked.”

Google searches for “oligarchy” and “what is an oligarchy” surged.

As the 2024 presidential race entered its final stretch, the nation’s richest tech leaders gravitated toward Trump’s side. 

Musk’s political action committee spent more than $200 million onTrump’s election effort, joining tech billionaires such as venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Joe Lonsdale, who also decided to throw in with Trump. 

Meta and Amazon each donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who visited Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida after the election, hosted a Trump inaugural reception. And on Jan. 20, TikTok CEO Shou Chew sat in camera view during the inaugural ceremony along with the other billionaires as the future of his platform faced uncertainty and appeared to rest in Trump’s hands.

Musk’s role in the incoming Trump administration is the most visible sign of billionaire influence:  He has taken calls with foreign leaders, helped stop a government spending bill and was to run the Department of Government Efficiency, a new advisory committee known as DOGE, along with fellow billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy. (Ramaswamy said this week he’ll forgo his committee leadership to run for Ohio governor.)

Many of these billionaires have made business decisions that critics have described as efforts to win or keep Trump’s favor. Zuckerberg abruptly ended Meta’s third-party fact-checking, a program that PolitiFact had joined and that generated complaints from conservatives since it was instituted in 2017. Bezos, the Amazon founder who also owns The Washington Post, killed a Kamala Harris endorsement from the paper’s editorial board during the campaign, and said the paper would end its long-standing practice of endorsing presidential candidates.

What is an oligarchy and is the U.S. heading in that direction?

Oligarchy, originally defined by the Greek philosopher Aristotle as the “rule of the few,” is a form of government in which power rests within a small group of people, usually individuals of extreme wealth. 

“For Aristotle, there were two different kinds — oligarchy and aristocracy,” University of North Carolina political science professor Graeme Robertson said. “Aristocracy is the rule of a few in the interests of the country as a whole, but oligarchy is the rule of the few that’s designed for the interests of the few.”

Robertson said whether the incoming administration will merit the “oligarchy” label will hinge on whether these billionaires, and other ultrawealthy people Trump has chosen to be in his Cabinet, are going to be “ruling” in their own interests, for their own enrichment.

“I think inherently the word oligarchy has a very broad definition and is frankly more of a descriptor than anything else,” said Daniel Weiner, director of the Brennan Center’s Elections and Government Program. “I don’t think you can really assess point-blank whether what Biden said was true or false. I think there’s an important and powerful point he was making that I agree with — that we are in danger of having a system that has many oligarchic characteristics.”

People with more wealth have always had a louder voice in American government, government ethics experts told PolitiFact, but Trump’s new allies and incoming administration members represent the starkest consolidation of wealth in U.S. politics in recent memory.

The total net worth of the billionaires involved in the incoming administration comes out to more than $382 billion — more than the GDP of 172 countries — U.S. News & World Report reported. When excluding Musk, Ramaswamy and people such as Trump’s NASA head Jared Izaacman and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, who are not part of the Cabinet, the net worth drops to about $11.8 billion.

By comparison, Biden’s presidential Cabinet’s total net worth was about $118 million, U.S. News reported.

Open secrets reported that there were five people (Musk being the top donor) who spent nine figures, or more than $100 million, during the 2024 election cycle and another 35 who spent eight-figure sums.

Richard Briffault, the Joseph P. Chamberlain Professor of Legislation at Columbia Law School, said he heard Biden’s oligarchy warning as “opinion and prediction, not one of fact.”

“But there is a lot of evidence to support his claim,” Briffault said. “The superwealthy played a major role in funding the election and will play a major role in the government.”

He said the country is moving into “an oligarchic direction” merely because candidates depend on large contributions from a small number of people — people who also get appointments to major positions of power.

Oligarchy can coexist with democracy, experts say

When people hear the word “oligarchy,” they may think of Russia. The country has almost become synonymous with the term since a handful of ultrarich Russians started pulling the strings behind the nation’s government and media infrastructure decades ago.

But the U.S.’ political makeup doesn’t have to look like Russia’s to blur the lines between a democracy and oligarchy, experts said.

“Are we, right now, seeing the kind of situation that we saw in Russia in the 1990s? No. It’s just not comparable. But to have Musk, who has millions in federal contracts making key government decisions about efficiency and procurement, that’s certainly an oligarchic situation,” Weiner said.

Robertson said, “The U.S. government has always been dominated by the rich. Money has always spoken loudly in American politics. It’s perfectly possible to have oligarchy and democracy at the same time. You can have free and fair elections, it’s just a function of how those elections operate and who gets the decisive say in the end.”

As the issue of big money in politics has grown over the years, government ethics scholars agree that the current Trump-era has further blurred the lines.

Trump, a highly transactional and unsubtle president, taking power when private wealth and political power has been melded so thoroughly heeds well to a growing oligarchic structure, they said. But, in the end, only time will tell whether that manifests.

In the meantime, Americans can watch for signs of a growing oligarchy, such as the government weaponizing antitrust and other laws to reward political friends and punish enemies, targeting independent or critical media, or trying to defund public nonprofits such as the American Civil Liberties Union and NPR.

“This isn’t just sort of an abstract question about whether or not government meets some fictitious ideal of purity,” Weiner said. “This is really about decisions that govern all our lives. Decisions about environmental policy, who’s going to be hit with tariffs and who will benefit, whose taxes are going to be raised and cut. It is very much about people’s everyday lives.”