At last count, President Trump has appointed about a dozen billionaires to top posts in his Administration, not even including himself and Elon Musk. They are joined by eight mere millionaires.

It is probably the wealthiest group of governmental advisors assembled since the final days of the French nobility, and certainly the most assured of their own wisdom and self-worth. They believe there is something special about them that makes them deserving of their immense wealth. Some even think they carry with them the essence of divinity—at least to their own senses. To the rest of us, they smell of Burnt Hair (Elon Musk’s cologne brand—not kidding) and sulfur.

Barron’s wrote, “If confirmed, these and other super wealthy people—many without government experience or a working understanding of the departments they may oversee—will hold considerable sway over public policy. In return, they, either individually or through their business interests, could potentially benefit from policies and regulations they oversee.”

Capitalists are gonna capitalize, right? And how.

Wealthy people have long found their way into presidential administrations, but the current Trump administration holds the record for the wealthiest, beating the previous record held by [checks notes] the first Trump administration.

And this particular set of superrich individuals seems to have cornered the market on a wide variety of predatory behaviors. There’s millionaire Pete Hegseth at Defense, who successfully campaigned to have war criminals pardoned, nearly bankrupted a veterans organization he ran, and paid, as part of a non-disclosure agreement, 50 grand to a woman who says Hegseth sexually assaulted her. There’s Howard Lutnick, slated to run Commerce who, as CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, lost 658 of his employees, including his brother, on September 11 and on September 15 announced that he was stopping the paychecks of nearly 700 employees who were missing or had died (and, believe it or not, that’s not even why he’s been called the most hated guy on Wall Street). And there’s Ivanka Trump’s father-in-law, Charles Kushner, as ambassador to France, who pleaded guilty to 16 counts of tax evasion, one count of lying to the Federal Election Commission, and one count of retaliating against a federal witness—his brother-in-law (it involved hiring a prostitute as bait for the brother-in-law, and it isn’t pretty). He was pardoned by Trump in 2020.

But what they bring besides their self interest is an ideology that first took firm root with Ronald Reagan and is in full flower with Donald Trump: the privatization of public goods and services. What can’t be run to their advantage as a government agency will be run to their advantage as a privatized service. Heads they win, tales we lose.  As Trump brings into iron-fisted executive authority a wide swath of the federal government’s day-to-day operations, the control of our day-to-day lives by this small group of the superrich will grow like a cancer.

Suddenly, a facility in your hometown of the Veterans Administration (which Hegseth advocated privatizing) is under control of a cabal (most of whom haven’t served), and they’re bringing all the patriotism of a multinational insurance corporation to their decision-making. Suddenly the Federal Emergency Management Administration is being run by some private firm that is itself run by—yep—billionaires, who will turn to Vegas oddsmakers to make bets on disasters. Suddenly there’s a policy to round up immigrants, and just as suddenly private prison companies run by millionaires are lined up in the queue.

If this system isn’t checked by public outrage and a rebuke in the midterms, historians and political scientist far into the future are going to find it hard to explain the new American System that developed in 2025.

But that history is yet to be told because it’s yet to be made—and certainly it didn’t turn out well for the French nobility. We must do everything we can to make sure the future story of American history is one of expanded equality, fairness, opportunity, and freedom for all. It’s time to fight back.

Jeff Hagan
Communications Director