Trump, the United States of Wounded Masculinity and the new Amerikan Plutocracy

Trump is stacking his White House roster with uber-rich backers

• President-elect Donald Trump is filling his next administration with billionaires and other mega-wealthy figures.
• The richest by far is Elon Musk, whom Trump has tapped to co-lead a bespoke advisory group tasked with slashing purported government waste.
• Some of Trump’s most affluent other picks include Warren Stephens, Stephen Feinberg, Kelly Loeffler, Jared Isaacman, Howard Lutnick, Linda McMahon, Scott Bessent and Dr. Mehmet Oz.

Donald Trump’s first administration was chock full of super-rich figures whose combined wealth exceeded $5 billion, marking an unprecedented marriage of money and executive power.

Trump’s second term could make that total look like chump change.

More than half a dozen of the Republican president-elect’s picks for his incoming administration are either confirmed billionaires or widely speculated to be. Numerous others are multi- or centimillionaires.

The richest by far is Elon Musk, whom Trump has tapped to co-lead a bespoke advisory group tasked with slashing purported government waste.

Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, is the world’s wealthiest person, with estimates placing his net worth above $346 billion and as high as $362 billion.

Vivek Ramaswamy, the entrepreneur and former presidential candidate working with Musk on the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, is worth $1 billion, according to Forbes.

The nonprofit Americans for Tax Fairness last month estimated that the average net worth among Trump, Vice President-elect JD Vance and his top appointees is $616 million.

For comparison, Forbes estimated the total net worth of President Joe Biden’s entire Cabinet at $118 million. And the tax group’s analysis is likely a low-ball estimate, since it came before Trump announced a slew of other highly affluent picks.

In the past week, he has picked billionaire financial services CEO Warren Stephens as his ambassador to the UK, billionaire investor Stephen Feinberg as deputy defense secretary, and venture capitalist David Sacks as his crypto czar.

Trump also picked Kelly Loeffler, a former U.S. senator who was reportedly considered the likely richest person on Capitol Hill while in office, to lead the Small Business Administration.

The same day, he chose billionaire CEO Jared Isaacman to head NASA.

Over the weekend, he selected Charles Kushner, the father of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, as his choice for U.S. ambassador to France.

The newcomers join an array of other super-wealthy Cabinet picks, including billionaire Howard Lutnick for Commerce secretary, WWE Co-founder Linda McMahon for Education secretary and Scott Bessent for Treasury secretary.

Trump also has picked billionaire Massad Boulos, the father-in-law of Trump’s daughter Tiffany, as a top Middle East advisor.

And Trump chose Dr. Mehmet Oz to lead the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Oz, as of 2022, was worth as much as $300 million, according to a New York Times analysis of a financial disclosure Oz filed during his failed bid for a U.S. Senate seat in Pennsylvania.

America was always a Military Industrial Complex death machine but now Trump’s United States of Wounded Masculinity has elected a naked Plutocracy.

Trump’s brand of Orange Fascism has used the UNDERmensch to empower the UBERmensch.

Trump has appointed the most Ghoulish Cavalcade of Political Circus Freaks imaginable to his Cabinet.

It is a Rogues Gallery of Supervillains, people, who are acolytes and loyalists before they are decent people.

The manner in which the woke made our side of politics seem like a sad joke of pronoun word salads has had terrible consequences. The woke middle class left spent too much time cancelling men and then realised they didn’t have anyone left to vote for them.

The Left have been tricked into a Culture War to replace Class War and the new American Plutocracy is a result.

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