The three wealthiest Americans, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, sat together Monday in a VIP section at the second inauguration of President Donald Trump.
It was an historic moment: a literal concentration of wealth, the core of a group of billionaire guests with a collective worth of more than $1 trillion. Images of the Billionaires’ Row circled the globe, inspiring the same fascination that greeted pictures of five current and former presidents assembled at Jimmy Carter’s funeral, earlier in the month.
The sight of five presidents at Carter’s funeral, by most accounts, was stirring. The sight of three tech billionaires at the Trump inauguration, for some observers, grabbed attention.
“Watching the wealthiest men in America, and even the world, flank our new president, it felt undemocratic and, honestly, it felt ominous,” said Lindsay Owens, executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative, a left-leaning think tank.
To Owens and others, the gathering seemed to imply that the three richest Americans might wield more influence than their fellow citizens in the second Trump administration.
“Whether you like billionaires or don’t like them, seeing them sit in such close proximity to the highest levels of political power should give one pause,” said Daniel Weiner, director of the Elections and Government Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, a center-left think tank.
In a farewell address last week, President Joe Biden issued a warning: “Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights, the freedoms and the fair shot for everyone to get ahead.”
The seeming reference was to Trump and his wealthy friends, especially Musk. The world’s wealthiest man contributed more than a quarter-billion dollars to Trump’s reelection effort. Now, Musk oversees a new Department of Government Efficiency. He is said to hold a White House email address.
The image of Musk, Bezos and Zuckerberg at the inauguration seeded talk, especially on the left, of a rising “broligarchy.”
The three men “saw their wealth increase by more than $233 billion since the November elections,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent, in a video posted on X. “No wonder they were sitting right behind Donald Trump at his inauguration.”
Bezos and Zuckerberg made recent moves that seemed tailored to win favor with the new president. Bezos reportedly spiked an endorsement of Kamala Harris, Trump’s Democratic rival, in The Washington Post, which he owns. Zuckerberg pulled the plug on Meta’s fact-checking program, which Trump opposed. Their respective companies, Amazon and Meta, each donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund. Last week, Amazon and Meta joined a wave of companies scaling back corporate diversity programs, an initiative Trump has pushed hard in executive orders this week.
Now, some political scientists predict the three men, none of them elected, might be allowed to set policy in the second Trump administration.
“Democracy is supposed to be a form of government that serves the people. It’s not supposed to be a form of government that serves only a small elite,” said Marc Hetherington, a political scientist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Of the Billionaires’ Row inauguration photo, Hetherington said: “If James Madison saw it, I think he’d be pissed.”
Pressed for an example of what harm the billionaires might do in shaping Trump’s policies, Hetherington offered this:
On Monday, Trump declared the United States would prioritize space exploration in his second term, “launching American astronauts to plant the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars.” In the ovation that followed, Musk threw his hands into the air. Musk is CEO of SpaceX.
By one outdated estimate, a human mission to Mars would cost half a trillion dollars.
“It’s a pretty important thing for Musk to go to Mars,” Hetherington said. “And it’s not really a thing that most people want to do.”
More: Trump’s ‘broligarchy’ turned heads at the inauguration. It sends a powerful message.
Musk has a stake in several other companies that are regulated by the federal government or reap federal contracts or subsidies.
Theoretically, as leader of the new Department of Government Efficiency, Musk could push for budget cuts and regulatory changes that benefit his companies.
“You’re seeing it in the executive orders that roll out. You’re seeing it in the reshaping of the federal government,” said Celine McNicholas, director of policy and general counsel for the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank. “It is not the way government is supposed to work.”
The concern, McNicholas said, is that Musk and other billionaire insiders might push Trump to adopt policies that help themselves and their companies, rather than the nation as a whole.
Musk’s companies, alone are under investigation by “nine different federal agencies,” with allegations that range from malfunctioning cars to national security concerns, said Owens of the Groundwork Collaborative. As a White House insider, Musk could try to shut them down.
“What benefits the public,” Owens said, “is when Musk’s companies play by the rules that all other companies play by.”
She and other critics of the “Broligarchy” gathering say they would have the same reaction if they saw the billionaires assembled at the inauguration of a Democrat.
“Nancy Pelosi sits with rich people all the time,” McNicholas said. “She doesn’t give them a job in her office.”
Of course, the mere presence of three wealthy Americans at the Trump inauguration does not mean any of them expects a seat at the table in his administration.
More: Donald Trump and Elon Musk are pushing the H-1B visa. Does it take American jobs?
Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg and other tech leaders have been “keen to self-identify with the Trump administration,” said Ryan Bourne, an economist at the libertarian Cato Institute.
Many tech leaders defected from the Democrats, Bourne said, over what they viewed as overzealous enforcement of antitrust law and excessive social media scrutiny under Biden.
Now, by attending the inauguration, the billionaires may be simply trying to turn the page.
Even so, their assembly in the Capitol rotunda may have sent the wrong message.
“I don’t want us to be in a world forevermore,” Bourne said, “where business folk feel like they need to curry favor with whoever is president to get the kind of policies they want.”
