"We are moving rapidly into an oligarchic form of society … We can't go around the world saying, 'in Russia, Putin has an oligarchy.' Well, we got our oligarchy here, too"

Sen. Bernie Sanders is ringing the alarm that the United States is “rapidly” becoming an oligarchy run by billionaires out to enrich themselves.

“We are moving rapidly into an oligarchic form of society. Never before in American history have so few billionaires, so few people, have so much wealth and so much power,” the senator said.

“Never before has there been so much concentration of ownership, sector after sector, power of Wall Street,” he continued. “And never before in American history — and we better talk about this — have the people on top had so much political power. We can’t go around the world saying, ‘Oh, well, you know, in Russia Putin has an oligarchy.’ Well, we got our oligarchy here too.”

Sanders decried the influence of billionaires in the past election, saying that “billionaires spent huge amounts of money to elect their candidates.”

In a video released Friday, Sanders said, “In 2024, just 150 billionaire families spent nearly $2 billion to purchase candidates.”

Now Donald Trump is rewarding some of those billionaires who gave to his campaign with top roles in the federal government. The billionaires chosen by Trump to serve in his administration have a combined wealth of at least $383 billion — a number higher than the GDP of 172 nations.

Trump’s vice president-elect, J.D. Vance, acknowledged the power of oligarchs in a 2021 speech where he complained that the right has “very few oligarchs on our side.” He added, “I don’t mean just rich people. I mean people who are smart about deploying their resources in a way that advances the cause.”

Sanders’ Democratic colleague Sen. Chris Murphy explained the concept of oligarchy and how the U.S. is moving toward it in an interview last week on MSNBC.