Amazion founder Jeff Bezos participates in a discussion during a Milestone Celebration dinner September 13, 2018 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)
The total wealth of billionaires increased by 121% from 2015-24.
Driven largely by the accumulation of massive wealth by the richest people in the United States, the Swiss wealth manager UBS said Thursday the assets of billionaires around the world more than doubled over the past decade.
Between 2015-24, the total wealth of billionaires increased by 121%, from $6.3 trillion to $14 trillion.
Meanwhile, the MSCI AC World Index of global equities, which measures the performance of more than 3,000 stocks from both developed and emerging markets, rose by 73%.
The planet’s total gross domestic product is about $105.4 trillion, with a population of just over 8 billion, underscoring the extreme concentration of wealth among the very richest people.
The number of billionaires rose from 1,757 to 2,682 over the past decade, while the wealthiest people in the world boasted significant gains over just the past year.
Billionaires’ wealth jumped by about 17% in 2024, with the accumulation of wealth among the richest people in the U.S. offsetting a decline in China.
U.S. billionaires amassed wealth gains that were 27.6% higher than the previous year, accumulating a total of $5.8 trillion—more than 40% of international billionaire wealth.
The tax cuts pushed through by President-elect Donald Trump and the Republican Party in 2017 are still in effect in the U.S. Tax policy analysts have found that the law was skewed to the rich, with households in the top 1% of incomes expecting to receive an average tax cut of more than $60,000 in 2025 compared to an average tax cut of less than $500 for people in the bottom 60%.
As Common Dreams reported this week, the top 12 U.S. billionaires now control $2 trillion. The wealth of the four richest people in the U.S.—Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg—has hit $1 trillion.
Journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin speaks with billionaire businessman Jeff Bezos during The New York Times Dealbook Summit on December 4, 2024 in New York City. (Photo: Eugene Gologursky/Getty Images for The New York Times)
“Shockingly another one of the richest guys on Earth wants to defund our government and scrap regulations.”
Billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos on Wednesday expressed his optimism about U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s next term and suggested he would “help” the Republican gut regulations.
“If we’re talking about Trump, I think it’s very interesting, I’m actually very optimistic this time around… I’m very hopeful about this—he seems to have a lot of energy around reducing regulation,” Bezos told The New York Times‘ Andrew Ross Sorkin during the newspaper’s DealBook Summit.
“And my point of view, if I can help him do that, I’m gonna help him, because we do have too much regulation in this country. This country is so set up to grow,” he continued, suggesting that regulatory cuts would solve the nation’s economic problems.
After complaining about the burden of regulations, Bezos added, “I’m very optimistic that President Trump is serious about this regulatory agenda and I think he has a good chance of succeeding.”
The comments came during a discussion about Bezos’ ownership of The Washington Post, which also addressed the billionaire’s recent controversial decisions to block the newspaper’s drafted endorsement of Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and have it stop endorsing presidential candidates.
Bezos said Wednesday that he is “very proud” of the move, that the Post “is going to continue to cover all presidents very aggressively,” and the decision did not result from fears about Trump targeting his companies.
As Inc. reported Thursday: “Trump had railed against Bezos and his companies, including Amazon and The Washington Post, during his first term. In 2019, Amazon argued in a court case that Trump’s bias against the company harmed its chances of winning a $10 billion Pentagon contract. The Biden administration later pursued a contract with both Amazon and Microsoft.”
Bezos owns Blue Origin, an aerospace company and a competitor to Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Musk—the world’s richest person, followed by Bezos, according to the Bloomberg and Forbes trackers—has been appointed to lead Trump’s forthcoming Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) with fellow billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy.
Bezos’ remarks at the Times summit led Fortune‘s Brooke Seipel to suggest that he may be the next billionaire to join DOGE.
Musk and Ramaswamy headed to Capitol Hill on Thursday to speak with GOP lawmakers about their plans for the government.
“Despite its name, the Department of Government Efficiency is neither a department nor part of the government, which frees Musk and Ramaswamy from having to go through the typical ethics and background checks required for federal employment,” The Associated Press noted. “They said they will not be paid for their work.”
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum speaking on the phone to US president-elect Donald Trump. Photo: Presidencia MX
The Mexican President told the press that it is not true that she informed the US President-elect that she would close the border between both countries, contradicting statements from Trump about their conversation
The tensions between Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and US president-elect Donald Trump are growing, with Trump continuing to launch accusations and threats at the Southern neighbor of the US, only to be met with a firm and resolute Sheinbaum.
On November 25, Trump, in a post on his media platform Truth Social, threatened to impose a 25% tariff on Mexican and Canadian products until illegal migration and drug imports into US territory were stopped. He also threatened that products coming from China will have to pay 10% more tariffs if the Asian country does not further control the sale of certain chemicals from which fentanyl is made. The three targeted countries responded clearly and firmly (more so China and Mexico than Canada) to Trump’s warnings and pointed out that if the threat were to become a reality, a real “trade war” could be unleashed.
For her part, the Mexican President stated in her daily morning press conference on November 26 that the imposition of new tariffs will not reduce drug consumption in the United States, nor will it curb illegal migration to the United States; on the contrary, “it would cause the United States and Mexico inflation and job losses.”
That same day, Sheinbaum and Trump spoke on the phone and addressed several issues of interest to both nations, such as immigration, drug trafficking, drug consumption, and more. However, in the aftermath of their conversation, two versions have emerged of what was said and agreed on, with Trump insisting that Mexico has agreed to effective “clos[e] our Southern Border” to “stop the illegal invasion of the USA”.
Donald Trump said through his social network, Truth Social “Just had a wonderful conversation with the new President of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo. She has agreed to stop Migration through Mexico, and into the United States, effectively closing our Southern Border. We also talked about what can be done to stop the massive drug inflow into the United States, and also, the US consumption of these drugs. It was a very productive conversation!”
The president-elect added “Mexico will stop people from going to our Southern Border, effective immediately. THIS WILL GO A LONG WAY TOWARD STOPPING THE ILLEGAL INVASION OF THE USA. Thank you!!!”
However, for the Mexican head of state, this version is far from the truth.
Sheinbaum’s version
For her part, Sheinbaum reported on X “I had an excellent conversation with President Donald Trump. We addressed the Mexican strategy on the migration phenomenon and I shared that no caravans are arriving at the northern border because they are being taken care of in Mexico. We also talked about strengthening collaboration on security issues within the framework of our sovereignty and the campaign we are carrying out in the country to prevent the consumption of fentanyl.”
However, the Mexican President said that at no time did she communicate to Trump that she would order the closure of the Mexican-US border: “In our conversation with President Trump, I explained to him the comprehensive strategy that Mexico has followed to address the migratory phenomenon, respecting human rights. Thanks to this, migrants and caravans are attended to before they arrive at the border. We reiterate that Mexico’s position is not to close borders but to build bridges between governments and between peoples.”
In an official visit to the state of Nuevo León, the Mexican leader highlighted that trade ties between the United States and Mexico are very deep, so a trade war would only bring higher inflation and a contraction of the GDP of the countries involved. In the case of the United States, Sheinbaum said that Mexican remittances are partially consumed in the United States, so a disruption could imply a major disruption of the US economy; she also noted that a reduction in migration would increase the US social security debt by 13%.
The Mexican president also announced last week that in her letter to Trump, she called on the head of state to remove the economic sanctions and blockade on Cuba and Venezuela, and that respectful and open dialogues be established between all nations of the continent.
Jensen Huang of Nvidia speaks about the future of artificial intelligence and its effect on energy consumption and production at the Bipartisan Policy Center on September 27, 2024 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
“The oligarchic dozen is richer than ever, and they are endowed with extreme material power that can be used to pursue narrow political interests at the expense of democratic majorities,” according to the author of a new analysis.
Just 12 U.S. billionaires now have a collective net worth of over $2 trillion—a figure that amounts to a little less than a third of total federal spending in 2023—according to an analysis out Tuesday from Inequality.org, a project of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS).
The $2 trillion number is also twice the amount of wealth that the top 12 US billionaires held in 2020, according to researchers at IPS, a progressive organization.
The full list of 12 billionaires includes Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Warren Buffett, Elon Musk, Steve Ballmer, Larry Ellison, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Jim Walton, Rob Walton, and Jensen Huang.
“This is an unsettling new milestone for wealth concentration in the United States. The oligarchic dozen is richer than ever, and they are endowed with extreme material power that can be used to pursue narrow political interests at the expense of democratic majorities,” wrote the author of the analysis, Omar Ocampo, a researcher at IPS.
New to the “oligarchic dozen” is Jensen Huang, the co-founder and CEO of the tech company Nvidia. Nvidia, which became the most valuable publicly traded company this year, has seen its profits jump thanks to the world’s ravenous appetite for the artificial intelligence chips that the firm produces. According to the analysis, Huang’s personal wealth “has skyrocketed from $4.7 billion in 2020 to $122.4 billion—a mind-boggling 2,504 percent increase—over the last four years.”
Each of the billionaires on the list “owns or is a controlling shareholder of a business that is investing billions of dollars in artificial intelligence,” according to Ocampo, which raises concerns about their respective carbon footprints.
Fueling AI is energy intensive, and AI data centers in the U.S. are largely powered by fossil fuels, meaning their proliferation poses a threat to the environment and a transition to a green economy.
Ocampo also discusses the political reach of the billionaires on the list. Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, who respectively own X and The Washington Post, “have both purchased large media platforms, which has granted them the ability to set the terms of public debate with the hopes of influencing public opinion in their favor.”
Musk specifically has established himself as a major power broker within the GOP. The billionaire spent hundreds of millions helping to re-elect Donald Trump and is now poised to play a major role in the president-elect’s administration, helping oversee a new advisory committee tasked with slashing government spending.
As of early December, Trump had tapped an “unprecedented” total of seven reported billionaires for key positions in his administration, according to a separate piece of analysis by Inequality.org.
“We see the effects of this growing concentration of wealth and economic inequality everywhere—plutocratic influence on our politics, wealth transfers from the bottom to the top, and the acceleration of climate breakdown,” Ocampo wrote on Tuesday.
Stephen Feinberg is pictured at the U.S. Capitol on December 11, 2008. (Photo: Jahi Chikwendiu/The The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Stephen Feinberg is co-CEO of Cerberus Capital Management, which owns a company that provided training to members of the hit squad that murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
President-elect Donald Trump has reportedly offered the number-two Pentagon job to a secretive billionaire investor with close ties to the military-industrial complex, potentially introducing additional conflicts of interest to an incoming administration that is set to be rife with corporate executives and lobbyists.
Stephen Feinberg is co-founder and co-CEO of the private equity behemoth Cerberus Capital Management, which owns a firm that provided paramilitary training to members of the elite team that murdered Saudi journalist and U.S. resident Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.
Trump drew global outrage for publicly defending the Saudi regime in the wake of the assassination, even after U.S. intelligence agencies established that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman authorized Khashoggi’s murder.
The New York Times reported in 2021 that four Saudis who took part in the 2018 Khashoggi assassination “received paramilitary training in the United States the previous year under a contract approved by the State Department.” Tier 1 Group, an Arkansas-based company financed by Cerberus, provided the training.
“The instruction occurred as the secret unit responsible for Mr. Khashoggi’s killing was beginning an extensive campaign of kidnapping, detention, and torture of Saudi citizens ordered by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, to crush dissent inside the kingdom,” the Times noted.
“Having this revolving door of people who sit on boards of major defense contractors and then cycle in and out of the Pentagon is a problem that did not begin with Trump, but is a problem nonetheless.”
It’s not yet clear whether Feinberg intends to accept Trump’s offer to serve as deputy defense secretary, but news of the choice prompted speculation that Feinberg could be elevated to the top Pentagon spot as Fox News host Pete Hegseth—the president-elect’s nominee for the role—faces skepticism from senators amid new details of the sexual assault allegations against him. (Update: The Times reported Wednesday morning that Trump’s support for Hegseth is “wobbling” and he is “openly discussing other people for the job, including Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.”)
Citing an unnamed person familiar with his thinking, Politicoreported that Feinberg is expected to accept the job offer for deputy defense secretary. Feinberg would also have to be confirmed by the Senate.
The Washington Post, which first reported Trump’s offer on Tuesday, noted that the private equity billionaire is a major donor to the president-elect and has “investments in defense companies that maintain lucrative Pentagon contracts.” The Post observed that Cerberus “has invested in hypersonic missiles” and “previously owned the private military contractor DynCorp.”
Matt Duss, executive vice president at the Center for International Policy and a former foreign policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), told the Post that “having this revolving door of people who sit on boards of major defense contractors and then cycle in and out of the Pentagon is a problem that did not begin with Trump, but is a problem nonetheless.”
“Is he going to be listening to a whole range of constituencies or primarily business constituencies?” Duss asked of Feinberg.
Jeff Hauser, executive director of the Revolving Door Project, characterized Trump’s Cabinet picks so far as “chaotic evil” and warned that their conflicts of interest could bring horrible consequences for the American public.
“Corruption is not only bad in and of itself,” Hauser told the Institute for Public Accuracy on Tuesday. “It’s also a bad thing that makes other terrible things more likely to happen. If you corrupt the enforcement of environmental protection laws, people will be poisoned by the water they drink and air they breathe. If you corrupt the Department of Labor, workplace safety will collapse over time and wage protections will disappear.”
“That’s what happened under the last Trump administration. This is going to be worse,” Hauser warned. “Food safety issues, automobile safety with driverless cars, rail safety—these are all risks that the Trump team will be taking with the lives of ordinary people.”
Elon Musk applauds alongside the wife of House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) during a House Republican Conference meeting on November 13, 2024. (Photo: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
“Elon Musk’s commission is a plot to destroy our Social Security by giving it to Wall Street executives—so that you get nothing and they get everything,” warned one advocate.
A lengthy series of X posts attacking Social Security as a “nightmare” caught the attention of the platform’s mega-billionaire owner, Elon Musk, who could soon take aim at the beloved New Deal program as co-chair of an advisory commission tasked with identifying federal spending to slash.
“Interesting thread,” Musk, the world’s richest man, wrote late Monday in response to the posts by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), who once said he hopes to pull Social Security “up by the roots and get rid of it,” along with Medicare and Medicaid.
In his new thread, Lee characterized Social Security—which lifts more Americans above the poverty line than any other federal program—as a “tax plan” insidiously disguised as a retirement plan and condemned the Social Security Act of 1935 as one of many “deceptive sales techniques the U.S. government has used on the American people.”
Max Richtman, president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare (NCPSSM), replied Tuesday that Lee’s posts amount to “a misrepresentation of Social Security’s history and how the program works.”
“There is nothing deceptive about Social Security. The social insurance program has been working just fine for nearly 90 years and has never missed a payment,” said Richtman. “The kind of propaganda Sen. Lee posted undermines public support for Social Security, making it easier to cut or privatize the program. It is perhaps no coincidence that Sen. Lee’s second-biggest campaign contributor by industry is the securities and investment sector.”
“The money is ours, Mike Lee, Elon Musk, and Donald Trump. You’re not going to get a penny of it.”
Social Security Works (SSW), a progressive advocacy group, said Tuesday that by amplifying Lee’s thread to his hundreds of millions of followers, Musk “just declared war on Social Security.”
“For 89 years, through war and peace, boom time and bust, health and pandemics, Social Security has never missed a single payment,” said Alex Lawson, SSW’s executive director. “Compared to the risky alternatives on Wall Street, Social Security is a rock of retirement security. If billionaires like Elon Musk paid into Social Security at the same rate as the rest of us on all of their income, we could expand benefits for everyone and pay them in full forever.”
“This is a declaration of war against seniors, people with disabilities, and the American public,” Lawson said. “The Republicans are coming for your Social Security, which they call a ‘nightmare.’ Elon Musk’s commission is a plot to destroy our Social Security by giving it to Wall Street executives—so that you get nothing and they get everything.”
“We’ve seen this play again and again,” he added. “When Republicans destroyed defined-benefit pension plans, they claimed that the market would be able to create amazing returns for everybody. Instead, workers got pennies, while Wall Street managers got billions. That is always the plan. We will defeat this Republican effort to steal our earned benefits. The money is ours, Mike Lee, Elon Musk, and Donald Trump. You’re not going to get a penny of it.”
Richard Fiesta, executive director of the Alliance for Retired Americans, similarly denounced Lee’s thread and Musk’s promotion of it, saying both “should enrage and concern every single American who has contributed to Social Security.”
“Sen. Mike Lee has dreamed about ‘phasing out Social Security’ and the benefits generations of Americans have earned for more than a decade. His bad ideas have been rightfully ignored but last night he got a big assist from Elon Musk, who amplified Lee’s wrongheaded views about Social Security on X.”
“Social Security is a solemn promise between the American people and the government,” Fiesta continued. “We pay for Social Security’s guaranteed benefits with every paycheck and expect them to be there when we retire, lose a spouse or parent, or become disabled. No one voted to phase out Social Security or let Wall Street gamble with their earned benefits. Older Americans will rightly punish any politician who tries to cut their benefits or gut the system that has worked for generations.”
On the campaign trail, President-elect Donald Trump pledged to defend Social Security while simultaneously pushing proposals that would wreck the program’s finances.
Many Republican lawmakers, who are soon to be in the majority in both chambers of Congress, have called for raising the Social Security retirement age—a change that would cut benefits across the board. On Tuesday, Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.) toldFox Business Network that “we’re going to have to have some hard decisions” on Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare—a euphemism for benefit cuts.
Richtman of NCPSSM said that the kind of attack advanced by Lee and other Republicans “conflicts with President Trump’s promise not to tamper with Americans’ earned benefits.”
“It signals where Trump’s MAGA allies in Congress are heading—toward privatization and benefit cuts, something the majority of Americans across party lines say they do not want,” Richtman added.
A woman holding a girl reacts after Israeli airstrikes hit the Ridwan neighborhood of Gaza City, Gaza on October 23, 2023. (Photo: Ali Jadallah/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“Someone tell Trump that Israel already unleashed hell on Gaza, and hostages were not released.”
In an early signal of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s foreign policy plans for when he returns to office next month, the Republican said Monday “there will be ALL HELL TO PAY in the Middle East” if Hamas does not release hostages taken from Israel, the occupying military force in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Trump demanded hostages seized during the October 7 attack of last year be released or his promised retribution would follow. Nearly 45,000 Palestinians have already been killed—mostly civilian men, women, and children—since Israel launched a full-scale invasion of Gaza in the wake of the Hamas-led operation.
Of the 251 people taken captive last year, 63 are believed to be still alive in Gaza, according toThe Washington Post‘s tracker, which was updated last week. So far, 117 others have been freed or rescued and 71 have been confirmed killed.
After dining with Sara Netanyahu, the wife of Israel’s prime minister, at the Trump International Golf Club in Florida Sunday night, the U.S. president-elect made his threat about the hostages on his Truth Social platform Monday afternoon.
“Everybody is talking about the hostages who are being held so violently, inhumanely, and against the will of the entire World, in the Middle East,” Trump wrote. “But it’s all talk, and no action! Please let this TRUTH serve to represent that if the hostages are not released prior to January 20, 2025, the date that I proudly assume Office as President of the United States, there will be ALL HELL TO PAY in the Middle East, and for those in charge who perpetrated these atrocities against Humanity.”
“Those responsible will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied History of the United States of America,” Trump added. “RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW!”
Stephen Pollard, editor-at-large The Jewish Chronicle, responded that “this is the message the president of the USA should have sent on October 8, 2023.”
Noting Pollard’s comments, Rohan Talbot, director of advocacy and campaigns at the U.K.-based Medical Aid for Palestinians, said: “Genuinely interested to know what Stephen thinks the U.S. could have supported Israel to do in Gaza beyond what it currently has. Nukes?”
“This statement is unhinged—’there will be ALL HELL TO PAY in the Middle East,'” Talbot added.
Andreas Krieg, a senior lecturer in the School of Security Studies at King’s College London, said, “Someone tell Trump that Israel already unleashed hell on Gaza, and hostages were not released.”
Drop Site News highlighted that “Trump’s statement—which follows a video released over the weekend by Hamas’ armed wing featuring U.S.-Israeli captive Edan Alexander and explicitly addressing Trump—does not acknowledge that Netanyahu has repeatedly sabotaged cease-fire deals that could have freed Israeli hostages. It also appears timed to position himself to claim credit for any progress in cease-fire talks, as negotiations between Hamas and Egyptian mediators are already underway.”
As the American Jewish outlet Forward reported Monday:
The White House is attempting a final push to get… a deal done. President Joe Biden said last week that the cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon had created an opportunity to reignite stalled negotiations for a similar deal in Gaza. “We will use every day we have in office to try to generate as much progress towards that end as possible,” Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, said Sunday morning on ABC‘s “This Week.”
Given the failed efforts in the past, the families of the American hostages are hoping Trump could leverage his popularity in Israel and his relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to take immediate action during the transition period. “Trump must not wait until he is inaugurated to help reach a deal that secures the freedom for Edan, six other Americans, and the rest of the hostages,” Adi and Yael Alexander, the parents of Edan, said on Saturday.
Despite an abundance of evidence showing how Israel is using U.S. weapons to slaughter civilians in Gaza and severely restricting the flow of humanitarian aid while claiming to target Hamas, Biden and Congress have refused to cut off arms to Netanyahu’s government. In fact, just hours after the cease-fire between the Israeli government and Hezbollah took effect—a deal that Israel has since violated approximately 100 times—the Financial Times reported last week that “Biden has provisionally approved a $680 million weapons sale to Israel.”
Former Chief of Staff to the United States Secretary of Defense Kash Patel speaks during a Turning Point Action ‘United for Change’ campaign rally for former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in Las Vegas, Nevada, on October 24, 2024. (Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images) Photo by Patrick T. Fallon / AFP
Kash’s nomination to lead the FBI, said one watchdog, “represents the cronyism that is coming to define the second Trump administration. Loyalty to President-elect Trump is what matters above all else.”
Watchdog critics are sounding the alarm over president-elect Donald Trump’s choice of Kashyap “Kash” Patel to be the next director of the FBI, calling the MAGA ultra-loyalist—who even former Republican colleagues describe as “dangerous” and unqualified—to be running the nation’s top law enforcement agency.
Patel, who served in the previous Trump administration as chief of staff in the Department of Defense and a counterterrorism adviser on the National Security Council, was characterized by the Associated Press earlier this year as “trusted aide and swaggering campaign surrogate who mythologizes the former president while promoting conspiracy theories and his own brand.”
Journalist Medhi Hasan, co-founder of Zeteo, said that while previously working for MSNBC he had done a deep-dive on Patel, during which he discovered just what “a deeply strange and alarming and sycophantic figure” Trump’s pick is.
“Yes, we’re going to come after people in the media.” —Kash Patel, 2023
As the New York Timesreports, Patel founded a nonprofit that provides legal assistance to individuals prosecuted for involvement in the January 6, 2021 insurrection and also runs a merchandise business which sells flashy pro-MAGA gear under the “K$H” label.
Patel, the Times notes, “sells pro-Trump T-shirts and other items as well as a series of his children’s books that pay homage to ‘King Donald.’ Mr. Patel also collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in consulting fees from the 2024 Trump campaign and from Friends of Matt Gaetz, the campaign committee for the former House Republican from Florida, who withdrew from consideration as Mr. Trump’s attorney general after criticism over allegations of sex trafficking and drug use.”
According to the watchdog group Accountable.US, Patel is just the latest unqualified choice by a president-elect will to put “political loyalty above national security.” As the group noted in a statement:
While Patel joined the previous Trump administration in its last year and quickly rose through the ranks thanks to his hard-nosed style and fawning devotion to Donald Trump, other Trump officials reportedly regarded Patel as “dangerous” including General Mark Milley who feared he would break the law for Trump, and former Trump Attorney General Bill Barr who said “Over my dead body” when Trump entertained naming Patel deputy director of the FBI. Recently, Patel has threatened to prosecute journalists and political opponents of Trump. Patel has also reportedly spread baseless Qanon conspiracy theories and “earned hundreds of thousands of dollars a year from his own business dealings with Trump-related entities.”
Last year, during an appearance on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, Patel vowed that Trump’s enemies would be targeted if the former president returned to power. “We will go out and find the conspirators not just in government, but in the media,” Patel said at the time.
“Yes, we’re going to come after people in the media,” Patel explained to Bannon, talking about journalists and others who he claimed “help Joe Biden rig elections.”
Tony Carrk, Accountable’s executive director, warned Kash’s nomination to lead the FBI “represents the cronyism that is coming to define the second Trump administration. Loyalty to President-elect Trump is what matters above all else.”
“Even former Trump officials have questioned Patel’s qualifications and ability to adhere to the rule of law after he has threatened to prosecute journalists and Trump’s political opponents,” Carrk added. “Patel’s financial entanglements with the president-elect also present potential conflicts of interest. He has turned his gushing idolization of Trump into a money-making opportunity, enriching himself by promoting the Trump brand alongside his own. It says it all about Donald Trump’s priorities to once again reward a devout political crony even if it means America’s national security interests come a distant second.”
“Even in an administration full of loyalists, Patel was exceptional in his devotion.”
Writing Saturday in The Atlantic, staff writer Elaina Plott Calabro described Kash as “exactly the kind of person who would serve in a second Trump administration,” based on his personality as much as his record.
Why was he seen as “dangerous,” even among Trump administration insiders at the time?
“It wasn’t a question of ideology,” according to Calabro. “He wasn’t a zealot like Stephen Miller, trying to make the bureaucracy yield to his agenda. Rather, Patel appeared singularly focused on pleasing Trump. Even in an administration full of loyalists, Patel was exceptional in his devotion.”
Climate denier Gregory Wrightstone (left) has nothing but praise for Trump’s energy secretary pick, Chris Wright (right). Credit: DeSmog
The head of the CO2 Coalition tells DeSmog that Wright agrees carbon dioxide is “not the demon molecule, it’s the miracle molecule.”
Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Energy, Chris Wright, is receiving enthusiastic approval from a climate obstruction organization that argues global carbon dioxide emissions should be increasing because the gas is “essential for life.”
“I had a chance to sit down one-on-one with Chris in 2022 in his Denver office,” claimed Gregory Wrightstone, executive director of a group called the CO2 Coalition. For nearly a decade, the organization has publicly disputed the fundamentals of climate science while receiving donations from foundations linked to corporate backers, including the oil and gas billionaireCharles Koch.
Wrightstone, who detailed the encounter with Wright in a recent newsletter, “was impressed with his knowledge and views on energy philosophy, which aligned closely with those of the CO2 Coalition.”
In a phone interview with DeSmog, Wrightstone elaborated on that alignment, explaining that “the main thing that he and I and the CO2 Coalition agree on is that increasing CO2 is a net benefit, it’s not the demon molecule, it’s the miracle molecule.”
Wright is currently the CEO of the fracking services company Liberty Energy and would bring no political or government experience to the role of energy secretary. Yet Wrightstone concluded that because Wright is “a petroleum engineer and energy executive, he will likely be the most highly qualified person ever to hold that position.”
After Trump announced the nomination last week, some industry observers hailed the appointment as a sign of political moderation within the Republican cabinet, with the head of the Colorado Oil and Gas Associationarguing that Wright is “a pragmatic problem solver” and “not a climate denier.”
Yet the full-throated praise that Wright is receiving from the likes of Wrightstone raises serious questions about whether the future energy secretary even thinks climate change is a problem worth addressing, said Connor Gibson, an independent research specialist who’s spent years tracking the CO2 Coalition and other groups that obstruct climate action including for Greenpeace USA.
“The CO2 Coalition has been a persistent voice undermining the ABCs of climate change — that it’s happening, that it’s caused by human fossil fuel use, and that it’s going to be dangerous,” he told DeSmog.
Wright didn’t respond to questions via his company Liberty Energy nor via the Trump-Vance transition team.
Screenshot from CO2 Coalition emailed newsletter. Credit: CO2 Coalition
Backed by Koch
In email correspondence with DeSmog, Wrightstone explained how his meeting with the future nominee for energy secretary came about several years ago: “I was speaking at an event in Denver and set up a meeting in his office,” he wrote.
“We had a wide-ranging conversation, but I can’t recall any particular details,” he added during a phone interview. Yet Wright made a positive impression on the executive director of the CO2 Coalition. “The key takeaway is that he’s a big supporter of the continuing use of fossil fuels, including coal, oil, and natural gas,” Wrightstone said.
According to Wrightstone, he and Wright’s views align on other key points, including the factually incorrect or dubious claims that “there is no man-made climate crisis,” “science is not consensus and consensus is not science,” “fossil fuels cannot be replaced by intermittent and unreliable solar and wind power,” and “history tells us that warmer periods have been beneficial, while cold periods have been horrific to humanity.”
These talking points have for years been disseminated by the CO2 Coalition, which was recently cited by Alberta’s United Conservative Party in a resolution that abandoned the oil-producing Canadian province’s net-zero targets and officially recognized “that CO2 is a foundational nutrient for all life on Earth.”
During the first Trump administration, William Happer of the CO2 Coalition was appointed to the National Security Council but exited after only a year. White House advisors reportedly feared that his extreme views were a liability to Trump’s reelection. In 2017, Happer argued that the “demonization” of carbon dioxide “really differs little from the Nazi persecution of the Jews, the Soviet extermination of class enemies, or ISIL slaughter of infidels.”
Nevertheless, the CO2 Coalition received more than $76,000 from foundations linked to the oil and gas billionaires Charles and David Koch during Trump’s first term, according to Gibson’s report. Greenpeace calculations show the group got $620,000 in Koch-related contributions between 2004 and 2015.
“We have not received Koch Industries money since I’ve been here,” Wrightstone, who took over in 2021, said when asked about Koch contributions.
Gibson argues that Wright, as a fossil fuel executive, is slightly more nuanced in expressing his views on climate change than his supporters at the CO2 Coalition. Wright acknowledges that human-caused global heating is real and potentially a problem while saying in a video posted to his LinkedIn last year that “there is no climate crisis.”
“It seems to me to be the calculated words of a CEO who recognizes that there is a potential liability of telling an outright lie to the public,” Gibson said. “Yet the effect of his comments is to leave people with the impression that climate change is not happening.”
