Mr. Super Rich Goes To Washington

In the 1939 movie Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, Jimmy Stewart, as newly appointed Sen. Jefferson Smith, arrives in Washington to fight against government corruption.

In 2025, it’s now Mr. Super Rich going to Washington, but for entirely different reasons.

The Super Rich have donated massive amounts to support Donald Trump’s campaign, his Inauguration festivities, his Super PAC, and other Trump vehicles for vacuuming up gobs of money.

They have come to Washington to help ensure that their influence-money protects their business and personal economic interests.

They also are here as nominees for Cabinet positions and other jobs, and to create a plan to tear apart the federal government and the safety net that protects the American people.

The faux populism that Trump ran on is clearly not reflected in the multibillionaires and powerful Corporate America representatives that Trump has chosen to hang out with during his victory celebration.

If MAGA supporters are concerned about the influence of elites in our society, they’ll find plenty of them surrounding Trump at his Inauguration next week.

For example, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerburg, the three richest people in the world, will be seated on the inaugural dais, very close to Trump, like courtiers waiting to serve their monarch.

The Roberts Supreme Court has done its part to legalize the corrupt practices that created the tsunami of influence money that Washington floats on today.

From 1976 to 2010, the Supreme Court defined “corruption” to include “buying influence.”

In 2010, however, in its Citizens United decision, the Supreme Court majority led by Chief Justice John Roberts dropped “buying influence” from its “corruption” definition. In so doing, they legalized what had long been recognized by the Court as a corrupt practice.

The Supreme Court and its earlier Justices had it right for more than three decades prior to 2010 – “buying influence” remains a corrupt practice, the Roberts Court notwithstanding.

Supreme Court decisions in Citizens United and 2014’s McCutcheon v. FEC, which also disingenuously narrowed the definition of “corruption,” will play a key role in the new Trump era that begins on Monday as the ultrawealthy and mega-corporations exercise enormous power over our government.

Let’s look at just one of Trump’s money-making vehicles – next week’s Inauguration.

Trump is raising an unprecedented amount ostensibly to pay for his Inauguration festivities. There’s no limit on contributions to Inaugural committees, and Trump has “requested” $1 million donations for the highest-level access. He reportedly has already raised more than $170 million. This compares with $62 million raised by President Biden four years ago.

There is no requirement to disclose inaugural expenditures. There is no reason to believe they will need all this money for the Inauguration, and we will likely never know where all the money ends up.

These huge contributions to an Inaugural committee are the safest way to buy influence in a new Administration. They’re backing the candidate who already won.

And the number of million-dollar contributions from companies with major issues pending before the government makes it hard to believe this is anything but money given for influence with the new Administration.

No surprise then that big tech is well represented in the $1 million club. Inaugural guests will include Apple’s Tim Cook, Alphabet/Google’s Sundar Pichai, Meta’s Zuckerberg, and OpenAI’s Sam Altman.

And then there’s Elon Musk, the richest of them all.

Musk spent at least $260 million to elect Trump.

In return, Trump has given Musk extraordinary powers to influence his coming Administration, despite the potential enormous conflicts that Musk’s financial interests have in government decisions. His companies already have billions of dollars in federal contracts and have huge financial stakes in decisions to be made about government regulations.

Million-dollar tributes paid by our wealthiest Americans and our mega-corporations are, in simple terms, obscene.

The Super Rich and the mega-corporations are taking over Washington in ways unseen since the Robber Baron era of the 19th century.

Where does this leave the interests of the American people and how long will Trump get away with his faux populism?

____________