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If you’re feeling despair over Trump’s second regime, which begins today, I understand.
Yet I remain hopeful about America. Let me explain why.
Trump hoodwinked average working Americans into believing he’s on their side, and convinced enough voters that Kamala Harris and Democrats were on the side of cultural elites (as exemplified by Trump bogeymen the “deep state”, “wokeism”, and “coastal elites”).
But his hoax will not work for long, given the oligarchy’s conspicuous takeover of America under Trump’s second regime.
That regime has barely begun but it’s already exposing a reality that has been hidden from most Americans for decades: the raw, stinking power of the American oligarchy, and its use of obscene wealth to gain and increase this power.
My hope is founded on Americans finally seeing and responding to this reality. How can they not?
Today, seated together on the platform where Trump is giving his inaugural address, will be the three richest people in America, each of whom contributed $1m to the event – Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg.
Each of them also owns powerful social media platforms and have enormous sway over what Americans see and learn.
Musk sank a quarter of a billion dollars into getting Trump elected. He also turned his giant social media platform, X, into a cesspool of lies and bigotry in support of Trump.
Trump has authorized Musk, along with billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy, to target for elimination programs that Americans depend on – thereby making way for a giant tax cut for the wealthy.
Bezos, the second-richest person in America and owner of Amazon, has reportedly agreed to pay $40m for a documentary about Melania Trump for which she is executive producer, to run on Bezos’s streaming service, Amazon Prime.
Previously, Bezos blocked the newspaper he owns, the Washington Post, from endorsing Harris in the 2024 election.
Zuckerberg, the third-richest person in America and CEO of Meta, has decided to allow lies and bigotry on his Facebook and Instagram platforms, presumably in support of Trump.
Zuckerberg says the deciding factor for getting rid of factchecking moderators was the “cultural tipping point” of Trump’s election.
Today, Zuckerberg is co-hosting a black-tie reception with the Republican mega-donor Miriam Adelson to celebrate the inauguration.
The conflicts of interest are mind-numbing.
Besides Musk’s social media powerhouse X, his SpaceX is a major federal contractor through its rocket launches and its internet service, Starlink. In addition to Bezos owning Amazon Prime and the Amazon distribution service, Amazon is a major federal contractor through its cloud computing business. Besides Zuckerberg owning Facebook and Instagram, Zuckerberg is pouring billions into artificial intelligence, as is Musk, in hopes of huge federal contracts.
Not to mention the billionaires Trump is putting in charge of key departments – treasury, commerce and education – to decide on taxes and expenditures, tariffs and trade, and even what young Americans learn. And the other billionaires he’s bringing into the White House.
Not since the gilded age of the late 19th century has such vast wealth turned itself into such conspicuous displays of political power. Unapologetically, unashamedly, defiantly.
This flagrancy makes me hopeful. Why? Because Americans don’t abide aristocracy. We were founded in revolt against unaccountable power and wealth. We will not tolerate this barefaced takeover.
The backlash will be stunning.
I cannot tell you precisely how or when it will occur, but I expect it will start with average Americans helping their communities and protecting the most vulnerable.
We will then see it in the 2026 midterms and the 2028 presidential election, when Americans elect true leaders who care about working people and the common good.
And just as we did at the end of the first gilded age of the late 19th century when the oligarchy revealed its hubris and grandiosity, we will demand and get fundamental reforms.
We will force big money out of our politics.
We will raise taxes on the wealthy to pay for what most Americans need.
We will bust up giant corporations so they cannot exercise untrammeled economic or political power and regulate big finance so it cannot hold the economy hostage to its wanton gambling.
And we will hold huge social media platforms accountable to the public rather than to a handful of multibillionaires.
In light of Trump’s re-election, some people have concluded, wrongly, that Americans don’t care about democracy – they’re more concerned about the cost of living or reproductive rights or immigration.
But no other issue can be addressed if we lose our democracy. Self-government is the means by which a free people grapples with its common challenges.
We could not remain on the path we were on. Even under Democratic administrations, the sludge has been thickening for many years. Fundamental, systematic flaws have remained unaddressed. Inequalities have continued to widen. Corruption and bribery have worsened.
Even before Trump, we were on the way to losing our democracy – but we did not pay attention. Now, we have no choice but to attend to it, to preserve what’s left of it, and move forward to strengthen it.
It’s unfortunate that America has come to this point. But, as a friend put it, the authoritarian forces that have been building for years are like the pus in an ugly boil. The only way we work up enough outrage to lance it, she said, is for the boil to get so big and ugly that it disgusts all of us.
A few years of another Trump regime even more disgusting than the first will be hard on many people. We cannot gloss over the magnitude of the suffering that will occur.
But when the oligarchy is exposed for what it is, the nation will see, more clearly than ever before, that we have no alternative other than to take back power.
Only then can we continue the essential work of America: the pursuit of equality and prosperity for the many, not the few. The preservation and strengthening of a government of, by and for the people.
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Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com
