At a fiery Monday night rally in Idaho, Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez pulled out all the old rhetoric, torching President Donald Trump and tech billionaire Elon Musk for allegedly “undermining democracy” and fueling what they branded an American “oligarchy.”
Their language was blunt—almost theatrical. Sanders compared billionaires to heroin addicts, whose drug of choice is greed, and warned that American society is “governed by billionaires.”
But if we’re being honest, their performance wasn’t so much a defense of democracy as it was a cover operation. The reality? These so-called champions of “the people” are part of the very elite machine they pretend to oppose.
Let’s break this down.
Sanders declared, “These oligarchs… can’t control themselves. They need more and more… we are going to take care of their addiction problem.” But when he talks about greed, is he including the multi-million-dollar corporate donors bankrolling his party? Or how about the government contractors raking in billions while Democratic leadership signs off on endless spending bills that devalue the currency and hammer working Americans with inflation?
This isn’t about Musk, Bezos, or Zuckerberg—it’s about power. And right now, the progressive wing is wielding plenty of it.
AOC, meanwhile, warned the crowd, “This concentration of power, greed, and corruption is oligarchy in America.” The irony? She made these statements while standing on a platform funded by left-wing PACs and donors whose checkbooks rival any GOP megadonor.
And while she calls for “out-organizing the oligarchy,” her policies—massive taxation, open-ended entitlement programs, and sweeping environmental regulations—would only increase government control and put more power in the hands of bureaucrats.
That’s not grassroots empowerment. That’s central planning with a PR makeover.
Sanders also took aim at Trump’s cabinet, claiming it was packed with billionaires. But what he didn’t mention is that the Biden administration has quietly become one of the most Wall Street-entrenched in recent memory, with senior officials rotating between public office and the boardrooms of the very corporations they claim to regulate.
And let’s not forget: under Democratic control, the cost of living has exploded. Food, fuel, housing—you name it. The working-class voters these two claim to represent are being crushed, not by Elon Musk’s tweets, but by policies that print trillions, kill domestic energy, and flood the job market with unvetted labor, all while lecturing Americans about equity and climate justice.
