Have Billionaires Gone Too Far?

Summary

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Podcast Summary: The Political Scene | The New Yorker

Episode: Have Billionaires Gone Too Far?
Date: May 9, 2026
Host & Panelists: Evan Osnos, Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer
Guest: Brooke Harrington (Professor of Economic Sociology, Dartmouth)

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Overview

This episode of The Political Scene explores the surge of anti-billionaire sentiment in American culture and politics, examining its causes, manifestations, and the potential consequences for democracy. The conversation draws on recent political shifts, growing public anger over inequality, billionaire activism, and the possibility of a larger backlash—both on the left and the right—against extreme wealth. Guest Brooke Harrington brings expert insight into how today's billionaires differ from their predecessors, the shifting cultural norms surrounding wealth, and historical lessons about oligarchy and populist reactions.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Spectacle of Wealth and Political Shifts

• [01:54] Evan Osnos recalls Trump's second inauguration: a stage packed with tech tycoons and billionaires, congressional leaders relegated to the audience.
  • Quote (03:11):

    "The political advantages of the ultra rich were not just being tolerated. It seemed as if they were going to be celebrated. It was a sort of year Zero for shamelessness."

• Recent events indicate backlash: Zoran Mamdani’s mayoral win in NYC, a proposed wealth tax in California, protests over Jeff Bezos’s role in the Met Gala.

2. Pitchfork Politics and Class Backlash

• [03:37] Susan Glasser highlights the left’s “pitchfork politics,” noting the MAGA base’s disillusionment as Trump enriches himself and his allies.

  • Raises the question of what becomes of right-wing populism post-Trump.

• [04:32] Jane Mayer describes class politics becoming personalized, such as Mamdani targeting hedge funder Ken Griffin for a “pied-à-terre” tax.

  • Griffin’s public outrage and threat to leave, though “he’s already moved to Florida.”

3. The Culture and Ethic of Today’s Billionaires

• [07:17] Evan Osnos invites Brooke Harrington to explain what’s different today.
• [07:50] Brooke Harrington:
  • Today’s ultra-wealthy are “unconstrained by any kind of sense of mutual obligation” to society.
  • Quote (08:19):

    "The general post-Reaganite era of wealth has been characterized by what I call noblesse without the oblige."

• [09:20] Brooke underscores that billionaires are not monolithic—some overtly oppose democracy (e.g., Peter Thiel), while others simply follow self-maximizing logic.

4. Norms, Shame, and Historical Lessons

• [10:15] Jane Mayer suggests that the difference may lie not in the rich themselves, but in society’s willingness to demand accountability.
• [11:12] Brooke Harrington agrees, pointing out the historical role of social norms over law:
  • Elites crave social approval; withholding admiration (as after the Ludlow massacre) historically triggered more responsible behavior.
  • The shift since the 1980s: from civic expectations to “greed is good culture.”
  • Quote (12:43):

    "Civic virtue is for chumps… that’s for losers and you should look out for number one only."

5. Billionaires in Politics: Overreach and Blowback

• [13:12] Evan Osnos cites Elon Musk’s brief reign over government, ultimately cut short by public discomfort with “unelected plutocratic rule.”
• [14:14] Brooke Harrington:
  • The era of the “wealth creator” myth is unraveling as billionaires overplay their hand.
  • Billionaires now seem like “buccaneers and pirates… pillaging democracy.”

6. Private Power vs. Democracy

• [15:04] Jane Mayer:
  • Americans instinctively reject unelected billionaires running the country.
• [15:56] Susan Glasser raises concerns about the erosion of democratic institutions and the rise of “proxy wars between the ultra-rich of the right and left.”
  • Links to anxieties over the emergence of a coming “trillionaire class” fueled by AI.

7. AI and the Future of Inequality

• [17:08] Brooke Harrington:
  • Most people only see AI as a threat to jobs, but the deeper threat is to democracy itself:
  • Quote (17:12):

    “How do you have a democracy if nobody knows what’s real anymore?”

[Break: ads and housekeeping skipped]

8. Historical Mechanisms of Change: Revolution or Social Pressure?

• [19:51] Jane Mayer to Brooke: Will backlash truly bring change, or just reify the ruling class?
• [20:22] Brooke Harrington:
  • Most autocratic regimes fall due to “normative pressures,” not violent revolution—elites withdraw support when association becomes toxic.

9. Current Billionaire Backlash: Will It Last?

• [22:16] Evan Osnos: Recent polling shows only 49% of Americans now say billionaires are good for society—down from 63% four years ago.
• [23:16] Brooke Harrington:
  • Elites eventually “peel away” from an overreaching oligarch or movement, making strongman rule unsustainable.
  • This is likely “irreversible.”

10. Billionaire Psychology & Political Behavior

• [24:51] Susan Glasser: Why are billionaires so angry and petty if they’re so successful?
• [24:54] Brooke Harrington:
  • Wealth isolates, leading to psychological fragility and grievance.
  • Example: Tom Perkins comparing criticism of the wealthy to Kristallnacht.
  • Online groupthink radicalizes billionaire views (“risky shift”).

11. Protest Triggers & Declining Norms

• [26:37] Brooke Harrington:
  • The “Broligarchs” now refuse even symbolic civic duty (donating to libraries, universities).
  • Americans sense a “one law for them, another for us,” fueling anger.

12. Cultural Norms and the Pendulum Effect

• [27:34] Evan Osnos: Old norm: “The whale that never surfaces doesn’t get harpooned”—billionaires were once discreet, now conspicuously brazen.

• [28:18] Brooke Harrington:

  • MAGA billionaires are “not enculturated into the norms of wealth” (i.e., no restraint or subtlety).
  • They flaunt it, and that is producing backlash.

• [29:47] Brooke Harrington:

  • Eventually even these oligarchs “burn themselves out,” leading to a quiet period of political correction:

    “It will take the form of a whimper rather than a bang... people will be too embarrassed to be associated with them and their tackiness.”

13. Political Implications: Left, Right, and the 2026 & 2028 Elections

• [39:47] Susan Glasser:
  • Republicans face a split: continue Trump-style populism or align with wealthy party elites (especially tech billionaires).
  • Democrats are making inequality a centrist, not fringe, issue—with candidates like Jon Ossoff capitalizing on middle-class anxieties.
• [42:04] Jane Mayer:
  • Some Trump voters feel betrayed by his billionaire alliances; uncertain how this anger will be directed.
  • Tensions within the Democratic coalition (left vs. establishment) persist, but radical ideas like those of Bernie are now mainstream.

14. Inequality By the Numbers

• [35:58] Susan Glasser:
  • Top 0.001% saw 52% income growth (2017-25), middle 40% just 7.5%, bottom 50% only 12%.
  • Cost of living rose by 14%, so for the bottom, real gains are negative.
• [37:25] Jane Mayer:
  • The key shift: when the “professional and educated are falling further behind the very, very top,” it is the upper-middle’s sense of being cheated that fuels backlash.
  • The “Horatio Alger myth” (anyone can rise) is dying; with it, patience for extreme inequality.

15. What’s Next? Cycles, Reform, Division

• [33:26] Evan Osnos:

  • Two historic paths: sharper division (“oligarchy-fueled civil war”) or eventual reform as after the Gilded Age.
  • Per Robert Putnam, American society oscillates between rugged individualism and collective solutions (“the cowboy vs. the wagon train”).
  • Quote (34:45):

    “Right now we’re clearly in the moment when the cowboy is king.”

• [35:58] Jane Mayer & Susan Glasser: Debate whether deep reform (like the Progressive Era) is possible given current legal and political realities (e.g., Supreme Court decisions favoring money in politics).

• [38:13] Evan Osnos:

  • The current backlash is fueled by both longterm trends ("greed is good" since the '80s) and acute recent events (Trump, AI, visible billionaire overreach).

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Notable Quotes

• Brooke Harrington [08:19]:

  "The general post-Reaganite era of wealth has been characterized by what I call noblesse without the oblige."

• Jane Mayer [10:15]:

  "The change is not really in the character of the rich so much as in the character of society."

• Brooke Harrington [12:43]:

  "Civic virtue is for chumps... that’s for losers and you should look out for number one only."

• Susan Glasser [16:57]:

  "My worry is that what AI is doing is accelerating, the winners winning even more. And the trillionaire class could be even worse for America than the billionaire class."

• Brooke Harrington [24:54]:

  "You kind of become psychotic in a way. You lose touch with reality."

• Brooke Harrington [29:47]:

  "There will be, I think, a desire to return to some sort of quiet civic minded elitism like Kennedy era, although he would have been considered a nouveau riche in his time, of course."

• Evan Osnos [34:45]:

  "Right now we’re clearly in the moment when the cowboy is king."

• Jane Mayer [35:58]:

  "When that [American] dream dies, they get mad."

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Important Segment Timestamps

• Trump’s Second Inauguration & Billionaire Spectacle – [01:54]
• Zoran Mamdani and "Pitchfork Politics" – [03:37]
• Billionaire Grievances: Ken Griffin – [04:32]
• Brooke Harrington on Billionaire Culture – [07:17]
  • "Noblesse without oblige" explained [08:19]
• The Shift from Norms to Greed as Virtue – [12:43]
• Elon Musk's Political Defenestration – [13:12]
• Rise of the Trillionaire Class & AI – [16:57]
• Historical Lessons: Elite Disassociation – [20:22]
• Polling Evidence of Billionaire Backlash – [22:16]
• Billionaire Psychology & Petty Grievance – [24:51]
• Decline in Rich Supplying Civic Goods – [26:37]
• Changing Cultural Norms Around Wealth – [27:34]
• What’s Next for American Inequality and Politics – [33:26]
• Income Growth Inequality Data – [35:58]
• Forward Outlook: Elections & Populist Energy – [39:47]

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Tone & Language

• Conversational yet analytical, often ironic and incisive—especially regarding the spectacle and cultural aesthetics of wealth ("golden statues," "Pyongyang on the Potomac," "buccaneers and pirates," "the golden age of tacky gold").
• Mix of historical context, lived experience, and contemporary political analysis.
• Tone alternates between skepticism, exasperation, and cautious optimism for reform.

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Takeaways

• There is palpable, rising backlash against billionaires and extreme wealth, manifesting in political campaigns, culture, and proposed tax reforms.
• The current ultra-rich are more shamelessly performative, less bound by old social norms—triggering sharper public anger and scrutiny.
• Cycles of respect and resentment for wealth are a recurring American theme, now potentially entering a new phase.
• The ultimate outcome (deeper division vs. reform) remains uncertain, but the terrain of American politics is shifting, with inequality and the power of the wealthiest rising to the center of the discussion.
• The panel is split between hope for a self-correcting backlash and concern that entrenched money power may make true reform impossible—especially with the coming AI revolution.

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End of summary.

Transcript

[Evan Osnos]

If you're a fan of the political scene podcast from the New Yorker, I hope you'll join us for a live taping of the show at 92 NY in Manhattan.

[Jane Mayer]

We're going to be talking about Donald Trump's falling approval numbers, the prospects of a comeback for the Democratic Party in

[Susan Glasser]

the midterms, and let's just say, the potential threats to the integrity of the election that are coming from the president.

[Evan Osnos]

I hope you'll join me, Evan Osnos and my colleagues Susan Glasser and Jane Mayer on June 4th at 7:00pm Ticket information is at92ny.org.

[Jane Mayer]

There are banners up all over town at construction sites. They were put up by Donald Trump that say, thank you, Donald Trump. And have a picture of himself in a hard hat. I thought, you know, it's an unusual sort of thing to, like, put up huge banners at public expense with your picture on them thanking yourself. It's the latest outcropping of Pyongyang on the Potomac. Is the Potomac. I mean, there is, of course, he has just unveiled his golden statue of himself at his club, but at least that's his own club. These are our city streets.

[Brooke Harrington]

Yeah.

[Evan Osnos]

I have to say, it's gotta be a good time in the golden statue business. Like, if, you know, it's been a tough millennium, I guess in the golden statue business, they haven't had as much business since, like, Caesar.

[Susan Glasser]

Even Caesars were in marble.

[Evan Osnos]

Yeah, good point. It was a little more subtle. Welco. Welcome to the Political Scene from the New Yorker, a weekly discussion about the big questions in American politics. I'm Evan Osnos and I'm joined, as ever, by my colleagues Susan Glasser and Jane Mayer. Hi, Susan and. Hi, Jane.

[Susan Glasser]

Hey. It's so great to be with you guys.

[Jane Mayer]

Hey, good to see you.

[Evan Osnos]

Well, you guys remember 18 months ago, Donald Trump was sworn in for the second time. And the scene on that inauguration stage was indelible. Truly, it was a kind of unusually candid exhibition of the nature of American power. You had a president there surrounded by so many tech tycoons and friendly billionaires, that there was not even room on the stage for the leaders of Congress. They were relegated to the audience. And I think even with all of the history of big money in Washington, which we've all written about and talked about, the. This scene really felt like a step change because it was an announcement of an era in which the political advantages of the ultra rich were not just being tolerated. It seemed as if they were going to be celebrated. It was a sort of year Zero for shamelessness. Since then, however, we've seen a whole host of signs of a backlash. You had Zoran Mamdani elected mayor in New York. A wealth tax is now on the ballot in California. And then this week there were protests against Jeff Bezos being the big sponsor of the Met Gala. So you're seeing the spectacle of immense wealth colliding with economic frustration and really gaping inequality. And today we thought we would dig in to this feeling of a blowback, both political and cultural. So what's really taking shape here? What's happening on the left and on the right? And is this a blip or is this something larger happening in the zeitgeist? I'm curious, Susan. You know, we've been talking this week about some of these signs of anti rich sentiment. You described it as pitchfork politics. And what has caught your attention?

[Susan Glasser]

That's right, Pitchfork politics. Well, it's listening to you run down these sort of data points, right? What you see is blue America has one version of the backlash. Right? You know, Donald Trump is selling a ballroom at a time when he's sort of immiserating millions of people around the globe with his foreign adventurism. So I sort of get that piece of it. I wanna talk about that. But then for me, I'm also fascinated by what happens to right wing populism after Donald Trump. I think we're now seeing in Donald Trump's second term just a sort of amazing clash between the electorate, the MAGA electorate that thought it was getting one thing, a man to burn it down on their behalf, and then the billionaire who's enriching himself, his family and his friends. So where does that go?

[Evan Osnos]

Yeah, Jane, what do you think?

[Jane Mayer]

I mean, I think there's been a fascinating outcropping of sort of class politics that you don't usually see in America, where you see Mamdani showing up at the building where Ken Griffin, the hedge fund manager who runs Citadel, lives, and it's one of his many homes, and it's not his primary residence. He has a, I think it was a record breaking $238 million penthouse there. And the issue that Mamdani is bringing up is whether with very wealthy people with second homes worth more than 5 million in new York City need to pay a special tax, a pied a terre tax. Pied a terre tax.

[David Remnick]

This is an annual fee on luxury properties worth more than $5 million whose owners do not live full time in the city. Like for this penthouse, which hedge fund CEO Ken Griffin bought for $238 million. This pied a terre tax is specifically designed for the richest of the rich, those who store their wealth in New York City real estate, but who don't actually live here. But even so.

[Jane Mayer]

And what was interesting to me was that Mamdani personalized it the way he did. And Griffin was furious and shot back at this and said, you know, I'm taking my chips and moving to Florida. The problem was he's already moved to Florida, so it's not much of a threat. He's already domiciled in Florida anyway. But he's saying he's gonna take his money out of a big project in Manhattan. But the thing that you're seeing is that Mamdani is crossing a line in terms of what's usually polite in America and putting a face on who's the villain, who's the greedy rich guy. And I'm at his. What the rich do not want is people at their personal gates standing there with the pitchforks. And that's what that moment, I think, was so fascinating to see, a kind

[Evan Osnos]

of uncomfortable level of attention, personally. There were reports this week, too, competing reports, on whether Jeff Bezos may or may not be selling his giant mega yacht.

[Jane Mayer]

Bezos is so big, he can't bring it into normal ports. Right. He's gotta have it out where the cargo ships are.

[Evan Osnos]

Yeah. You know, these are the practical logistical challenges that face. But, you know, a pied a terre at sea, I suppose. We are in a fortunate position, guys. Cause we have a guest to join us today who is really perfectly suited to talk about these issues culturally, politically. She has studied the culture of wealth in America for a long time. Brooke Harrington is a professor of economic sociology at Dartmouth. And I first learned about her work after she did something unusual for a scholar, which is that she got fully trained as a wealth manager to basically embed in that world and be able to understand the byways and the bylaws from within.

[Jane Mayer]

So great.

[Evan Osnos]

Brooke, welcome to the show.

[Brooke Harrington]

It's great to be here. Thank you.

[Evan Osnos]

Brooke, you've spent years really studying the culture of wealth in the United States and around the world. You've embedded in it. You've been trained in it. We've always had tycoons. I think some people say, well, what is really different, frankly, about what's happening in the world today around wealth and ultra wealth? Is it just a matter of numbers, about scale, about the size of these fortunes? Is it about culture? What's distinctive about this cohort that looms so large today?

[Brooke Harrington]

In my view, As a sociologist, what's really distinctive about the wealthiest people in society today is how unconstrained they are by any kind of sense of mutual obligation towards the societies that made them prosperous to begin with.

[Jane Mayer]

You've coined this phrase, this wonderful phrase. The Broligarchs, did they have a different ethic generally from say, the Rockefellers and Vanderbilts and Carnegies?

[Brooke Harrington]

Yes, those are more the tech guys. But the general post Reaganite era of wealth has been characterized by what I call noblesse without the oblige. So they want the trappings of aristocracy and they want the deference from us, but they refuse any sense of obligation towards us. That's new.

[Susan Glasser]

So, Brooke, something flipped for these guys in the 2024 election. And we've all seen former democratic givers like Jeff Bezos become not only Trumpified, but physically transformed, apparently in the process of becoming. Do they see themselves as. Donald Trump sees himself very definitely, as kind of burning it down. And in effect, he is the leading enemy of liberal democracy inside America today. Do these ultra wealthy, do they see themselves as actually seeking to break down the liberal democratic state or simply to wield disproportionate power over it?

[Brooke Harrington]

I think it's important to recognize that the ultra wealthy in the US and elsewhere are not a monolith. So some of them definitely view the world the way you just described. Peter Thiel has famously said that he thinks democracy and capitalism are incompatible tu corps, as it were. So some people are very out and proud about that among the ultra rich. Others, I think, just haven't thought about it. Like, they're not like, sitting there like Mr. Burns, trying to figure out how can I be maximally destructive to the United States of America? They're just thinking the way that economics says you should think. Like, how do I maximize my utility? And if everyone else does the same, it'll somehow work out through the offices of the invisible hand. But like, anyone who's like, read a page of a history book or literature knows it doesn't always work out that way.

[Jane Mayer]

Can I ask you a question, though, just to back up for one sec? I mean, the sort of the supposition that somehow the robber barons were good guys or better guys or were philanthropic or whatever. And I really wonder if they actually were or if it was just that society forced them to have to do this. And the change is not really in the character of the rich so much as in the character of society in that they were forced. Rockefeller was forced. He and his son had to hire, you know, famously a PR man who taught him how to improve his image. Ivy Lee, I think was his name. And it was because they were afraid of the pitchforks. They were afraid of the backlash politically coming after them, particularly after the Ludlow massacre in Colorado. So is it that the rich are the same, but we as a society are not shaming and threatening them in the same way? Maybe it's we who've changed more.

[Brooke Harrington]

I'm really glad that you raised that because it never occurs to me to clarify that, because I always thought, well, obviously people are just people and they've been pretty much the same kind of people for thousands of years. I'm not aware of anyone arguing that the robber barons were better people. The way I see it as a sociologist is you have to look at what does society demand of us, of all of us, not just the rich, but all of us. There are some pretty strict rules about things like you shouldn't take without giving back, you shouldn't exploit other people. So those rules tend to be more heavily enforced on those of us who aren't rich. But they used to be much more heavily enforced, even on the rich, though they had a little more wiggle room. So if you read the work of economic historians like Guido Alfani, for example, he just wrote this wonderful book called as Gods Among Men and he talks about how exactly societies did enforce norms. This is this crucial word for social scientists, not the law, but norms. Because the Achilles heel of all these rich people throughout history, they want deference and respect and admiration. And if we withhold it from them, they change their behavior.

[Jane Mayer]

So we've started simply admiring them. Maybe since, I don't know, Ayn Rand or something. Greed is good. The kind of Gordon Geckos have won. Is that the idea? Since the 80s, yeah.

[Brooke Harrington]

So this is within my lifetime. This is a fairly recent change. And like I remember that massive sea change culturally from like the Carter administration, let's all turn down the heat and wear some cardigan sweaters to greed is good. Civic virtue is for chumps paying your taxes or, you know, doing the things that used to be expected, especially of elites. That's for losers and you should look out for number one only.

[Evan Osnos]

You know, it seemed to me that we reached a new cultural phase in 2025, when you had the world's richest man get something that his predecessors like the Vanderbilts and the Rockefellers and the Carnegie's would have dreamed of, which is literally his own department of government that he could use to then dismantle, for instance, regulatory powers that were relevant to his own businesses. And what was fascinating for me, and I wonder if it was a precursor to what we're seeing, and we'll talk about in a moment, was that actually, in some ways, Elon Musk was kind of defenestrated from Washington by the American public. Like Trump was picking up on the fact that Tesla sales were dropping, that people, on some level that maybe people didn't even explicitly articulate it, offended this subtle balance that we have in the culture between admiring success on one hand and also being pretty creeped out by somebody gallivanting all over the notion of reasonable political power.

[Brooke Harrington]

That's exactly right. And I'm sure all of us are old enough to remember when the term wealth creator came online, and we were all sort of collectively encouraged to have a sort of worshipful attitude toward the rich, as if their wealth automatically showed how virtuous and smart they were. But what we've seen is them overplaying their hand so that people like Musk and Thiel and Bezos, you know, what happened with the Met Gala recently, they're coming across as, like, buccaneers and pirates. You know, they're pillaging American cultural institutions, they're pillaging democracy. And I think that is so egregiously out of character for these sort of objects of worship that that's where people are starting to go, you know, time out here.

[Jane Mayer]

Maybe.

[Brooke Harrington]

Maybe they've gone too far.

[Jane Mayer]

Is it their conspicuous consumption and sort of privateering, or is it the line that they're crossing is that they're going from becoming oligarchs to plutocrats who are actually running, trying to run a democracy with their money? I mean, I think the thing about Musk is no one elected him, and there he was running the government. And it seems to me that there's kind of an instinctual American backlash against the idea that people we didn't elect because they're rich are completely running our lives. Is that a line that is being crossed now?

[Brooke Harrington]

I think that's part of it. I mean, you probably remember, as I do, when Hillary Clinton, in Bill Clinton's first term, was trying to, like, put forward ideas about a national health care system, and the thing everyone was saying was, nobody elected her. What is she doing here?

[Susan Glasser]

Yeah. You know, it's interesting, though. I guess, for me, the fear is, have our institutions become so eroded? Have we changed the rules so much already? I mean, Jane is our amazing chronicler of dark money. It's been a long time since Citizens United and the hyper empowerment of billionaires and wealthy corporations in our political system. My question now is, okay, well, maybe there's a populist backlash that's gonna brew against these and Elon Musk and Trump, but maybe it's really just now a series of proxy wars between the ultra rich of the right and left. Can the people actually assert themselves anymore in a meaningful way in the political system? That's actually one of my great anxieties as we enter the age of artificial intelligence. And my worry is that what AI is doing is accelerating, the winners winning even more. And the trillionaire class could be even worse for America than the billionaire class.

[Evan Osnos]

Do you get a sense, Brooke, that people, that this anxiety, this emerging backlash is driven partly by some sense of what AI is going to do in economic and cultural terms?

[Brooke Harrington]

I think most people don't even see it beyond the sort of headlines of like, AI is going to take your job. It's going to take everybody's job, be really scared. Other than that, I think most people don't know enough about it to anticipate what it could mean. Say, for democracy, that's actually what kind of keeps me up at night is like, how do you have a democracy if nobody knows what's real anymore?

[Evan Osnos]

We're going to take a quick break, and when we come back, more on the billionaire backlash and how the political pressure is building in response to this increasingly visible in your face form of oligarchy. The political scene from the New Yorker will be right back. We are in uncharted territory.

[Narrator]

Staff writer Evan Osnos on the New Yorker Radio Hour.

[Evan Osnos]

I think all of us right now are trying to make sense of an avalanche of news every day. And there aren't very many places where you can go and understand how something looks in the grand scope of history and context. That's what I come to the New Yorker for.

[Narrator]

I'm David Remnick, and each week my colleagues and I try to make sense of what's happening in this chaotic world. And I hope you'll join us for the New Yorker Radio Hour.

[Jane Mayer]

Before we get back to it, quick question. What do you think the overlap is between our listeners and people who are, let's say, anxious about the 2026 midterms?

[Evan Osnos]

I would say the overlap is significant. Probably some cautious optimists out there, too.

[Jane Mayer]

People with very strong opinions. Either way, it's a lot.

[Susan Glasser]

Whatever you're feeling about the midterms, though, please come and see us live. We are doing a special taping of the podcast at 92 NY in New York City on June 4th.

[Evan Osnos]

Yeah, we're gonna be talking about election integrity. What's at stake, whether Democrats can actually capitalize on Trump's falling approval numbers and

[Jane Mayer]

whether some of these once safe Republican seats are, are really as competitive as they look.

[Susan Glasser]

And by the way, what happens if Democrats actually do take back Congress? What does it mean for 2028 for

[Jane Mayer]

anyone with a VIP ticket? There's also a meet and greet after the taping, so the political analysis will continue over drinks.

[Evan Osnos]

It's true. And if you're not in New York, good news because we have streaming set up so you can watch from wherever you are. So head to92ny.org for more info or check the link in our show notes. We hope to see you there on June 4th.

[Jane Mayer]

When you're talking about how the Broligarchs don't respect the humanities and don't understand history, I'm curious, what lessons can you tell us about what happens when there is this kind of concentration of wealth? Should we expect this backlash to be significant enough to bring these people down? I mean, when do you have, you know, are we expecting a revolution in the country or are we expecting just sort of a built in ruling class?

[Brooke Harrington]

Thinking about the work of historians like Ruth Ben Guy, she wrote some very interesting things about how previous strongmen have been deposed. And it was done in many cases without revolution, in the sort of The France and 1789 sense of the word, you know, where heads actually rolled. It was actually done through subtler social means of the kind of normative pressures that I was talking about, unlike when the Medici were around. I'm talking to you from Florence, so I think about the Medici a lot.

[Jane Mayer]

Nice.

[Brooke Harrington]

Lucky you.

[Evan Osnos]

Tough work.

[Brooke Harrington]

So the Medici were kept in line by the reality of eternal damnation and the possibility of excommunication.

[Susan Glasser]

And what we need is eternal damnation for us.

[Jane Mayer]

Yeah.

[Brooke Harrington]

Which is part of what we enter the Pope. Well, it's part of what makes the White House attack on Pope Bob so shocking. It's like, wait a second, J.D. vance is trying to talk theology to the Pope? That's crazy. That's an indicator of how far our sort of normative controls have weakened. Imagine even 100 years ago, any sort of Catholic trying to scold the Pope. But in the present day and in the recent past, like the last 50 years, we have examples in the case of, say, Pinochet or of being able to depose autocratic rulers basically by stigmatizing their rule and that making it kind of toxic for the elites who keep them in power to continue supporting them. And so it's a slower and less dramatic process than rolling out the guillotines into the Place de la Concorde.

[Susan Glasser]

But.

[Brooke Harrington]

But what you get is things like Tucker Carlson saying, I repent of my support for maga.

[Jane Mayer]

Interesting.

[Evan Osnos]

What you're describing is the sense that there is a cultural moment that is in some ways upstream from the political changes that it produces. I mean, we're seeing now, when you look at data on public attitudes, there is a sign of something changing. I mean, traditionally it's been that Americans are sort of completely divided between admiration for giant wealth and then also saying, well, I'm not sure it makes this country more fair. But just recently, I mean, I'm looking at a poll right here that says that now there are. It's only 49% of Americans who say billionaires are good for society, which is down from 63% just four years ago. So I mean, that's a substantial indication of the mood. And particularly among young people, you see a lot of that sort of concern. Do you get the feeling that this is something temporary or does your reading of the waves of this through history suggest actually when this happens, it takes a while to work itself out?

[Brooke Harrington]

It seems like it takes a while to work itself out. But what you get is this peeling away, like peeling the skin of a banana. The elites who propped up the strongman kind of start to back away or publicly repudiate him, and then you can't be a strongman by yourself. You have to have elite support. And when you start losing the elites and they come out and say it publicly, that's really bad news. And I think that's probably irreversible.

[Susan Glasser]

Can I ask you a little bit about the behavior and sort of how these roligarchs have pivoted into engaging in politics? I'm fascinated by their reaction and their public statements in the context of this California billionaires tax. This is a proposed one time 5% tax on Californians with a net worth of over $1 billion. So it's a very, it's a pretty narrow 200 people. I think it's a narrow coh. They are literally acting like the end of the fricking world. They are behaving in a way that is so, to me at least, incredibly revealing. I feel like they, they're gonna create populace out of people who are not exactly, you know, the pitchfork wielding types. But tell me a little bit about like their. As they become explicitly political actors. Right? You know, they're not just sitting back in retirement hanging out on their Yachts and, you know, sort of watching the world flow by. By the way, you know, the grievance of these people, I feel like that's what's fused them to Donald Trump. But, like, my goodness, you know, you got a billion dollars. Why are you so damn angry and petty? What's your problem?

[Brooke Harrington]

So petty.

[Susan Glasser]

What is wrong with them psychologically?

[Brooke Harrington]

I think it's like some sort of Howard Hughes phenomenon where you're so isolated by your own wealth and by being surrounded by yes men that you kind of become psychotic in a way. You lose touch with reality. My favorite example of this is, I think, way back in 2014, Tom Perkins of the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caulfield, he was interviewed about the criticism that was then occurring in the Bay Area press about the growing wealth of. We didn't call them, but that's what they were. And he said, basically, criticism of the wealthy is just like Kristallnacht.

[Susan Glasser]

And I remember. I remember this.

[Evan Osnos]

Yeah, yeah.

[Brooke Harrington]

My job has been on the floor for 12 years because of that. I just still can't believe he said it.

[Jane Mayer]

It.

[Brooke Harrington]

It's so ludicrous. But you know, what we see now in terms of the grievance you described, this has been coming for a long, long time. And apparently all these guys are in group chats now. And so you get this social phenomenon called polarization or risky shift, where you put a bunch of people together who are basically aligned in their views, and you set them talking to one another, and they come out of that discussion way more extreme and radical in their views.

[Susan Glasser]

End the group chat.

[Brooke Harrington]

Yes, exactly.

[Jane Mayer]

So what do you think, maybe are the triggers right now? Is it that tableau of the oligarchs at the inauguration that was a while back, or is it the affordability crisis, the sense that inflation is becoming more and more painful? Or why now? What's happened? I wonder that you're beginning to see this in California and in New York and, you know, even people protesting at the Met gala, that kind of thing.

[Brooke Harrington]

I think there's a sense of, like, the refusal on the part of the Broligarchs and other elites even to do the minimum pro forma performance of civic guardianship. You know, the way the Rockefellers used to do, like, don't charge us any taxes, but here we'll give you a library or a university. The refusal to engage even in that most minimal performance of civic engagement has penetrated to the point where it's no longer cool or acceptable to be aligned with people like that who are just picking our Pockets right and left. And the sense that there is one law for them and another for the rest of us is kind of inescapable. In addition to every time an American goes to the gas pump these days, their eyes pop out of their head at the per gallon price.

[Evan Osnos]

One of the things you wrote about Brooke in your work that really stays with me is this idea of cultural norms. And there was an old saying in the private wealth management business that the whale that never surfaces doesn't get harpooned. This is an old fashioned idea of sort of keeping quiet, staying out of sight. That's definitely not what we're seeing now. And that makes me wonder, do these cultural norms change again? Like how often does this pendulum swing when it comes to being in your face versus out of sight? And do you get the sense that actually the political pressure that's building now ends up producing a cultural change among some of the participants themselves?

[Brooke Harrington]

I think it really could. What we're really seeing here is people who have not been enculturated into the norms of wealth, which have to do with things like being the whale who stays underwater. You don't flaunt it. You don't rub it in people's faces the way that Bezos and Musk and the rest of the MAGA crew are doing.

[Susan Glasser]

I think you're really onto something here, though, about this idea that Donald Trump and his sort of creation of this broligarchy is the golden age of tacky gold. Now, it turns out he has an entire class of other tacky oligarchs who kind of want to be part of it. The MAGA aesthetic. We're here in Washington, and believe me, I'm sure there was a view in Florence's golden age that some of the gold was extra and tacky, but my goodness, it's got nothing on what's being transformed before our very eyes in the heart of the republic here. And I do think that sort of almost undemocratic aesthetic, what happens? Do people literally want to burn that down? Is it just that over time there's a reaction to it? Or are institutions now so sclerotic and controlled by the money that we'll just incorporate them like we've incorporated previous generations of appalling wealth? The sort of Gatsbys eventually, right? They would just wear the old money.

[Brooke Harrington]

Sooner or later, I think these folks are going to burn themselves out and overstay their welcome in American politics to such an extent that there will be a backlash. And I think it will take the form of A whimper rather than a bang that, as Ruth Ben Ghiat explained, the elites will sort of continue peeling off from maga. There will remain a core, but people will be too embarrassed to be associated with them and their tackiness. And just as we saw after January 6, when members of Congress were on their hands and knees in the hallway sweeping up the broken glass and cleaning the walls, I think there's gonna just be a very sad, somber period where embarrassed civic minded people in the halls of Congress and elsewhere will begin the work of cleaning up the gigantic tantrum that the petite bourgeoisie have managed to throw via their instrument, Donald Trump. And there will be, I think, a desire to return to some sort of quiet civic minded elitism like Kennedy era, although he would have been considered a nouveau riche in his time, of course.

[Evan Osnos]

Brooke, you've helped us really understand how this is different than what it was in the past and I think also given us a sense of where this may be going. And we're very grateful that you joined us today. Thank you.

[Susan Glasser]

Thank you.

[Evan Osnos]

The political scene from the New Yorker will be back in just a moment.

[Narrator]

This week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, our reporter asked President Obama the question on a lot of minds, should he be doing more for the Democrats in a time of crisis?

[David Remnick]

I think the real answer is, A, I'm doing more than you think and B, I promise you, if I was out there every day, you'd be tired of me.

[Narrator]

The post presidency of Barack Obama. That's the New Yorker Radio Hour from wnyc. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

[Jane Mayer]

How cool to have become a wealth manager. In order to understand how it works, I think as reporters we need to consider this kind of, you know, undercover role.

[Susan Glasser]

Well, my dream, I'm just sitting here dreaming of the year long sabbatical in Florence. But I mean, putting that aside, like from her lips, you know, to God's ears, I mean, it's fascinating to hear her outline the scenario that at various points over the last 10 years, I have believed in a version of this scenario, which is this idea that eventually, whenever that period is, people will be ashamed to say that they ever were a part of that.

[Evan Osnos]

They stood on that stage on inauguration.

[Susan Glasser]

Exactly. That being said, Trump's return to power, the enduring grip that he has over a third or so of the country, makes me wonder if that's really gonna happen. And in part because the super wealthy have become so super empowered by the Supreme Court, by other developments in our politics. I like hearing her describe this scenario of it will sort of fade away with a whimper. People will repudiate it. I don't know. Do you guys buy that?

[Evan Osnos]

Look, I'll tell you that when you look at the history of these things, and I. I've spent a lot of time in the last few months kind of going around talking to people about this, and there are sort of two paths. Not to be too dire about it, but one path is that the country ends up dividing even more sharply and more brutally than it has. I mean, there is a whole history of the Civil War as essentially a war over oligarchy. But there is also another path, which is what happened after the Gilded Age and the advent of the Progressive Era. Robert Putnam, who is the great Harvard scholar of sort of civic fabric, he says that we're tugged between these two impulses. One is the lone cowboy on a hill, or we are the wagon train. And the truth of American history is that it takes both. The cowboy dies without the wagon train, without this whole complex of institutions and resources and collective solutions that we've created. But one of these is often in the lead at. And if you look over of American history, one of those two icons, either the wagon train or the cowboy, has dominated at a certain point, and then the pendulum swings. And right now we're clearly in the moment when the cowboy is king.

[Jane Mayer]

I mean, I see it as, you know, if you go back to the Gilded Age, it was followed, as you say, by the Progressive Era, which was an era of reform. And the question is whether reform could work here. And there has to be public support for that. And it's very hard, as Susan says, I think, because of the Supreme Court's rulings, which have allowed money to dominate the political process to the extent that they have. So reformers still exist, but they have a much harder time getting power because of that. But in my reading of this, and the single most important statistic that has controlled class warfare in American history, I think, is the sense that it's a land of opportunity and anyone can make it if they work hard. And that is sort of the, you know, the Horatio Alger mythology. It's kept people from envying the rich and instead wanting to be the rich. And I think the statistic, to me, that's really important is that people born in the 1940s, 90% of them did better than their parents. People born in the 1980s, only 50% of them did better than their parents. When that dream dies, they get mad.

[Susan Glasser]

Well, Jane, I think that's exactly right. And that's why I raised the Question of the AI future and whether the trillionaire class ends up being even more dangerous to what we would consider to be the idea of America than even the billionaire class just in the Trump era. These numbers on inequality suggest that the divide is already widening even before the advent of sort of job killing AI developments in the country. From January 2017 to the end of last year, income growth per adult increased by more than 52%. Among the top 0.001%. It increased by by 22%. Among the top 10%. It increased by only 7.5% among the middle 40% of America. Right. The traditional big American middle class. And by 12% among the bottom 50%. So the difference between your income going up by 12% over this period of time and 52%. And by the way costs went, overall, the overall growth was 14%. So the losers at the bottom of our society, the bottom half of our society is making less than the average 12%. So they're falling further behind. And the.001% is increasing by 52%.

[Jane Mayer]

Actually, I think the most important part of it is not so much just the bottom getting poorer, which of course is terrible for society. But there's a growing gap between the haves and the haves have yachts, as Evan would say. The people who are professional and educated are falling further behind the people on the very, very, very top. And so when the bourgeoisie feels like they're being cheated and the people on the top are not paying their taxes and that we're shouldering the burden of the welfare state ourselves and all that, I think that's where you're beginning to get more of a backlash. The middle class and upper midd is falling further and further behind.

[Evan Osnos]

Yeah. And I think the way that people, you know, what you would describe as the upper middle class is the way that people are feeling the AI anxiety now is not just is my own job gonna go away, but what about my kids? I mean, there is this very distinct sense among anybody coming out of college right now that there are just many fewer entry level positions available. It's much harder to get started. How do you get on that ladder? So we're beginning to see this crystallizing. I think what comes through over the course of this conversation we've had today is that there are a combination of long running trends that go across a generation. You know, goes all the way back to Gordon Gekkos sanctifying the idea that greed is good. And then you also have these really obvious specific things that have happened just over the course of the last couple of years that have made it really acute, sort of Donald Trump saying, bringing all of this onto, onto the stage, literally and figuratively. And then now this emerging feeling that the future is very uncertain. So that seems to explain how we've gotten this political backlash as we wind down. I'm curious how you guys see this playing out politically. Is this a case where you have people emerging on the right, for instance, who the right is already. Susan, as you know, the right is already activated to say that the tech companies are the source of your distress, dear voter. And so maybe they're in the position to take advantage of this. What are you seeing right now emerging among what do you hear from candidates in terms of advertising out there? Who is making the most hay of this?

[Susan Glasser]

Well, it's interesting you say that about the right in tech companies, because I feel like that was the case until Donald Trump sold out his government to leaders of the tech companies. And this stock market boom that we've seen is essentially driven by the Magnificent Seven or whatever it is. Those are just basically the AI and tech boom that's driving the whole stock market. So I'm curious, that's my question mark headed into 2026 and 2028 is do Republicans go with the populist base or do they go with the oligarchic top of the party? And so you do have powering into these midterms. You have Democrats, of course. They're the ones looking to pick up seats. They're the ones looking to capitalize on the visceral rage that so many Americans are feeling across the country about prices. That's where you have the this, quote, affordability conversation. Lot of talk about Mamdani. New York City's politics, of course, is very dangerous to generalize to the whole country what's happening in deep blue New York City. But I do think Mamdani, aoc, Bernie Sanders before them, crystallize a certain way of talking about inequality, of talking about the future of the country that more and more Democrats, even those who used to be in more centrist districts. I think we're hearing that you even have in Georgia in the Senate race right now, Jon Ossoff looking for reelection. He might have been seen as one of the most vulnerable senators. I don't think he is considered one of the most vulnerable senators anymore, in part because he's capitalized on this idea that income inequality, that used to be seen as an issue of the far left of the Democratic Party. I would say it's now a centrist issue like, hey, middle class America, you're getting screwed. So I see that for the Democrats, I'm more up in the air about what's going to happen to kind of post Donald Trump populism, because I think it's not clear, does it become Christian nationalism? I've seen this term blood populism used. We mentioned Tucker Carlson before, but he talk about another millionaire sort of beating the drums. There's a lot of rage still on the Republican far right, and I don't know what happens to it.

[Brooke Harrington]

I don't know.

[Jane Mayer]

I mean, I think that you could see in that focus group of New York Times voters for Trump recently that there's a sense of betrayal among a number of people who have voted for Trump and thought that they were going to do better economically because of it, and they're now feeling cheated. But where that goes, I don't know. In the Republican Party, I think it's going to be very difficult for the Democratic Party to smooth over what looks like a growing fight between the far left. Part of it in a nutshell, Graham Platner versus Schumer. And it's breaking out in primary fights and we'll see in the general if they can smooth it over. But I think there's a lot of discontent out there and the Democratic Party's trying to figure out how its way forward over this. It's funny because Bernie Sanders message just a few years ago seemed so radical and there was, I think, a feeling, at least within a lot of the kind of conventional thinking in politics that it couldn't sell in this country. Now he sounds like the leader of the pack in a lot of ways.

[Evan Osnos]

Yeah. Well, I'm so glad we had this conversation today because in politics reporting, we often talk about follow the money. And that'll tell you where power lies in this sense. It's follow the money in the cultural sense. And you can't understand this political season and where things are going without, without recognizing the role of money and big money at the center of it. And I'm very glad we talked about it today. Thank you, Susan, and thank you, Jane.

[Jane Mayer]

Great to have this conversation with you guys.

[Susan Glasser]

Yeah, really, really enjoyed that. And if only we were taking our sabbatical in Florence.

[Evan Osnos]

This has been the Political Scene from the New Yorker. I'm Evan Osnos. We had research assistance today from Alex, Alex d' Elia and editing by Rhiannon Corby. Our producer is Nora Richie, mixing by Mike Kutchman. Steven Valentino is our executive producer. Our theme music is by Alison Layton Brown. Thank you so much for listening.

[Nick Capodice]

Hello there everyone. I'm Nick Capodice, and if you're listening to this podcast, you might like our show, Civics 101. We work with historians and political scientists to really break down the basics of how our government works. It is no shame, no shame at all to have forgotten your 8th grade civics class. Basically, it's a prep for the AP government class you didn't think you'd have to take, but then everything went bonkers and here we are. So check out Civics 101 wherever your podcasts pod

[Jane Mayer]

from PRX.