Bernie Sanders Gets Agitated When Treasury Nominee Scott Bessent Dismantles His ‘Oligarchs’ Question

It turns out that when President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders call out “oligarchs” in the tech industry, they’re only talking about people they don’t like, not oligarchy as a whole.

Sanders discovered the difference after an ugly exchange with President-elect Donald Trump’s Treasury secretary nominee.

In case you missed Biden’s farewell address to the nation — and one would excuse you if you had literally anything better to do, including nighttime root canal surgery — Biden made headlines by claiming that “an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead.”

“We see the consequences all across America. And we’ve seen it before,” Biden said, according to a White House transcript of the speech.

Your definition of oligarchy may differ. For instance, moving on to what he called a “tech-industrial complex” (at least he acknowledged he was borrowing from Dwight Eisenhower, unlike his prior plagiarism of Neil Kinnock and others), he claimed this included social media platforms “giving up on fact-checking.”

You know, so his administration can’t pressure them into adopting their version of reality by yelling and screaming at Meta employees; that kind of tech-industrial complex. If government isn’t part of the equation, it’s a no-go for the Democrats.

But I digress. On the day after Wednesday night’s address, Sen. Sanders, a Vermont independent socialist, used the “oligarchy” line from Biden’s speech as an opening to attack Treasury secretary nominee Scott Bessent, a hedge fund manager, during his testimony before the Senate Finance Committee.

Regarding Biden’s remarks, Sanders said that “I agree with” the president, mentioning several “oligarchs” he was concerned with: Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Rupert Murdoch, and Mark Zuckerberg.

“Do you?” he asked Bessent.

Bessent went on to note that the names he mentioned — observers could make a reasonable guess in each case as to why they were included — “all made the money themselves,” and added that “Mr. Musk came to the country as an immigrant,” to boot.

Sanders went on to say that he wasn’t concerned about how they made their money — somewhat critical in the definition of an oligarch, it’s worth noting — but the fact that they had money.

“What Biden said last night is ‘we’re moving toward an oligarchy.’ I’m asking you that question,” Sanders said.

“Do you think — forget how they made their money — do you think that when so few people have so much wealth and so much economic and political power, that that is an oligarchic form of society?”

Funny, Bessent noted in his response, how the left seems to only think that oligarchs are the ones on the other team.

“Well, I would note that the President Biden gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to two people who I think would qualify for his oligarchs,” Bessent said.

.@SenSanders: “What Biden said last night is we’re moving towards an oligarchy. I’m asking you that question…forget how they made that money.”

Scott Bessent: “President Biden gave the presidential medal of freedom to two people who I think would qualify as his oligarchs.” pic.twitter.com/cAu3tXb4YS

— CSPAN (@cspan) January 16, 2025

Bessent was clearly referring to billionaire Democrat donors and progressive activists George Soros and David Rubenstein, who received the award as Biden was headed out the door.

Sanders, unhappy about this, said that his question was “not a condemnation of any one individual” (of course it wasn’t; he named three! duh) and that he was more concerned with an “oligarchic form of society.”

Of course, if Sanders was really concerned with “a small number of billionaires in both political parties” making sizable contributions into presidential and congressional campaigns, as he said earlier in the question, the easiest place to start would be with the Soroses and Rubensteins of the political world — the ones he has control over. But those are the good oligarchs! He’s concerned with the bad ones, although he didn’t say it quite that way.

Merriam-Webster, usually helpful in these matters, lists two key definitions for “oligarchy.”

The first: “government by the few.” That naturally includes Sanders and the Democrat-industrial complex, which has no problem getting money from billionaires. Pointing out this very salient fact — or the fact that Sanders himself is a fat-cat by his own socialistic standards — apparently upsets him greatly.

The second: “a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes.” This was hardly what Biden was talking about in his speech, though; a quick perusal through the transcript indicates he was essentially targeting his political enemies now that they’ve given up on fact-checking that can be easily controlled by Democrat oligarchs in the federal government.

There’s also a third possibility, what we can term Inigo Montoya Syndrome from the famous line in “The Princess Bride”: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

“Oligarch” and “oligarchy” are poised to become big words in Democrat messaging in the early days of the Trump administration, if one is to judge by Biden’s speech, how the media covered it, and how trend-chasing lefties are poised to start using it in their messaging. Its meaning is completely divorced from definitional oligarchy, mind you.

The Dems aren’t particularly opposed to “government by the few” so long as they’re the few, and they’re also perfectly happy to be the small group that “exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes.”

They’re just unhappy that the donor money and power of the establishmentarian bully pulpit wasn’t enough to put them over the top this time. Expect the whining to continue until morale improves or the midterms ensue.

Advertise with The Western Journal and reach millions of highly engaged readers, while supporting our work. Advertise Today.