Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

“Every morning,” the billionaire Marc Andreessen smiled a few weeks after Donald Trump’s re-election this past November, “I wake up happier than the day before.”

The stoked Andreessen, with Trump’s re-entry into the White House only days away, must by now be sitting in seventh heaven. He no doubt has plenty of deep-pocket company. We’ve never before had an incoming president as openly committed to stocking his administration with the already super rich.

Trump is entering his second term, as the political scientists Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson put it, “fixated on helping the wealthiest Americans.”

And who knows better how to do that helping than those wealthiest themselves? In Trump’s second term, these wealthy will be more directly running the government of the United States than they have in any other presidency. The Trump transition team — co-chaired by the billionaire Wall Street financier Howard Lutnick — is filling Trump II’s top slots with more holders of grand fortune than any previous administration ever dared.

Lutnick himself has ended up as the Trump pick for Commerce secretary. Lutnick will be sitting through meetings in a West Wing Cabinet Room overflowing with his fellow ultra-rich. He’ll also be running a department neatly positioned to advance his cryptocurrency and other business interests.

The Trump pick........

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