Q&A with Luke Winslow: Oligarchic rhetoric has MAGA rooting for the billionaires

Developments in Washington and across America underline the title of Baylor University associate professor Luke Winslow’s new book, “Oligarchy in America: Power, Justice and the Rule of the Few,” published by University of Alabama Press. President Trump, a multi-billionaire real estate tycoon, wrestling promoter and reality-TV star, last week launched punishing tariffs on goods imported into the United States, worsening inflationary pressures that had only recently begun to subside and wreaking havoc on the retirement plans of millions of Americans. Amid continued administration upheaval in the Social Security Administration, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick — another multi-billionaire — dismissed fears of imperiled constituent service by insisting that if his 94-year-old mother-in-law didn’t get her monthly Social Security check, “she wouldn’t call and complain, she just wouldn’t, she’d think something got messed up and she’ll get it next month.” And SpaceX entrepreneur and Tesla CEO Elon Musk — reportedly the richest man in the world — employed a tactic he used in supporting Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign to the tune of some $290 million: Seeking to swing an election for Republicans in Wisconsin, he gave out $1 million checks to selected voters. Courts declined to object. In this Waco Tribune-Herald Q&A, Winslow — who researches rhetoric as a way of dissecting political and societal movements — discusses the views of oligarchs and those defending their intervention in government over a century and a half as well as those now dominating the Trump presidency. He also discusses the one chapter that his editors asked him to jettison.

Question: This is an interesting, head-spinning and ultimately disturbing book. Every time I finished a chapter and picked up a newspaper or read something online, it somehow involved some multi-billionaire who had significant influence on our government. “Oligarchy in America: Power, Justice and the Rule of the Few” is a thought-provoking leadup to where we are today in the United States. You quote comedian Jerry Seinfeld about oligarchy and the fact many people aren’t sure what oligarchs are. A decade ago I limited the term to corrupt Russians in league with Vladimir Putin, enriching themselves as the people there settled for what little remained of democracy.

Luke Winslow: Oligarchs are a specific class of ultra-rich individuals willing and able to use their wealth to exert influence on the state. In the past, we linked oligarchy to shady Eastern Europeans with names like Roman Abramovich and Vladimir Putin at the head of a kleptocratic and oligarchic Russian government. But I feel the same way in following this second Trump administration. Oligarchy has become a helpful label to describe what’s happening not just in Moscow but in Washington, D.C.

Q: Your last book was “American Catastrophe: Fundamentalism, Climate Change, Gun Rights and the Rhetoric of Donald J. Trump.” You approach topics from the perspective of rhetoric. So does your new book on oligarchs. Why is the perspective of rhetoric a proper way to investigate all this?

Winslow: Rhetoric is often misunderstood in public conversations. Rhetoric is usually a pejorative to describe public arguments you don’t like or arguments you think are fallacious or weak. In my world, rhetoric is an academic discipline that goes back to ancient Greece. It’s also a method or tool used to analyze public discourse, public argument. I study rhetoric and teach rhetoric classes at Baylor University. What that means simply is we study public argument. In the study of oligarchy, the difference between Putin’s Russian version of oligarchy and oligarchy in America is one of degrees and subtlety. Donald Trump won two free and fair elections and I don’t think Vladimir Putin could say the same, especially if the criteria is “free and fair.” If they’re united by an affinity for oligarchy, what’s unique about the U.S. is that Donald Trump and a lot of the oligarchs exhibiting influence have deployed rhetoric effectively to convince a significant number of Americans to support their rule. That’s where the rhetoric comes in. Rhetoric has argument, rhetoric has influence, rhetoric has effective public messaging and it is especially helpful in explaining the rise of oligarchy generally and specifically in what’s happening in the Trump administration.

Q: One question that comes up in reading your book is why people aren’t wise to all this. Look at the imprudent imposition of tariffs by some willy-nilly formula, driving longtime allies and Wall Street investors crazy, sending the stock market into a tailspin and eroding the United States as a global leader. The Wall Street Journal, which generally serves as an apologist for Trump, takes a dim view of these Trump tariffs, calling them “dumb.” Yet neighbors who voted for Trump are OK with this. They think it’s all going to work out. Meanwhile, if you pick up the newspaper, you see all sorts of ways in which Elon Musk is personally benefiting from his involvement with the Trump administration, such as the Commerce Department changing rules in ways benefiting Musk’s Starlink satellite internet system.

Winslow: It’s a great question. Start with the modern media ecology. A lot of Americans are unaware and don’t follow politics or economic matters closely. We also have distinct echo chambers. There’s a massive kind of propaganda machine propping up a lot of this. I don’t think that’s a particularly fresh take, but what I can contribute that is new and fresh to the conversation is: If people become aware of the harmful economic impact that these policies are having on their lives, why then do they continue to support it? Maybe the price of eggs is a good example. Representative democracy always assumes that leadership will be shaped by the demands of the public. And the demands of the public are very often material — the price of eggs goes up, the price of gasoline goes up. We want public leaders to respond if they want to stay elected. The complicated part is what you describe: What of tariffs? What about Musk’s obviously self-interested intervention into public policy that plainly looks like corruption? Many Americans feel like oligarchs such as Donald Trump and Elon Musk, because they’re so wealthy, consequently deserve the spoils of that wealth. So it’s kind of this zero-sum fatalism where if you are wealthy, you must be deserving of that wealth — and if so, you deserve to have a disproportionate impact on public policy.

Q: Ouch.

Winslow: Let’s use tariffs as an example. On the surface, the Trump tariffs defy the assumptions of oligarchic America because its protectionist leanings are going to crash the economy. You would think, if you’re a wealthy elite, you want to help the economy so you can get rich. So on the surface, journalists and economists alike are scratching their heads, wondering what’s going on. Beneath the surface there are some clear connections. First of all, tariffs are a regressive consumption tax that hits middle-class and working-class people per share of income much harder than the wealthy. Interesting also is how they animate Trump, given these tariffs are not motivated by any sort of quantifiable economic logic. The formula by which they came up with tariff rates for various countries defies economic sense. It’s crazy. But if you look at how Trump has talked about tariffs since the 1980s, there’s this feeling of unfairness. He feels — maybe not personally but as a representative of this country — that other countries are ripping us off. He often uses references to fairness and being “ripped off” and uses tariffs as an example of other people taking advantage of us.

Q: Yet the United States is either the largest or second largest economy in the world.

Winslow: Right now it’s the healthiest and strongest in the world. And so where do these feelings of unfairness come from? Well, again, they defy quantifiable economic sense. It’s not that. It’s more an economic feeling of injustice that if you look simplistically at a trade imbalance, again on the surface it looks like, say, France must be ripping us off. But that’s not how the economy works. Yet in some ways it doesn’t matter because it’s a more personal, subjective feeling.

Q: And this widespread sentiment in the Make America Great Again world stems from rhetoric used by Trump and his supporters to justify these tariffs?

Winslow: Exactly. I’m not an economist, I’m not a journalist, so I’m reading the same things you are. But to resort to the rhetorical, what arguments is Trump putting forth to justify this incongruous economic action? What complicates it even more is Trump has always linked his identity to the stock market. If you’re doing well, that’s reflected in the stock market. So what happens when the tariffs come out and the economy crashes? That’s why it will be really interesting going forward to look at what arguments he comes out with to explain his continued faith in tariffs in view of a crash of the stock market or even a looming recession.

Q: Which should be interesting, given Trump’s own significant record of business failures.

Winslow: Which explains why the reality-TV show “The Apprentice” was such an important rhetorical coup for him. It really mediated the longstanding reputation that he had as a carnival-barking casino billionaire propped up initially by his dad’s real estate empire and then afterward in a series of bankruptcies. The tariff thing is really interesting because, just as a consumption tax, it affects the middle class and the poor disproportionately more than the wealthy. All taxes on consumption do. One fresh idea on the Trump tariff idea is that if you’re wealthy enough to avoid consumption taxes, at least proportionately, then, the messaging goes, you must deserve to maintain your wealth. And conversely, if you are middle class or poor and you are affected by tariffs, then there must be something wrong with you or at least you must deserve to feel a little bit of pain and suffering because you haven’t risen to the elevated heights of people like Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

Q: To put this book together, you had to do a lot of research and a lot of reading, going back to influential 19th-century British philosopher Herbert Spencer’s hijacking of evolutionary ideas such as “survival of the fittest” from English naturalist Charles Darwin and applying them to societal and economic theories, justifying the eminently successful businessman as somehow more gifted and more deserving of privilege and influence than the rest of us common folks. What was the biggest revelation or take-away from your research?

Winslow: I think I was struck by the consistency across generations by which the ultra-rich justified their elite concentrations of power based on their unique gifts. Put clearly, the rich are better than us and we know that because they’re rich. And if they’re better than us, they should have a disproportionate amount of political power. You asked what I learned. I guess I was naïve in my American Exceptionalism. I thought relevant individual differences, especially in the greatest democracy in the history of the world, wouldn’t have such an effect on who ruled. Unlike the British aristocracy and the Indian caste system, America is exceptional because the people who rule deserve to rule because of merit, character, industriousness and individual brilliance. Doesn’t matter who your dad is, doesn’t matter what race or ethnicity you are, doesn’t matter what country club you belong to, America is exceptional, America is unique, because anyone can be president. But that’s kind of a Pollyannish, naïve take. Going back and tracing this sort of oligarchic thread from Spencer up to Tucker Carlson shows you the consistency by which the powerful are able to justify their rule based on their unique talents and capacities.

Q: Like millions of Americans, I watched Donald Trump, a 78-year-old business tycoon and reality-TV star, sworn in for a second time as president of the United States in the Capitol Rotunda that his supporters seized through violence four years earlier. Seated nearby during the oath-taking were individuals who I would now describe as oligarchs, including Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and, most notably, Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and, among many things, founder and CEO of SpaceX which has a controversial rocket-testing site near my Central Texas home. Drawing from your research going back to America’s Gilded Age — a period with which President Trump is obsessed — how do the oligarchs of the late 19th century such as Andrew Carnegie and J.P. Morgan compare with those of our times?

Winslow: Not every rich person is an oligarch. There are a lot of rich people who are comfortable making a lot of money without exerting their influence on public policy and the nation state. What’s interesting about Gilded Age tycoons like Andrew Carnegie was that they had to justify bridging their economic wealth with their political power. So here’s the similarity: We let Andrew Carnegie effect public policy then for the same reason we let Elon Musk effect public policy today. We assume because he’s wealthy, he has all these unique capacities that transcend engineering in Elon Musk’s case or, in the case of the Gilded Age tycoons, transcend the extraction of natural resources and the building of railroads. The reality: You can have a sharp, analytical mind for a specific career, but that doesn’t actually mean you necessarily know how to run a government agency.

Q: You can know a lot about, say, space engineering or science — the challenges of getting to Mars, for instance — yet can still make an absolute shambles of systematic governance, institutions of democracy and the U.S. Constitution. Over lunch the other day you mentioned you had included a chapter on Donald Trump in your book but that your editors suggested dropping it because it would be outdated by the time of the book’s release. What new ground did you strike in that chapter and are you seeing your concerns in that chapter blossom into reality?

Winslow: I think one of the editors’ concerns — this was about 2020 or 2021 — was that after Biden defeated Trump and after January 6, we would look back on the Trump presidency as an aberration, a little blip, and if you focused so much at the end of the book on this historical aberration, the book would appear quickly out of date. I mean, this is unlike a newspaper article. In an academic book like this, there is an expectation that, because the publication process takes a really long time, you’re always aiming for larger conceptual lessons that transcend specific day-to-day subjects. And hearing myself say that now, how laughable is that? No one anticipated in 2024 his reelection!

Q: That’s ironic.

Winslow: What’s new to me is just the brazenness and baldness of the oligarchic exercise of power in the second Trump administration — and not just with him and not just with the people within his Cabinet but with, say, Jeff Bezos and the Washington Post and the way public sentiment has become willing and able and complicit in this idea that we are going to concentrate power in this single individual because, in a sense, he “deserves” it.

Q: When it comes to oligarchs being out of touch with the common man, I think of Trump Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, a multi-billionaire who earlier led a brokerage and investment firm. On March 20, he remarked: “Let’s say Social Security didn’t send out their checks this month, my mother-in-law — who’s 94 — she wouldn’t call and complain. She just wouldn’t. She’d think something got messed up and she’ll get it next month.” He then suggested only a “fraudster” would complain upon not receiving his or her Social Security check. His remark reminds me of a friend who worked for one of the richest men in West Texas and explained to me that some people of wealth simply don’t think like the rest of us. Did you find evidence of that, particularly in researching the writings of people like Charles Koch and Andrew Carnegie for your book?

Winslow: There’s some legitimacy to it. Depends on the rich person. I think Bill Gates — especially now — speaks very differently than Elon Musk. Yet the rhetorical line from Andrew Carnegie to Milton Friedman to now [Supreme Court Justice] Clarence Thomas — they have that same assumption you describe where government is seen as a crutch for the weak. If you rely on government, you’re lacking something. It’s built into this American ethos of personal responsibility: You don’t need a welfare check, because you can do it on your own. Some rich people get a lot of comfort in perceiving the world in accordance with their own skills: “It’s my wealth, I earned it, therefore I should get to keep more of it.” Now, they do make a distinction between religious charity and government charity such as Social Security, Medicare, things like that. Even then, it means you couldn’t make it on your own.

Q: Scott Galloway, professor of marketing at New York University Stern School of Business, podcaster and founder of several businesses, suggests one reason so many everyday Americans cheer oligarchs’ success in cheating the taxman boils down to the fact these Americans imagine one day themselves becoming rich. I would argue that, given the rate of investment and saving in America, they’re far more likely to one day need their Social Security checks than enjoy lives among the rich and famous at Mar-a-Lago. I also suggest Musk toyed with and capitalized on this very idea of becoming rich overnight by handing out $1 million checks to everyday yokels during the 2024 presidential campaign and 2025 state judicial election in Wisconsin just a week or so ago.

Winslow: I always want to be cautious when trying to describe people’s mindset — you never know — but it’s an interesting thought experiment. When I study Trump’s base, Trump’s followers, it leaves me feeling kind of cynical and depressed to think they’re supporting him because they actually think they’re going to become billionaires. Yet maybe that’s true. Another important piece is the warm glow they get from basking in Trump’s wealth and power. It’s similar to an old monarch, some old prince or king, where you have the serfs working the land. The serf never thinks he’s going to become king, but he takes pride in being on the king’s side as opposed to the king over the hill.

Q: As Hannah Arendt argued in her classic book, “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” such individuals become cogs in the proverbial wheel. They satisfy and pride themselves in that. They’re part of the hierarchy but they’re also in the hierarchy.

Winslow: I’m not going to say Galloway is wrong, but it’s not necessarily that one might become a billionaire but that “I’m on his side, I can bask in his warm glow.” I think that does a better job of explaining why so many working-class folks are drawn to Trump and to Musk.

Q: I get 10 or so emails a day from Trump’s White House because I obtained press credentials from his staff to attend his March 25, 2023, rally in Waco kicking off his 2024 presidential reelection campaign. Now, if you live a somewhat isolated lifestyle or you’re one of those Make America Great Again folks percolating with resentment or delusion, he plays on that. He wants your opinion on the tariffs, he wants to make you a card-carrying member of his Trump board of advisers, he wants you to come out to Mar-a-Lago to play golf, he wants to send you an autographed picture of himself or a Dark MAGA cap or a replica of his signed executive order that proclaims the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America,” though always, always for a campaign handout. And for some people, that may count for something emotionally. It may convince them they’re patriots or belong to a cohesive, soul-reassuring revolutionary movement that’s actually more about grift and bullying and grievance and testosterone. Before our interview, I got an email from Trump offering me golf balls with his name on them — just after he flew to Mar-a-Lago to play golf and schmooze with Saudi investors and golf celebrities and hold an American Patriots Gala fundraiser while my wife and I back in Waco, where he launched his presidential bid, debated investment strategies after the stock market crash saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummet 2,231 points, or 5.5 percent, on top of the 1,679 points it fell the day before. Shortly before the market closed, Trump posted: “ONLY THE WEAK WILL FAIL!”

Winslow: I agree. It counts for something, but not in your bank account.

Q: Early in the book, you discuss how the Founders might have viewed American oligarchs such as Trump and Musk. Many clearly believed major decisions should be left to informed men of some accomplishment, obvious integrity and public service — Jefferson, Washington, Madison, Franklin and Adams certainly qualified. However, as you and I have discussed in the past, John Adams in particular drew the line at unhealthy public veneration and adoration of a certain sort of entitled, arguably narcissistic, boastful American in whom he feared the nation’s ultimate downfall. Do I have that right and are we seeing his fears in full bloom now?

Winslow: The operative word in your question is “accomplishment.” Oligarchy in the etymology is “rule of the few,” which explains the subtitle of my book. What that means is when you have a complicated, massive government system and 325 million people, as we do, you can’t have a direct democracy. You have to elect people to represent your interests. The other key question is: On what basis are some people elected and others not? The ideal would be that we elected the best of us to represent our interests, people who are like us, similar to us, but even better. This goes back to the Founding Fathers who said, “We need people of accomplishment to represent us, to be the best of us.” The concern our Founding Fathers would have now is the criteria by which we evaluate “accomplishment” and who is accomplished and then the link between those who purport to represent our interests and their impact on public policy.

Q: I was having lunch at Cotton Patch Café with former Congressman Chet Edwards shortly before the 2024 election and we met this very ingratiating, toothless woman in the parking lot who said she was voting for Trump and who agonized over inflation, including the price of eggs. Yet now I see interviews with Trump voters suddenly willing to suffer high inflationary costs under tariffs. They believe long term we will all benefit. I think of an investment broker I ran into shortly before Trump imposed global tariffs. I asked how the markets would fare with tariffs kicking in and unemployment ranks already swelling. He said all would be fine for the markets if the news media would just leave it all alone!

Winslow: [Broad laughter] I think it’s normal when political power changes hands that if you have a partisan rooting interest and your party takes over, you will suddenly see things different. It happens when Democratic presidents come into power, it happens when Republican presidents come into power. I don’t think Trump will ever lose 30 to 35 percent, maybe even 40 percent, of his support. American elections hinge on between 5 and 7 percent of moderate, independent swing voters. We saw this in 2016, we saw this in 2020 and we saw this in 2024, and it’ll likely happen in 2028. You wonder whether something like the price of eggs or, more broadly, geopolitical turmoil will have any effect. The price of eggs may not really affect the political support of the woman outside the Cotton Patch but it may affect the 5 to 7 percent of 2024 Trump supporters who aren’t necessarily ideologically tethered to him. If that happens, then as we saw in 2020, the power could change hands and public policy as well.