Kerby Anderson

In his last two presidential addresses, Joe Biden warned of the rise of oligarchs and the development of a tech-industrial complex. He reminded the nation of the farewell address of President Eisenhower, who spoke of a military industrial complex.

Noah Rothman observed that Democrats invented this “new bogeyman” only when some billionaires and Big Tech titans started to “support Republican politicians and their policy preferences.” He reminds us that Democrat leaders weren’t “all that vexed by ‘misinformation and disinformation’ when they were the ones improperly wielding the coercive power of the state.”

Victor Davis Hanson concluded that Biden’s attempt to copycat the warnings of Eisenhower failed because “to paraphrase a famous quip from 1988 Democratic vice-presidential candidate Lloyd Bentsen, ‘President Biden, you’re no Dwight Eisenhower.’”

He also reminds us that “until November 2024, Biden had no problems with oligarchs. In fact, he courted and used them. And they, in turn, eagerly donated lavishly to his agenda.” Meta/Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg did the bidding of the Biden campaign team in 2020 by pouring millions “into Biden-related PACs and voting groups to change voting laws.” In one of his last acts as president, Biden awarded George Soros with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Only now are these oligarchs dangerous because some voted for Trump, and a few will be working with the new administration. Big Tech has been guilty of censoring speech and promoting disinformation, but the former president and his party only noticed the problem when they were no longer in charge.