“Jared Kushner is one of the most powerful American diplomats of the twenty-first century — and he has no skill set to speak of that I can see.” — Casey Michel

Four years ago, the muckraking journalist Casey Michel came on this show to discuss how the United States has built the greatest money-laundering scheme in history. That pre-Trump 2.0 America, he says, looks quaint. His new book, United States of Oligarchy: How America’s Wealthiest Ally with Dictators, Weaken the U.S., and Destroy Democracy, describes an American casino where the Trump family has become the dealer with a perennially stacked deck.

The word “oligarchy” comes with 2,500 years of baggage. Aristotle, not averse to aristocracy, nonetheless warned of the rule of the few. Teddy Roosevelt preferred “plutocracy” as a way of describing the baronial rule of the late 19th century American capitalists. And, of course, it took a Roosevelt — the sickly scion of upper-crust New York — to dilute his own oligarchic caste with anti-trust law and inheritance & progressive income taxes.

Exhibit A in this American oligarchy is Jared Kushner, who has leveraged his father-in-law’s rotten casino to ally with dictators and destroy democracy both in America and around the world. Michel says Kushner has “no skill set to speak of” — apart, of course, from an insatiable greed for wealth and power. The banality of the deal.

So what to do? Michel is waiting for a 21st century Teddy Roosevelt — he names Talarico and Ossoff — who will tax and perhaps even prosecute Kushner and his fellow oligarchs. But I fear he is waiting for Godot. Teddy isn’t coming back. Nor is FDR. Don’t expect the banality of the current highly lucrative deal to end anytime soon.

Five Takeaways

• Child’s Play. The Kleptocracy era now looks quaint: a Qatari airliner for the president, a $1.8B slush fund exempting the Trump circle from tax audits. Trump: symptom, not cause.

• From Aristotle to the Trillionaire. Oligarchy: rule of the few — who must also be richest. TR preferred “plutocracy.” Rockefeller’s $30B is pocket change beside America’s first trillionaire.

• Exhibit A: Jared Kushner. The most powerful diplomat of the century, with “no skill set to speak of” — the best thing he ever did was marry Ivanka. Not evil: indifferent to good and evil.

• The Incentive Machine. No crimes — that’s the problem. The machine makes dictator alliances rational: the standing ovation for Xi, Project Dragonfly, Tesla’s Beijing leverage.

• Waiting for Teddy. Interceptor stocks collapsed, allies wobbling, proliferation coming — and the GOP killing the shell-company database. The remedy: a 21st-century TR willing to be called a communist agitator.

About Keen On America

Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen.

Website: https://keenon.tv/ Substack: https://keenon.substack.com/ YouTube: https://youtube.com/@KeenOnShow

Buy United States of Oligarchy at bookshop.org

Chapters:

00:00:31 Introduction: four years after American Kleptocracy
00:01:42 Child’s play: what’s changed since 2022
00:03:59 What is oligarchy?
00:06:05 Oligarchy, plutocracy, aristocracy
00:04:44 Aristotle’s word: the few — and the richest
00:08:29 A civil war within the elite
00:09:05 The sickly child: how TR turned on his caste
00:11:38 Exhibit A: Jared Kushner
00:13:12 Born on third base — or smart?
00:16:11 Indifferent to good and evil
00:19:27 “Go tell Kushner to fuck off”
00:20:30 The Epstein class and dark bipartisanship
00:22:37 How central is Putin now?
00:25:00 Is America actually weakened?
00:26:18 Interceptors, Greenland, and the coming proliferation
00:28:27 Doing the Gulf’s dirty business in Iran
00:30:47 Standing ovation: the corporate class and Xi
00:33:37 Don’t be evil? Google, Brin, and Project Dragonfly
00:35:58 No crimes committed: the incentive machine
00:41:13 The Wall Street question
00:45:29 Trump: symptom, cause, or distraction?
00:45:29 Trump: symptom, cause, or distraction?
00:47:26 The slush fund and the Qatari airliner
00:48:20 Waiting for Teddy: Talarico, Ossoff, 2028
00:52:57 Thanks and goodbye