There’s nothing new about the problem of money in politics. We’ve been warned for decades that America is or is becoming an oligarchy. But something has felt different about the early days of President Trump’s second term, and I think it’s this: Attention, not cash, is the form of power that most interests him.
Plenty of his billionaire backers didn’t make the cut at his inauguration. The catbird seats were occupied instead by the titans of attention. It was the leaders of Facebook and Instagram and X and TikTok and Amazon and Google that Trump was so eager to see arrayed before him.
Washington is filled with lobbying offices and fund-raisers because powerful interests believe something is gained when dollars are spent. They are right. We have come to expect and accept a grotesque level of daily corruption in American politics — abetted by a series of Supreme Court rulings that give money the protections of speech and by congressional Republicans who have fought even modest campaign finance reforms. But we have at least some rules to limit money’s power in politics and track its movements.
The same cannot be said for attention. If Trump saves TikTok and, in return, TikTok boosts pro-Trump content before the 2026 elections to help it go viral, would that be illegal? Perhaps. But would we even know it had happened? If Elon Musk turns the dials on X to tilt the conversation in the Republican Party’s direction before the 2028 elections, who will stop him?
Attention, not money, is now the fuel of American politics. It seemed clear in 2022 that Musk had overpaid when he bought Twitter for $44 billion. And if it’s judged as a business transaction, he probably did overpay. X’s revenue is far from justifying its purchase price. But we did not know then, and we do not know now how to value the attention he bought. In terms of attention, Musk’s purchase of Twitter turned him into the most powerful person in the world, save perhaps Trump. What is that worth?
Oligarchy isn’t mere corruption. It describes what happens when wealth becomes intertwined with rulership. Musk is not just seeking contracts or favors; he is seeking influence and centrality. He is offering Trump not just money but also attention. And Trump has been happy, at least so far, to make that trade. Past presidents have had their wealthy backers, and those backers have won access and even spoils, but we had not seen as clear a trade for power in the modern era. And in making that trade so publicly, Musk and Trump have opened a path that other attention oligarchs may well want to walk.
In Trump’s world, everything is for sale. Most presidents and parties bargain within a circumscribed zone: They are somewhat bound by existing interests and ideologies and promises. Part of what cleaved Silicon Valley executives from the Democrats is that Lina Khan’s Federal Trade Commission hounded them relentlessly, leading many technology C.E.O.s who had long supported liberal causes to feel betrayed. Money in Washington is a hand on the steering wheel, but it is rarely the only hand on the steering wheel.
Trump’s zone of deal making is wider. It was Trump who originally proposed banning TikTok in the first place — part of his broader campaign against Chinese influence and power, one of the few areas of policy he seemed to care deeply about. Then he met with Jeff Yass, a billionaire investor whose firm has a major stake in TikTok, and Trump’s position flipped. Now he seeks to be TikTok’s savior.
Trump explained his shift as motivated by his hatred of Facebook. “They are a true Enemy of the People!” he wrote on Truth Social. He partly blamed Mark Zuckerberg’s spending on election integrity for his 2020 loss, and his response, in part, was to aid Meta’s chief competitor. Elsewhere he said of Zuckerberg, “We are watching him closely, and if he does anything illegal this time, he will spend the rest of his life in prison.”
Now, after making peace with Trump at Mar-a-Lago and moving Meta’s policies in a Trumpian direction, not to mention having Meta donate to his inauguration fund, Zuckerberg was seated just feet from Trump at the inauguration. Trump is a better investment than your average president: Both the blessings of his favor and the consequences of his enmity are more extreme.
I don’t want to overstate my case. The motivations, interests and philosophies of the attention titans arrayed before Trump differ. To group them is to erase obvious differences. Sundar Pichai is not Musk. Jeff Bezos is not Shou Chew. The statement Trump wanted to make by seating them so prominently at his inauguration may not reflect the role they wish to play. It is possible that in a year or two, Musk and Trump will have fallen out and, for the rest, it will have been business as usual: a mix of cooperation and irritation, of supplication and dismissiveness. Trump’s alliances have historically been short-lived, particularly when his allies wield real power.
May it be so. I’ll be pleased if I can look back on this column and read it, with some embarrassment, as an artifact of misplaced alarm. But I am not willing to watch Trump give America’s most powerful merchants of attention some of the best seats at his inauguration and pretend he wants nothing from them or that there is nothing they would want from him enough to cut a deal.
And the problem will persist beyond Trump. The right spent years believing the social media platforms were biased against them, and the left is about to spend years believing the same. As absurdly concentrated as wealth is in America, attention is even more so. As powerful as money is in politics, attention is even more so. We have largely failed to regulate the role of money in politics. For attention, the problem is worse — and we have not even begun to attempt solutions.
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