Welcome, everybody.

This is the last show before Donald Trump will once again be president of the United States.

And I think it is the perfect day to talk about oligarchy and kleptocracy and cacistocracy, terms we've used before,

but have never really been more relevant than they are today.

If you thought that Donald Trump's first term was a sort of swampy cesspool of corruption and self-enrichment.

You've got to brace yourself.

There's really no, it's coming.

It's happening.

The second Trump term is looking like it will be a full-on public coronation of America's billionaires and multi-multy millionaires. And it's not only an oligarchy,

although it is. It is also a kleptocracy and a cacistocracy rolled into one. It's government

by the wealthy for the wealthy, led by the worst among us, by the most corrupt, by the most brazenly

self-serving.

Remember when Donald Trump promised to drain the swamp?

If it feels like it was a decade ago, it's because it was.

And in a way, Trump sort of did drain the swamp.

He drained it and turned it into a country club where the super rich have sort of did drain the swamp. He drained it and turned it into a country club where

the super rich have sort of become their own lobbyists based on how much money they're willing

to commit either to super PAC supporting Trump or his inaugural fund or whatever other legal

means there is to funnel money to the orange guy. Why hire

middlemen when you can just appoint the billionaires directly if you were Donald Trump? And so we see

this flow both ways. The money's coming in from the billionaires who are hanging out at Mar-a-Lago

and, you know, the tech billionaire

...