Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wants Americans to “stay focused” on the most important issues of our time and has warned about a burgeoning oligarchy after the three richest men on Earth watched President Donald Trump get sworn into the highest office Monday.
Sanders noted Tuesday on CNN’s “The Source” that a handful of billionaires have already acquired major news publications and social media platforms, and he rang the alarm after being asked about Elon Musk, who owns X (formerly called Twitter), potentially buying TikTok.
“This is what oligarchy is about,” Sanders told anchor Kaitlan Collins. “You have Jeff Bezos, who owns The Washington Post, Mr. Musk already owns Twitter, you have other billionaires owning the major media outlets in this country, CNN, other companies.”
“If you look at who owns them, you’re looking at large Wall Street firms,” the progressive senator continued. “So you already have a major serious problem in terms of ownership of the media. If Musk ends up owning TikTok, it’ll only make a bad situation much worse.”
Trump confirmed Tuesday that he’s open to the idea of Musk buying TikTok.
That option is possible as a result of former President Joe Biden signing a $95 billion foreign aid bill for Israel and Ukraine in April last year, which also included a measure forcing TikTok to divest from ByteDance, its Chinese-owned parent company, or be banned in the U.S.
Supporters of the bill believe TikTok is a national security threat. However, Sanders, who voted against it because of its funding for Israel, said last week on X that he “feared Congress getting into the business of shutting down media platforms.”
We Won’t Back Down
Already contributed? Log in to hide these messages.
“We need media who are fearless in speaking out on the issues of the day, and you’re not going to have that when you have a small number of very wealthy people controlling what we see, hear and read,” the 83-year-old former Democrat said on CNN, noting that these people have recently “kind of caved in to Trump.”
Those fears have been long warranted but became glaring at Trump’s inauguration, which was attended by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Bezos and Musk — some of whom previously criticized Trump publicly.