Working Americans who understand what it’s like to struggle from paycheck to paycheck to make ends meet have never been well represented in the White House. But the extraordinary wealth of appointees President Donald Trump is naming to help run the government represents an unprecedentedly hands-on intervention by the billionaire class. This is not just government by the top 1%–Trump’s government is rule by the top 0.0001% (read as the top one ten thousandth percent).
The collective net worth of Trump’s top appointees is reportedly estimated to exceed $460 billion, including Elon Musk’s $400 billion net worth. Even without Musk, Trump’s cabinet and top appointees in 2025 by far exceeds the wealth of previous cabinets, including his previous cabinet (and previous record holder), which was worth $3.2 billion. President Biden’s cabinet collectively was worth $118 million.
Sixteen of Trump’s 25 wealthiest appointees and nominees are members of the 0.0001%, meaning they are among the 813 billionaires in the United States, where some 341 million of the rest of us make up the 99.9999% (earning an average yearly income of about $61,000). Elon Musk’s outrageous wealth places him in a category all his own, as the world’s richest person. By contrast, cabinet members who are mere members of the top 1%–members such as J.D. Vance, Kristi Noem, and Marco Rubio–appear almost working class, even if the wealth of each is more than triple the median income Americans earn over their entire lives ($1.7 million).
Will rule by the ultra-rich deliver for the other 99.9999% of us? Time will tell.
*Sources include family wealth. Sources: ABC News, Americans for Tax Fairness, Axios, CBS News, Forbes, Inequality.org, New York Magazine, U.S. News & World Report, World Inequality Database