'Stomachs turn': Ex-lawmaker flags Trump action that 'should send shivers up your spine'
January 16, 2025
President Joe Biden warned in his farewell address that "an oligarchy is taking shape" in the U.S., and CNN's Bakari Sellers presented chilling evidence that he's right.
House speaker Mike Johnson pushed out Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH) as chairman of the intelligence committee, and Sellers said that move proved the authority Trump wields over congressional Republicans and also showed the influence his billionaire backers hold over the president-elect.
"This further goes to the infighting that we know is going to happen in the Republican Party," Sellers said. "But I don't believe that that many people thought Donald Trump would have his thumb on the pulse of House Republicans all the way down to committee chairmanships. I have a feeling this has more to do with TikTok than people are actually ... giving credit for it. We know that Mike is opposed to having a TikTok within the confines of the United States, and then we see now that we're going to have a Chinese state-owned media executive who owns TikTok sitting in the box at the inauguration, along with three other billionaires. It should cause people's stomachs to turn just slightly."
ALSO READ: Fox News has blood on its hands as Trump twists the knife
Shou Zi Chew, the chief executive of TikTok, has reportedly been invited to sit in a position of honor on the dais at Trump's inauguration Monday as the social media company challenges a congressional ban in the U.S. Supreme Court and will shut down Sunday if it can't find an American owner, and Sellers said the president-elect wasn't hiding his consortium with the ultra-wealthy.
"When you when you look at just the imagery, I mean, let's go to inauguration, for example," Sellers said. "You're going to have Elon Musk, you're going to have Jeff Bezos, you're going to have Mark Zuckerberg, and now you actually have the CEO of TikTok sitting in the dais, the non-elected officials who have their finger on the pulse and can pull kind of the strings of the president of the United States. It should send shivers up your spine, and the reason being is because the Bill Ackmans of the world, the Marc Andreessen, who now is apparently a new [human resources] director for the Trump White House, the Jeff Bezos, who is stripping the Washington Post for parts, the Elon Musk, who would prefer the United States resemble South Africa than anything else, and then you have people like Mark Zuckerberg, who is just trying to preserve Facebook from 230 lawsuits, uh, antitrust lawsuits, et cetera."
"These people are there for their own self-interest, and what happens to the individuals who are affected in Middle America?" Sellers added. "What happens to Black folk and poor rural America? What happens to these people, Hispanic voters who don't, who have the uncertainty of immigration laws coming in, and what happened to grocery prices, and so when you begin to look at what's affecting everyday common people, I can guarantee you that the Ackmans, the Andreessens, the Zuckerbergs, the Bezos, the TikTok CEOs, the Musks, they don't have your best interest at heart."
Leave a Comment
