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larry ellison
Bernie Sanders on What Corporate Media Does Not Want Discussed: The Oligarchy
"Let’s talk," says the Vermont senator, "about the reality which the corporately-controlled media and the corporately-controlled political system don’t talk about very much."
Sep 24, 2025
Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont penned a new op-ed published Wednesday in which he attempts to redirect the American electorate away from what most media outlets seem fixated upon to a subject he argues they would rather not acknowledge, discuss, or promote—let alone challenge: the existence and power of the nation's oligarchy, which day by day continues to hollow out democracy while keeping the working class mired in relative poverty with families scraping to meet basic material needs.
"Let’s take a deep breath and, for one moment, forget about Donald Trump, Jimmy Kimmel, the UN, Charlie Kirk, Gaza, a government shutdown, and the other crises that we face," writes Sanders, an Independent, in The Guardian.
Instead, he says, "Let’s talk instead about the reality which the corporately-controlled media and the corporately-controlled political system don’t talk about very much," which is a two-tiered nation in which extremely wealthy billionaires—including mega-billionaires like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison, and Mark Zuckerberg—live in "a world completely removed from ordinary Americans" that struggle to have affordable healthcare, housing, and education while earning wages that are lower, on average, than they were half a century ago despite huge increases in worker productivity.
Sanders writes:
What we are witnessing right now is the rise of two Americas. One for the billionaire class. And one for everybody else.
In one America, the richest people are becoming obscenely richer and have never, ever, had it so good. That America is overflowing with unimaginable wealth, greed and opulence that makes the Gilded Age seem very modest.
And then there is a second America–an America where a majority of people live paycheck to paycheck, struggling to secure the very basic necessities of life–food, healthcare, housing and education.
The sad conclusion, Sanders argues, is that the political system in the United States "is badly broken," crushed by the same oligarchs who have amassed large enough private fortunes that they can control "our government, our economy, and our future."
Noting that Musk, Bezos, Ellison, and Zuckerberg—just four individuals—are now have an estimated $1.3 trillion in combined wealth, Sanders says it's not just them. "The top 1% now owns more wealth than the bottom 93%," he writes.
[The 1%] don’t ride overcrowded subways to get to work or sit in traffic jams to get home. They fly on private jets and helicopters they own. They live in mansions all over the world, send their kids to the most elite private schools and vacation on their own islands. And, for fun, some spend millions to fly off into space on their own rocket ships.
And then there is the other America, where the vast majority of our people live. For them, the economy is not just broken, it is collapsing. In this America, despite a massive increase in worker productivity, real weekly wages for the average American worker are lower today than they were more than 52 years ago.
Since Trump returned to office, Sanders has been traveling the nation as part of his "Fight Oligarchy" tour that has attracted tens of thousands of attendees in red, blue, and purple states. While the message appears to be resonating—and more lawmakers and candidate running for office echoing Sanders' message—the Vermont senator says the fight against massive inequality—both on the economic and political front—is far from over, but must be kept front and center.
After listing the litany of economic injustices faced by the nation's working class, Sanders says, "Enough is enough. As Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said in 1933: 'We can have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of the few, but we cannot have both.' That warning is even more relevant today."
Despite President Donald Trump being in office and the headwins seemingly in favor of the billionaire class, which has been able to buy elections and increase its stranglehold on major media outlets and platforms, Sanders suggests that the people still have the upper hand when it comes to the long-term battle for the nation's future.
"I know day-to-day life can take a toll, but we must not allow ourselves to fall into despair," he writes. "If we do not allow ourselves to be divided up by Trump and is oligarch allies, we can change the path we are on."
"The choice is clear," Sanders concludes. "Let’s stand together for democracy and justice."
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Experts Warn TikTok Deal Supplants Fake Threat of 'Chinese Propaganda' With Real Threat of MAGA Propaganda
"People can now be concerned that TikTok could be a conduit for US government propaganda," said the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Sep 23, 2025
As a prospective deal takes shape to hand partial ownership and control of social media giant TikTok to US tech giant Oracle, progressive critics are warning that it could soon become a source of pro-Trump propaganda while giving right-wing oligarchs another powerful media mouthpiece.
As reported by The Wall Street Journal last week, the current plan is to put TikTok's US business under the control of a consortium that will include Oracle, as well as investment firm Silver Lake, and venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
Oracle was founded by Larry Ellison, who was one of Trump's first backers in Silicon Valley. Andreessen Horowitz's Marc Andreessen donated $2.5 million to Trump's super PAC during the 2024 election campaign and he currently serves as an economic adviser to the president.
In addition to those two, right-wing media mogul Rupert Murdoch and computer pioneer Michael Dell are also rumored to be part of the consortium.
The idea of the world's most popular video platform in the world being under the control of billionaire Trump allies has set off alarms among critics who warn that it could be used to sway public opinion with a barrage of MAGA propaganda.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) pointed to statements made by Trump allies to warn that the TikTok deal could greatly damage the free flow of information in the US.
"If the concern had been that TikTok could be a conduit for Chinese government propaganda—a concern the Supreme Court declined to even consider—people can now be concerned that TikTok could be a conduit for US government propaganda," EFF said. "An administration official reportedly has said the new TikTok algorithm will be 'retrained' with US data to make sure the system is 'behaving properly.'"
New Yorker journalist Clare Malone wrote in a recent article that "the supposed national-security concerns of TikTok will go largely unaddressed" under the proposed deal, which she argued would do more to "bolster an emerging media conglomerate, under the auspices of the Ellison family, who are assiduously friendly to Trump."
To put this into perspective, wrote Malone, the Ellison family could soon "own a movie studio, multiple television streamers, two news networks, and have a significant stake in the world’s fastest-growing social-media platform, all while hosting the data of millions of users and providing much of the cloud-computing infrastructure that powers corporate America—a level of vertical integration that, even in an age of rapid consolidation, is unprecedented."
Former US Labor Secretary Robert Reich also noted that TikTok isn't the only media platform being eyed by Ellison.
"[Ellison's] media company owns CBS News and is plotting a bid for Warner Bros., which owns CNN," he wrote. "When billionaires take control of communication platforms, it’s not a win for free speech. It’s a win for oligarchy."
This major consolidation also caught the attention of former CBS News anchor Dan Rather, who recently told The Hollywood Reporter that he had serious concerns about the Ellisons buying up his one-time employer, as well as potentially owning CNN as well.
“I do think... without preaching about it, but that we, all of us, all the Americans, have to be concerned about the consolidation of huge billionaires getting control of nearly all of the major news outlets,” Rather said. “This is not healthy for the country, and it is something to worry about... It’s pretty hard to be optimistic about the possibilities of the Ellisons buying CNN.”
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Pro-Trump Billionaires Want to Control What You Watch
The Ellison duo taking over both CBS and CNN, as well as controlling a major social media network like TikTok, would be dangerous for democracy.
Sep 23, 2025
Larry Ellison, founder of the software firm Oracle, is the second-richest billionaire in both the US and the world, and for a brief moment was No. 1 in the world (AP, 9/11/25). But for a long time, unlike many of his peers, he was unable to boast that he controlled a chunk of the news and opinion reaching the American public.
On Forbes‘ US list, he is sandwiched between Elon Musk, No. 1, who bought the social media network Twitter and rebranded it as X, and Mark Zuckerberg, who runs Meta, which operates Facebook and Instagram. Jeff Bezos, at No. 4, has the Washington Post. Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google, Nos. 5 and 6, operate the leading search engine as well as one of the most important news aggregators, Google News. Michael Bloomberg, at No. 13, the former New York City mayor, has Bloomberg and its various outlets.
Ellison seems to have joined the club, as TikTok, under US government coercion (FAIR.org, 1/23/25), is selling 80% of its US operations to an investor consortium that includes Oracle, along with investment firms Silver Lake and Andreessen Horowitz (Reuters, 9/16/25).
Ellison is a big Trumper, joining in the reactionary denial of the 2020 presidential elections (Washington Post, 5/20/22). Like some of the others in the deal, he is part of the inner circle of Trump’s favorite corporate ideologues. This TikTok deal is not just about money. It’s about control of the political narrative.
‘CBS Shifts to Appease Right’
But owning a big chunk of the US’ leading short-form video platform is not Ellison’s only claim to being a media mogul. Eyeing the corporate media throne, you can almost hear Ellison channeling Seinfeld’s Frank Costanza, confronted with the daunting prospect of competing in computer sales against IBM and Microsoft, declaring: “I’ve got a secret weapon. My son.”
Enter Larry’s son David Ellison, who was born into the kind of riches most can barely dream of. As I wrote for FAIR (7/24/25), the younger Ellison is the CEO of Skydance, which recently merged with Paramount, giving him control over CBS. David’s campaign contributions trend more to the Democratic establishment, but it’s his father’s politics that seem to be reshaping the newly bought network: “CBS Shifts to Appease the Right Under New Owner,” as an NPR headline (9/12/25) put it.
The space for semi-skeptical media is shrinking as the space for regime-friendly broadcasters (Fox News still beats out both CNN and CBS in terms of viewers) is growing.
Anti-woke zealot Bari Weiss is nearing “a top role at CBS News,” which “left-leaning staffers at the network fret could amount to ‘dropping a grenade’ in the newsroom,” the New York Post (9/10/25) reported. It added that the network “is weighing naming Weiss editor in chief or copresident of the network,” and that Ellison is looking to buy her “news site, the Free Press, in a deal valued at upwards of $100 million.” According to Reuters (9/15/25), it was David Ellison who “installed Kenneth Weinstein—a supporter of President Donald Trump and the former CEO of conservative think tank Hudson Institute—as ombudsman of CBS News.” (See FAIR.org, 9/9/25.)
‘Pretty Hard to Be Optimistic’
The New York Post (9/11/25) reports that Ellison father and son are now looking to buy Warner Brothers Discovery, which carries with it CNN, creating an unprecedented level of media consolidation. While the Post said such a purchase could be difficult, because Warner Brothers “has a market cap of around $38 billion,” that might not matter, as “Larry Ellison’s net worth leaped by $100 billion following Oracle’s latest blowout earnings report.” He is “closing in on being the richest dude in the world, with a net worth… of more than $370 billion.”
CNN reports 1.8 million viewers, and CBS reports an average total audience of 1.4 million viewers, for a combined 3.2 million, which eclipses ABC’s 2.3 million, NBC’s 1.4 million, and MSNBC’s 1.2 million viewers (Forbes, 7/24/25).
The CNN/CBS combo would reach far more Americans through online news, with CNN.com‘s 276 million visits per month already making it the nation’s second-biggest news site. Add CBSNews.com‘s 63 million visits, and you’ll have an entity that edges closer to the heretofore undisputed leader, NYTimes.com, with its 425 million visits a month.
Former CBS Evening News star Dan Rather (Hollywood Reporter, 9/15/25) said Americans “have to be concerned about the consolidation of huge billionaires getting control of nearly all of the major news outlets.” Rather added, “It’s pretty hard to be optimistic about the possibilities of the Ellisons buying CNN.”
‘Not a Sign of a Healthy Democracy’
Fast Company (9/16/25) summarized the dangerous nature of the deal this way:
If the Warner Bros. Discovery deal were to go through, Ellison would control streaming services with a combined 200 million-plus subscribers, says Barclays (though there will be overlap between the Paramount+, HBO Max, and Pluto services). It’s something Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren warned against on X on September 11. The deal with Warner Bros. Discovery, she wrote, “must be blocked as a dangerous concentration of power.” Add TikTok’s 170 million-plus users and one of the hottest properties in the social space, and you get to a position of dominance in the media….
“It is not a sign of a healthy democracy when billionaires are buying up all of the means of cultural consumption,” says Steven Buckley, lecturer in media and digital sociology at City St George’s, University of London. Others have pointed out that the potential playbook, if this were to go ahead, draws comparisons with Elon Musk’s takeover of a social platform to dominate public discourse. Musk has previously taken credit for helping Trump secure the White House in 2024 through his positioning of X as a supportive social network…
“It is naive to think that over time [Ellison’s] business and political philosophy, combined with the external political pressures from this and future administrations, wouldn’t have an impact on how the American public experience TikTok,” Buckley says.
Conservative Media Capture
The United States has seen a tremendous amount of conservative media capture since Donald Trump returned to the White House. Bezos has moved to cull viewpoints at the Washington Post that might offend Trump (BBC, 2/26/25), Zuckerberg has taken steps to make Facebook friendlier to MAGA (NBC, 1/8/25), and Musk has turned X into a vehicle for his far-right politics (AP, 8/13/24; NBC, 2/16/25). All three men sat together at Trump’s inauguration.
The Los Angeles Times under billionaire owner Patrick Soon-Shiong has also made strenuous efforts to be more Trump-friendly (FAIR.org, 10/24/24; Independent, 12/17/24; NPR, 2/3/25; Guardian, 3/5/25).
Both Ellisons, the Hollywood Reporter (9/15/25) said, “have shown support for Trump in the past,” and they certainly buck the rising outrage against Israel’s genocide in Gaza. “Paramount, under its new owner, David Ellison, has become the first major Hollywood studio to condemn a boycott of Israeli film institutions that more than 4,000 actors and directors now support,” the New York Times (9/13/25) said.
With the Trump regime shutting down the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds NPR and PBS (FAIR.org, 4/25/25; NPR, 8/1/25), the space for semi-skeptical media is shrinking as the space for regime-friendly broadcasters (Fox News still beats out both CNN and CBS in terms of viewers) is growing.
As for social media, given that Andreessen Horowitz’s cofounders are also Trump supporters, it seems that, along with Ellison, these oligarchs could steer TikTok in the same direction as Facebook and X (TechCrunch, 7/16/24).
Worse, critics of TikTok’s Chinese ownership fretted that data collection of American users eventually led to surveillance by the Chinese government. Data collection is a given with social media generally, but now that power rests partly with Ellison, who has gotten rich off such technology. Fortune (9/17/24) reported, “Oracle founder Larry Ellison… sees a growing opportunity for his company to help authorities analyze real-time data from millions of surveillance cameras.” And funnily enough, an AP investigation (9/9/25) showed that Oracle was among the many Silicon Valley firms whose technologies have supported Chinese surveillance systems.
Just imagine what he could do with a large social media network like TikTok.
Rather and others are right that the Ellison duo taking over both CBS and CNN, as well as controlling a major social media network like TikTok, would be dangerous for democracy. And given their closeness to the Trump regime, that seems to be the point.
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