(DCNF)—Numerous elected Democratic officials have criticized the wealthy despite taking funding from billionaires in the past.
Railing against billionaires has been a popular Democratic rhetorical device for decades, but the criticism has come to the forefront since Elon Musk took the lead of the Department of Government Efficiency and has made many substantial government changes in President Donald Trump’s administration.
Though there is a long list of Democratic officials who have condemned the ultra-rich, here are just seven high-profile Democrats who have recently made anti-billionaire statements despite having accepted support from billionaires in the past.
Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren
Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren has criticized billionaires throughout her career, making policies on taxing the wealthy a staple of her political campaigns. Since 2019, Warren has even sold mugs branding the words “billionaire tears” for $28 on her campaign’s website. When she began selling them in 2019, they were $25.
Despite her strong anti-billionaire sentiments, Warren accepted funding from at least 30 billionaires from 2011-2019, according to a New York Post review of her campaign donations.
Warren posted on X during President Donald Trump’s presidential run that he “promised” his “rich as hell donors” tax cuts that won’t “help working people one bit.”
On Feb. 12 Warren told Rolling Stone that Trump is trying to “distract” people from his “failure to cut costs for families” and that he is “play[ing] up to the billionaires.”
George and Alex Soros, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Susan Pritzker, wife of Hyatt heir Nicholas Pritzker II, Christopher Sacca, a venture capitalist who went on “Shark Tank,” GitHub founder Tom Preston-Werner’s wife, Theresa, and David Geffen, co-founder of DreamWorks and many more all donated thousands of dollars to Warren’s presidential and senatorial campaigns, according to the New York Post.
Former President Joe Biden
Former President Joe Biden began his presidency calling for “unity” in his inaugural address but left office warning that an “oligarchy” was “taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy ” in his farewell speech.
Biden took funding from at least 230 billionaires during his 2020 presidential campaign, which amounted to 25% of America’s billionaires at the time, according to Forbes. Trump received money from only 14% of American billionaires that year.
Biden’s menagerie of ultrarich backers included George Soros, Ralph Lauren, Mellody Hobson, wife of George Lucas, Eric Schmidt, former CEO at Google, the founders of companies like DoorDash, Patagonia, and Netflix, as well as the family heirs to the Walmart fortune. Some billionaire donors gave a few thousand dollars, and others gave up to 1.7 million.
Forbes noted that at least 60 Biden donors also gave to some of Biden’s super-PACs, Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskovitz contributing $47 million, and Mike Bloomberg rolling out $100 million.
Biden also presented his billionaire donor George Soros the Presidential Medal of Freedom last month, along with Hillary Clinton and Denzel Washington.
I’m so grateful my father was honored for his lifetime of work devoted to freedom and human rights. It was humbling to be with such an astounding group of honorees. Especially poignant to be alongside Bono and @HillaryClinton, two of the people my father has the highest regard…
I’m so grateful my father was honored for his lifetime of work devoted to freedom and human rights. It was humbling to be with such an astounding group of honorees. Especially poignant to be alongside Bono and @HillaryClinton, two of the people my father has the highest regard… pic.twitter.com/Vx3KrQ4ELj
— Alex Soros (@AlexanderSoros) January 5, 2025
“I love Bernie, but I’m not Bernie Sanders. I don’t think 500 billionaires are the reason why we’re in trouble,” Biden said in 2018 at the Brookings Institution. “The folks at the top aren’t bad guys. I get in trouble in my party when I say wealthy Americans are just as patriotic as poor folks. I’ve found no distinction.”
Democratic Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison
In a video posted to X on Feb. 5, Democratic Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison repeated former President Joe Biden’s “oligarch” claim. He concluded the video with a call to action, “the small, tiny little group of oligarchs that are trying to destroy our democracy, we can stop them if we band together. We are the many, they are the money and we can overwhelm them.”
In 2018, Ellison accepted $100,000 from Alex Soros, George Soros’ son and business successor, according to the Washington Free Beacon. This amount represents a little less than half of funds raised by an independent expenditure committee devoted to Ellison’s campaign success.
With one of America’s greatest leaders and a dear friend, Minnesota Attorney General @keithellison. pic.twitter.com/pdcncF6174
— Alex Soros (@AlexanderSoros) August 17, 2022
Alex Soros, like his father, is a left-wing billionaire philanthropist. “He’s a lot more on the fringe than his dad was,” Joseph Vazquez, associate editor and George Soros expert at the Media Research Center told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “He’s going to be a much more potent political threat.”
Vazquez said that Alex Soros might use his father’s business like “a wrecking ball,” and that he may “take that $32 billion empire and smash it against wherever he needs to in order to turn his father’s vision into reality.”
Vazquez and Tom Olohan outline why Alex Soros “could be even worse” than his father in an MRC special report titled “Meet the New Boss.” The authors conclude in the report that Alex Soros might be “more radical than his father on everything from abortion to climate change to the weaponization of race to demonize his political opponents.”
Ellison was one of the several democratic officials that filed a federal lawsuit against Trump’s executive order banning child sex-changes. He said in a statement on Feb. 7 that “our children deserve so much better than to be targeted … by the President of the United States and his billionaire cronies,” pointing to how child sex-changes are “evidence based” and this executive order is “mean-spirited and deeply hurtful.”
Democratic Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar
Democratic Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar recently joked about Trump being “for sale,” though records show she has accepted funding from at least 21 billionaires.
“What is the difference between Greenland and Donald Trump? Greenland is not for sale,” Klobuchar said at the Washington Press Club Foundation Annual Congressional Dinner, according to the Huffington Post.
During Klobuchar’s 2020 presidential campaign she accepted donations from 15 billionaires and 6 of their spouses, including LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, according to a Forbes analysis of federal election findings.
DNC Chair Ken Martin
Newly-elected Democratic Party Chair Ken Martin has contributed to this anti-billionaire narrative multiple times. “Trump and the billionaire cabinet … bought this country,” he wrote on X on Feb. 7. George Soros gave at least $250,000 to Martin’s Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) party in 2022, according to the Center of the American Experiment, a Minnesota-based think tank.
“Are we on the side of the robber baron, the ultra-wealthy billionaires, the oil and gas polluter, the union buster, or are we on the side of the American working family?” Martin asked the DNC crowd during his acceptance speech on Feb. 1.
On Jan. 19, while Martin was still a DNC Chair candidate, he went on record saying he will only take money from “good billionaires” going forward.
Leading Democratic Party Chair candidate Ken Martin says that Democrats won’t take money from “those bad billionaires” but will take money from “good billionaires” pic.twitter.com/dkJbzM2Xss
— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) January 19, 2025
Former Vice-President Kamala Harris
Former Vice-President Kamala Harris critiqued the Washington Post and the LA Times for not endorsing her 2024 presidential run and suggested that her opponent only cares about “billionaires in Donald Trump’s club” during a podcast appearance with Charlamagne tha God.
A total of 83 billionaires supported Harris’ presidential campaign, according to a Forbes FEC filings analysis.
Notable Democratic PAC backers included George Soros, Laurene Powell Jobs, Gordon Getty, as well as Bill Gates, who donated $50 million.
It’s time for us all to unite around Kamala Harris and beat Donald Trump. She is the best and most qualified candidate we have. Long live the American Dream! ?? ? #Harris2024 pic.twitter.com/KG09YnWHZK
— Alex Soros (@AlexanderSoros) July 21, 2024
Democratic California Rep. Nancy Pelosi
Democratic California Rep. Nancy wrote on X on Feb. 10 that “Republicans are enabling financial predators to rip off hardworking Americans to reward their billionaire donors.”
The Golden State Representative is tied to House Majority Forward, a dark money nonprofit that received $3 million from Swiss billionaire Hansjorg Wyss in 2020, according to Fox.
Pelosi has received much criticism for her own high net worth over her career, as some estimates rank her as one of the wealthiest members of congress.
Many have suspected that Pelosi, along with her husband, Paul Pelosi, have participated in insider trading. Paul Pelosi has refuted these claims.
BONUS: Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders
Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders announced plans to fight “the oligarchy” on Feb. 12. His spokesperson Anna Bahr told Politico that Sanders will support “working-class people” while “Donald Trump and Elon Musk march us toward authoritarianism, oligarchy, and kleptocracy.”
The Washington Free Beacon reported the senator’s change in rhetoric from critiquing both “millionaires and billionaires,” until dropping the “millionaire” once he became one in 2019.
Federal filings show that Sanders received just under $500 from one billionaire donor, Marta Thoma Hall, the wife of billionaire Velodyne founder David Hall in 2019. After Forbes notified Sanders’ campaign, they claimed they wouldn’t keep the money.
“Most Americans should believe that as a citizen, you’re allowed to attempt to influence the political process,” Brian Doherty, Los Angeles Times bestselling author and senior editor at libertarian magazine Reason told the DCNF. “You’re allowed to have your voice.”
Doherty expressed skepticism regarding this anti-billionaire narrative. “I don’t think the democrats complaining about Elon Musk really have a political objection to … billionaires funding political causes,” Doherty said. “It’s a rhetorical red herring.”
Doherty added that when voters are “aware of the range of really rich people funding both parties and both causes,” they are likely to “lose that sense of anger” regarding wealthy donor influence.
The offices of Warren, Ellison, Pelosi, Martin, Harris, Klobuchar, Newsom and Sanders did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
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Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
