A party in Washington, D.C. on Saturday night hosted by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos featured a who’s-who of Trump administration officials, billionaires, and journalists—leading observers to note the “class solidarity” on display between members of the American ruling elite.
“Democracy dies at Jeff Bezos’ house,” tweeted journalist Dan Froomkin.
The Bezos party came after the Alfalfa Club annual dinner at Cafe Milano in Washington, a yearly event that on Saturday honored Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah). Romney brought actor Ben Stiller to the party as a guest; both men were also seen arriving at the Bezos party after the event.
Also in attendance at the party were a number of current and former officials in President Donald Trump’s White House. The president’s daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner, both advisers to the president, Transportation Secretary and wife of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Elaine Chao, White House adviser Kellyanne Conway, former Trump administration Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, and former National Security deputy adviser Dina Powell were all at the event at Bezos’ $23 million D.C. mansion.
The administration officials were joined by a number of wealthy executives and billionaires. Beyond Bezos, the party featured Microsoft founder Bill Gates, JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon, Bridgewater Associates co-CEO David McCormick, billionaire businessman David Rubenstein, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon, AOL founder Steve Case, and others.
Kushner’s closeness to Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, who is widely believed to have been behind the October 2, 2018 murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Kashoggi, was noted by Matt Duss, foreign policy adviser to the 2020 Democratic presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Bezos owns the Post.
“A couple weeks ago Jeff Bezos was tweeting pics from Jamal Khashoggi’s memorial,” said Duss. “Over the weekend he had Khashoggi’s murderer’s buddy Jared Kushner over for a party
“This town, man,” added Duss.
Members of the media, including CBS Evening News anchor Norah O’Donnell, Politico founder Robert Allbritton, and Good Morning America correspondent Claire Shipman, were guests of Bezos. Former President Barack Obama’s Press Secretary Jay Carney and former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan also attended the party.
Such a concentration of elite wealth and power, tweeted Crooked Media‘s Brian Beutler, appeared tailor-made for a campaign ad for the 2020 Democratic presidential candidacies of Sanders and Sen. Sanders and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).
“Very strange of Jeff Bezos to make such a huge in-kind donation to the Sanders and Warren campaigns,” said Beutler.