Bernie Sanders: American Success Story

Plus: Habemus papam, deporting grannies, and more...

Fighting oligarchy from the P.J.: Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) and I actually have a lot in common: We both think private jets are super cool. The only problem is that he's trying to brand himself as "fighting oligarchy," whereas I have no interest in being a foot soldier in that fight.

Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.) have been traveling the country doing speaking events and rallies on their "Fighting Oligarchy" tour, which aims to "take on the oligarchs and corporate interests who have so much power and influence in this country."

On Fox's Special Report with Bret Baier, Sanders was asked about his choice of transport. "You run a campaign, and you do three or four or five rallies in a week. [It is] the only way you can get around to talk to 30,000 people. You think I'm going to be sitting on a waiting line at United…while 30,000 people are waiting?" Sanders replied. FEC filings show that Friends of Bernie Sanders, his campaign committee, spent over $221,000 chartering private jets during the first quarter of 2025.

Sanders—who enjoys a house in Burlington, Vermont, another one in D.C., and a third at Lake Champlain, all of which he says are modest properties—might be part of the very oligarchy he claims to want to smash. He mentions on Lex Fridman's show that he didn't receive some massive inheritance; he grew up poor, but it's his book deals, his royalties, and his $175,000 annual salary that allow him and his wife to afford their homes. He notes that he drives an old car and just has a watch and a wedding ring, but that now they're financially secure such that they don't have to worry about surprise medical bills, which is "enormous" for their family. Good!

What Sanders appears to dislike is vulgar wealth. But what he doesn't understand is that his spending, justify it as he might, probably looks showy to those who are poorer than him. How many Americans have ever been on a private jet or owned a vacation home?

More importantly, what Sanders is describing—his slow crawl up the socioeconomic ladder, due to writing books that people value and want to read and representing ideas that people value and want to circulate and his ability to enjoy the attendant conveniences—is exactly what capitalists like me want more of (though ideally the ideas themselves would be better). If you subtract all the socialism-peddling, Bernie Sanders is an American success story who went from rags to (modest) riches. More of this, please!

Plenty of fellow politicians are beclowning themselves by suggesting that, of course, Sanders has to fly private:

Bernie Sanders is 83 and had to be in multiple states in the same day. In that situation you fly private.

— Andrew Yang????⬆️???????? (@AndrewYang) May 8, 2025

But Sanders and his defenders should ask themselves why this logic applies to politicians but not CEOs making decisions about billion-dollar businesses, which surely generate more economic value than the Fighting Oligarchy tour ever could. By misunderstanding who creates value in our economy (and how), Sanders is showing how ill-suited he is to restructure it. And by making excuses for why he gets to enjoy the spoils of his success, Sanders is showing that, actually, he too believes in the upward-mobility promise of the American dream.

Habemus papam: And he's from the Midwest!

After a very brief conclave, Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost was chosen by his fellow cardinals to be the next pope. He will assume the name Leo XIV. This is the first time an American has ever been elected pope (and also the first time we've had an Augustinian pope).

With Trump's tariffs in effect, we are now making popes in America

— Christian Schneider (@Schneider_CM) May 8, 2025

The Augustinians are a religious order whose members cater to the needy and live very humbly. They draw from the life and works of St. Augustine of Hippo, one of my personal favorite theologians, and author of Confessions. Pope Leo XIV, a native of the Midwest, went to Villanova University and studied mathematics and philosophy, then "served for two decades in Peru, where he became a bishop and a naturalized citizen" before he ascended to lead the Order of St. Augustine. He then served as a top bureaucrat in the Vatican, playing an essential role in choosing and supervising bishops around the world. He's also a polyglot, able to speak fluently in Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese, as well as his native English; he reads German and Latin.

"Even today, there are many settings in which the Christian faith is considered absurd, meant for the weak and unintelligent. Settings where other securities are preferred, like technology, money, success, power, or pleasure," said Pope Leo XIV in his first homily as pope today.* "These are contexts where it is not easy to preach the Gospel and bear witness to its truth, where believers are mocked, opposed, despised, or at best tolerated and pitied. Yet, precisely for this reason, they are the places where our missionary outreach is desperately needed. A lack of faith is often tragically accompanied by the loss of meaning in life, the neglect of mercy, appalling violations of human dignity, the crisis of the family, and so many other wounds that afflict our society. And these are not few."

Pope Leo XIV will, in some ways, be a natural successor to Pope Francis: He's oriented toward unity in the increasingly global church. "He is a very balanced, measured kind of person who deals well with crisis in a certain sense," a former classmate of his, Rev. Mark R. Francis, told The New York Times. "It doesn't fluster him. He thinks things through and offers very stable leadership."

Though popes should not be thought of as conservative vs. liberal—that's not really the axis on which they're operating—he has made several public statements that show him to be a bit of a rhetorical departure from Pope Francis. "The promotion of gender ideology is confusing, because it seeks to create genders that don't exist," he told local news media in Peru, when a government proposal sought to include gender-ideology teachings in local curricula. In other ways, his beliefs are expected to line up well with Pope Francis'; he retweeted articles criticizing Vice President J.D. Vance's understanding of ordo amoris applied to immigrants.

"Will the next pope be right wing?" Wrong question. Catholicism is nine times older than the left-right paradigm. There's no way to plot conclave politics on less than twenty different axes, several of which operate on non-physical planes & three of which are about being Italian

— Madoc Cairns (@MadocCairns) April 21, 2025

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Scenes from New York: "Why Can't New York Have Nice Mayors?" asks The New Yorker, misunderstanding that all those who seek such power have an innate character defect.

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QUICK HITS

• Ana Camero, a 64-year-old grandma, was deported after mistakenly taking the wrong turn on her way home from work, driving into San Diego's Marine Corps Recruit Depot and failing to provide ID, at which point immigration authorities were called. Her family says she came here illegally but has lived in the U.S. for 20 years and that she does not have a driver's license or any other California or U.S. identification. Forgive me, but the crime I'm worried about here is grandmas being bad drivers more than the decades-ago border crossing.
• Expect much more like this:

NEW ODD LOTS:

A US clothing brand facing existential threat from the tariffs.@tracyalloway and I spoke with Sarah LaFleur, CEO of the clothing brand @mmlafleur on the apparel and textile supply chain and what's already happening to her business. https://t.co/T0eI09RtVK

— Joe Weisenthal (@TheStalwart) May 9, 2025

• "India and Pakistan accused each other of launching new military attacks on Friday, using drones and artillery for the third day in the worst fighting between the nuclear-armed South Asian neighbours in nearly three decades," reports Reuters.

*CORRECTION: This article previously misstated the date of Pope Leo XIV's first homily.