Mary Trump Argues Billionaires and 'Oligarchs' Leave U.S. Worse Off Than 1986

Mary Trump argued in a podcast episode that the U.S. is economically worse off than it was in 1986, blaming what she called "unbridled greed" and a country that is "allowing oligarchs to take over."

The remark came in the middle of a film review. On The Mary Trump Podcast, the president's niece and her co-host, Bob Cesca, were going through Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, the 1986 film in which Captain Kirk's crew travels back to that year's San Francisco to find humpback whales. She did not name Donald Trump or any other person in the passage.

Mary Trump on Greed, Billionaires and 'Oligarchs'

The argument started with a joke from the movie. The crew of the Enterprise comes from a future without money and is baffled by it; Kirk is offered $100 for his reading glasses and has no idea whether that is a good price. She said the crew "doesn't understand money because they don't have to."

"Is $100 a lot of money? I don't know, because we don't need to worry about these things," she said, describing the crew's outlook. She then said the U.S. is "not any better off than we were in terms of the economics of it all."

"I would argue we're worse off than we were in 1986 because we also have this unbridled greed in the sense that we are allowing people to become billionaires. We are allowing oligarchs to take over." — Mary Trump

Cesca had just suggested that profit could end up driving clean energy, saying "it could be capitalism that drives the development of green energy and renewable energy." Mary Trump answered that "what's a better thing to hope for is that we move away from greed. We move away from a system that rewards the greediest and most acquisitive among us."

What the Wealth Data Shows Since the 1980s

On concentration, the record supports her. The Federal Reserve's Distributional Financial Accounts, which start in 1989, put the top 1 percent's share of U.S. household net worth at 22.8 percent in the third quarter of that year. In the second quarter of 2026 it was 32.5 percent, the highest in the series.

The number of billionaires has grown much faster. The 1990 Forbes 400 included 66 billionaires, according to a Gigafact fact brief.

But "worse off" is a harder case to make for the typical household. Census Bureau figures show real median household income was $65,430 in 1986 and $87,460 in 2025, both in 2025 dollars. The Fed's Survey of Consumer Finances found median family net worth reached $192,900 in 2022, up 37 percent from 2019. The Fed called that the largest three-year increase in the modern history of the survey, driven largely by rising home and stock prices.

By those measures, the middle has gained ground in absolute terms while the top has pulled further ahead. Her complaint, framed as "I would argue," is about who holds the gains.

Donald Trump's approval rating on the economy stands at 29.5 percent in PolitiKool's polling average.

'The Wrong People in Charge' on Climate

The hosts read the film as a climate allegory: humans wipe out the whales, and Earth nearly pays for it. Mary Trump said the movie's premise is that "we did terrible things to our planet and the other species we share it with."

"It's deeply unfortunate that at this very critical time for our planet, we have the wrong people in charge," she said. Again, she named no one.

The administration's record on renewables is a matter of public record. On his first day back in office, Trump issued a memorandum withdrawing the Outer Continental Shelf from new wind leasing and pausing offshore wind permitting, the Congressional Research Service noted. The Interior Department later issued stop-work orders to permitted projects and, starting in March 2026, agreed to cancel a dozen offshore wind leases. PolitiFact reported that courts have blocked several of those halts.

What Comes Next on the Show

The episode was the first of two on The Voyage Home. Mary Trump said next week's installment will cover how the film ends and where the hosts rank it. She closed the political detour with a line about the mood: "Before we get too depressed, let us turn our attention to my favorite segment of the show."