On Monday, we took you inside Stanford’s invitation-only “Rule” seminar, where 12 carefully selected students study how power works and how to navigate around official channels.

That eventually brought us to a larger question.

Who worries YOU more: billionaires or the politicians promising to protect you from billionaires?

Your answers suggest the real problem may not fit neatly into either camp.

“Unethical people want to rule,” writes Kathy G., “and usually they are corrupted long before they maneuver themselves into positions of power.”

Meanwhile, Bob D. zeroes in on Phoebe Gates and the “cookie stuffing” controversy we described Monday: “Could Ms. Gates be prosecuted? And while we’re at it, what about her old man?”

Then there’s Carl H., who doesn’t buy our billionaire-versus-politician framing at all. In his view, “enormous NGOs, international banks and political power are so intertwined that focusing on one group misses the larger machinery.”

John T. brings us right back to Stanford: “I would keep an eye on those students. That kind of appetite for power can become dangerous.”

Perhaps that’s the real answer to Monday’s question: Worry about the people who desperately want to be in charge.

Your Rundown for Friday, September 4, 2026...

Buck Sexton: DSA & DOD

Money & Power’s Buck Sexton has seen American domestic policy from the inside.

A former CIA officer who spent years briefing senior national-security officials, Buck now co-hosts The Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show.

And in a recent essay, he made the case for something Jim Rickards has been warning about, too: Economic frustration is creating an opening for political ideas Americans once dismissed as fringe.

Here’s Buck:

“I’m probably going to get some angry emails for this one, but I have to say it…

“Republicans need to start taking the socialists seriously.”

Buck isn’t predicting some massive blue wave. Nor does he think most Americans are suddenly clamoring for socialism.

The danger, he argues, is much simpler: “Everything costs too damn much.”

That gives the political left an opening.

“Somebody can walk into the grocery store, spend $150 on what feels like $90 worth of food and wonder why everybody on television keeps telling him the economy is doing so well.

“You’re not going to win that argument by showing him another chart.”

Housing makes the problem even harder to ignore. Younger Americans are looking at home prices and mortgage payments and wondering how they’ll ever afford their first house.

Then there’s “electricity, insurance, restaurants, childcare and just about every other expense that comes with living a normal American life.

“This is how people actually experience the economy.”

And Democrats don’t have to sell voters on the entire socialist agenda. They only need to say: “You’re struggling. These guys are in charge. Blame them.

“People have tried reasonable,” Buck adds. “They’ve voted for the people who promised to fix things. When they still feel like they’re falling behind, eventually the appetite for something more radical starts to grow.

“And waiting right there to greet them, wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt and carrying approximately $180,000 in student-loan debt, is the Democratic Socialists of America.”

The DSA, Buck says, has an answer for everything.

“Can’t afford a house? Government should build you one. Healthcare is expensive? Government should pay for it. College costs too much? Make it free. Jeff Bezos has too much money? Tax the snot out of him.”

Of course, most Americans understand there’s “no magical government money tree growing behind the Treasury Department.”

But that’s not really the point.

“When people get frustrated enough with the way things are going, they become a lot more willing to listen to ideas they would have laughed out of the room five years earlier.”

The pattern should sound familiar.

Trump himself won a second term by telling millions of Americans that the existing political system had failed them. Washington insisted Trump was too radical, too disruptive and too dangerous.

For many voters, Buck argues, “that was practically the campaign commercial.”

Trump and the radical left are obviously not the same. But Buck sees a similar political mechanism at work.

“When people lose enough faith in the status quo, they start looking for somebody willing to smash the windows in and start over.”

The difference is what happens when the DSA gets inside the building.

“They’re sitting on committees, writing legislation, controlling budgets and overseeing federal agencies. And suddenly the ideas we were laughing about can start affecting your money.”

The DSA and the broader socialist left aren’t particularly coy about those ideas: higher corporate taxes, higher taxes on investment, wealth taxes and more aggressive redistribution.

And Buck sees another potential collision — one involving the Department of Defense itself.

“A stronger socialist wing of the Democratic Party is a movement deeply skeptical of the Pentagon, American military power and spending hundreds of billions of dollars on weapons when that money could instead fund its domestic agenda.

“I understand why that pitch appeals to people.

“The problem is Vladimir Putin doesn’t care about our domestic spending priorities. Neither does Xi Jinping. Neither does Iran.”

For decades after the Cold War, the West got comfortable with the belief that enormous weapons stockpiles were no longer necessary.

Inventories could shrink. The defense industry could consolidate. And if a major war ever erupted, American industrial might could simply spring back to life.

“Turns out the switch is a little rusty,” says Buck.

Ukraine provided the first major wake-up call.

“The war with Iran has put even more pressure on American inventories. And drones have completely changed the economics of the battlefield.

“Modern warfare burns through artillery shells, missiles and air-defense interceptors at an astonishing pace.” Replacing them isn’t simply a matter of writing a bigger check.

America needs factories, skilled workers and supply chains capable of producing everything from rocket motors to guidance systems.

Much of that capacity vanished after the Cold War, when Washington assumed large-scale warfare was a thing of the past.

“Now we’re finding out what it costs to get it back,” Buck says.

At exactly the moment the DSA — and a growing socialist left — are asking why America should spend so much on defense, the rest of the world keeps supplying new reasons to do exactly that.

Market Rundown for Friday, September 4, 2026

S&P 500 futures are slightly in the green at 7,755.

Oil is down 1% to $90.35 for a barrel of WTI.

Gold is down 0.50% to $4,515.90 per ounce.

And Bitcoin’s down 2.30%, just under $80K.