By Sharon Zhang
This article was originally published by Truthout
A recent study found that the top 0.1 percent have gained 8,000 times more wealth than the average household since 2024.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino is being excoriated for being out of touch after posting a video of himself in a tuxedo partying and spraying a bottle of champagne — amid an affordability crisis that the Trump administration has worsened in its moves to transfer wealth from the working class to the rich.
The AI-generated video, posted on Scavino’s X and Instagram accounts on Saturday, shows Scavino riding on a gilded luggage cart pushed by Eric Trump, seemingly in the aftermath of a party in the White House. His wife and Eric Trump’s wife are sitting next to Scavino in black tie attire.
In the short clip, Scavino is yelling and cheering as he shakes up a bottle of champagne that he jubilantly sprays around. At the end, President Donald Trump briefly appears to greet them. Pitbull’s “Don’t Stop the Party” plays over the video, and Scavino appears to mouth, “best party ever.”
The video appears to be based off of the Scavinos’s attendance at the White House’s glitzy dinner hosted on Thursday to honor Chinese President Xi Jinping. Billionaires and other rich and powerful figures like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos showed up in droves to the party, wearing tuxedos and feasting on a three-course meal served on fine china from the Ronald Reagan era.
“This is not an intended[sic] for the Dems heads to explode — Being some of the post State Dinner party has gotten out, I felt inclined to share mine as well, in complete transparency, with the American People. GOD BLESS THE USA!!!” Scavino wrote in a caption on Instagram.
Scavino and his wife, Erin, were married at Mar-a-Lago in February at an event that similarly attracted tech billionaires and Washington power brokers.
Scavino’s post was lambasted as extremely out of touch, with many commentators noting historic parallels to the luxurious lifestyles and boisterous attitudes of the French aristocracy that ultimately led the French peasantry to revolt in 1789.
Scavino’s boasts about his lavish partying comes as Donald Trump bragged in comments to reporters over the weekend that the U.S. has the “best poverty numbers.” Trump seems to be referring to a recent Census Bureau report finding that the official poverty rate fell to 10.2 percent in 2025. But that same report also found that the supplemental poverty measure, which is more comprehensive, with considerations like cost of living, has not changed since 2024.
In reality, American families are facing an affordability crisis that is being rapidly worsened by the Trump administration’s policies.
Gas prices have soared to record highs amid the U.S.’s war on Iran, causing other costs like groceries to rise. Millions have been kicked off of government benefits like health care and food assistance due to the Republican One Big Beautiful Bill, which is slated to sap $1,600 from the poorest households per year, while granting the richest households $12,000 annually.
And the administration has implemented numerous other policies to lend corporations and the wealthy a helping hand while fleecing the public — like the $160 billion in tariff refunds that have largely gone toward corporations and not the consumers that paid the fees.
In all, a recent report by the Center for American Progress found, the top 0.1 percent of richest U.S. households have gained 8,000 times more wealth on average than households in the bottom 50 percent since 2024. That amounts to an extra $9.65 million per household for the top 0.1 percent. Federal Reserve data now shows that the wealth gap is at its largest point ever, with the top 1 percent owning nearly 32 percent of all U.S. wealth as of the third quarter of 2025.
This has led to new lows in Americans’ attitudes toward the economy. According to the latest report by the University of Michigan, the consumer index is at its second-lowest level in history, meaning that Americans feel worse about the economy now than they did during the 1970s oil crisis, the Great Recession, and the COVID-19 pandemic.
The public is also increasingly blaming Donald Trump and the GOP for these issues. A Reuters/Ipsos poll last week found that the president’s approval rating has hit a record low of 32 percent, with the cost of living and the economy ranking as his worst issues; even a majority of Republican poll respondents now say that they disapprove of the administration’s handling of cost of living.
This article was originally published by Truthout and is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). Please maintain all links and credits in accordance with our republishing guidelines.