In his last address, Joe Biden offered a Parthian shot at “oligarchs” and the dangers these “billionaires” pose to the republic. At the same time, left-wing senators hammered Trump cabinet nominees on the grounds that they would be too complacent in the face of a supposed takeover of the country by Trump’s “billionaires” and their “oligarchy.”

Many things could be said about Biden’s farewell address, but I will limit them to three.

First, Biden was attempting to copycat the warnings of outgoing president and iconic war hero Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Some 64 years earlier—on January 17, 1961, the near day of Biden’s “farewell address,” a departing Eisenhower warned of a new “military-industrial complex” threat to the republic that had grown out of World War II and was cresting during the ongoing Cold War of the 1950s.