Business Expert Warns US Now A 'Kleptocracy' After Meta Abandons Fact Checkers: 'We Are Becoming More Like Russia Every Day'

An NYU business professor claims President-elect Donald Trump of leveraging his power to shape the U.S. government in a manner resembling Russia's kleptocracy.

Scott Galloway of New York University's Stern School of Business made his stunning accusation on a segment of MSNBC's Morning Joe on Wednesday.

"We are becoming more like Russia every day, that's where we are," Galloway said.

He made the accusation in light of Mark Zuckerberg's 180-degree turn to abandoning fact-checking on Meta's Facebook social media platform.

A kleptocracy occurs when a government with corrupt leaders use political power to usurp the wealth of the people and land that they govern through embezzlement or misappropriation of government money.

As Galloway sees it, Trump influenced Zuckerberg to change Facebook's moderation guidelines for financial gain.

"With this decision, the CEO of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg gets kind of a two-fer," Galloway said. "He gets to placate, at least temporarily, the president who threatened to put him in jail the rest of his life, and he gets to save maybe upwards of $5 billion, which is how much they spend on their [Facebook's] safety and security department –– and a price-earnings ratio of 30, that's potentially $150 billion increase in market capitalization."

"Mark Zuckerberg owns 15 percent of the company, so you have what is effectively a get-out-of jail-card potentially from someone who appears to be an oligarch threatening to put people in jail and add $15 to $20 billion to his net worth," he added.

This move, Galloway said, is kleptocratic behavior, supposedly stemming from Trump's close relationship with Russia's Vladimir Putin.

"This is –– Russia is the role model. We are becoming more like Russia every day, that's where we are," Galloway said.

Galloway also said Trump is being influenced by other billionaire friends like Elon Musk, and it should raise a red flag to Americans.

"The greatest trade of 2024 –– it wasn't Bitcoin, it wasn't Nvidia -- it was Elon Musk investing a quarter of a billion dollars directly into the Trump campaign," he said. "And when Trump won, since the election, Elon Musk's worth has gone up $140 billion. So that's effectively, I believe, about a 56,000 percent return on investment."

Galloway doubled down on his kleptocracy statement.

"So we've gone full kleptocracy," stated. 'We can never, in my opinion, wave our finger at Russia again when the president, the elected president is taking public trust and public authority and weaponizing government."