Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and New York City mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani (D) took direct aim at Elon Musk on Saturday, declaring at a packed Brooklyn College rally that they would not allow the Tesla CEO to become the world’s first trillionaire.

“It’s important that we feel the outrage of children going hungry, people being homeless, 85 million without healthcare — and you got one guy, one guy, Mr. Musk, whose wealth is more than the bottom 52% of American households,” Sanders thundered. “Millions are struggling to put food on the table, and making one guy a trillionaire is insane. We are not going to allow that to happen.”

The comments came during Sanders’s fiery speech at the “Fighting Oligarchy” town hall alongside Mamdani, whose insurgent campaign has rallied progressive voters against corporate power and political elites.

Sanders was responding to reports that Tesla’s board has floated a mammoth new compensation package for Musk — potentially worth between $800 billion and $900 billion — that could catapult his net worth beyond $1 trillion.

Despite Tesla’s volatile performance on Wall Street, Musk remains the richest man alive, with an estimated fortune of $342 billion, according to Forbes.

Sanders, 83, framed Musk’s pay proposal as the latest symptom of a system rigged for the ultra-wealthy. “We are living in a crazy world,” he said, contrasting Musk’s wealth against working-class Americans crushed by inflation, soaring rents, and stagnant wages. “The richest one percent have never had it so good, while ordinary people are facing unprecedented financial pain.”

Though Sanders offered no details on how he and Mamdani would block Musk’s windfall, the rhetoric underscored a central theme of Mamdani’s mayoral bid: that unchecked wealth and corporate power must be dismantled in order to deliver justice for working-class New Yorkers.

Mamdani has already made headlines for proposing to open five government-run grocery stores if elected — a plan he defended in a CNN interview Friday night, despite skepticism over cost and implementation.

At Saturday’s rally, Sanders endorsed Mamdani as part of the progressive movement’s “future of the Democratic Party,” tying the fight against corporate greed directly to the local battle for New York’s City Hall.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)