Giving $814,600 Gets A Seat At Trump's Table At A Fundraiser For The Mega-Rich
Trump, a notorious tightwad who is always happy to take financial support from any source, has run up at least $100 million in legal fees so far. Stealing money from contributions meant to put him back into the Oval Office, his campaign is now seriously short of funds. He expects the billionaires whose taxes he's cut-- and says he will cut even more-- to step up to the plate. And they are, and in a big way.
But not for long. The billionaire class to the rescue! Yesterday, a quartet of Washington Post reporters noted that even billionaires upset about the attempted coup and who supported other Republicans in the primary, are back in Trump world… with their checkbooks. They wrote that right-wing billionaires Nelson Peltz, Steve Wynn, Isaac Perlmutter and Elon Musk had breakfast with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. (Previously, Musk had lied about the breakfast, claiming that Trump just dropped by the house he was staying in.) “As hopes of a Republican alternative have crumbled,” they wrote, “elite donors who once balked at Trump’s fueling of the Capitol insurrection, worried about his legal problems and decried what they saw as his chaotic presidency are rediscovering their affinity for the former president— even as he praises and vows to free Jan. 6 defendants, promises mass deportations and faces 88 felony charges.
The shift reflects many conservative billionaires’ fears of President Biden’s tax agenda, which if approved would drastically reduce their fortunes. In some cases, it also points to their discomfort with the Biden administration’s foreign and domestic policy decisions. Some of these billionaires have been assiduously courted by Trump and his advisers in recent months.
“If it starts to look like Trump may win, despite his legal troubles, it is inevitable that Republican business people who have not been fans will open their wallets in self-defense,” said Kathryn Wylde, CEO of the Partnership for New York City, the top lobbying group for major corporations in New York.
Democrats argue that these billionaires are making their personal fortunes their top priority. Biden has promised to raise many taxes on the rich, including the capital gains rate paid on investment income and a new 25 percent tax specifically on billionaires. These efforts were stymied in his first administration, but the president would try again.
“The billionaire class is really threatened by Biden: These guys are about creating a dynasty of wealth for themselves, and hoarding it for their posterity, at the expense of everyone else in society,” said Steve Rosenthal, senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank. “That’s the striking story at the moment.”
Some of these donors are not enthusiastic supporters of Trump— they wanted other candidates and still express misgivings about Trump and his ability to win a general election. “This isn’t a passionate embrace. It’s just reality,” one person close to major donors said. “No one is particularly excited about it.”
…Trump could desperately use the cash infusion as his campaign and the RNC trail Biden and the Democratic National Committee, and as he faces growing legal bills. Next month, he is planning a fundraiser hosted by a range of billionaires, including oil tycoon Harold Hamm, sugar magnate Jose “Pepe” Fanjul, real estate mogul Howard Lutnick, megadonors Rebekah and Bob Mercer, wealthy business executives Todd Ricketts and Warren Stephens and real estate magnate Steve Witkoff.
The price of admission is $250,000, but many donors are giving the maximum contribution of $814,600— which will be split between Trump’s campaign and other entities, including the Republican National Committee and a leadership PAC that pays many of his legal bills. It is being hosted by John Paulson, a billionaire investor backing Trump. Giving $814,600 gets a seat at Trump’s table.
A Trump adviser said the event is expected to raise about $33 million. Trump advisers said that while they do not expect to have as much money as Biden’s campaign and the DNC, they believe they can close the gap.
…Wynn [a criminal and serial rapist like Trump] has helped orchestrate some of the conversations. He and Trump talk regularly. But Trump in recent months has complained that Wynn has not given him a dollar even though they have been friends for years, according to people familiar with the remarks. Now, Wynn is headlining the fundraiser as well.
Oracle’s Larry Ellison— a billionaire who backed Sen. Tim Scott R-SC) and former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley in the GOP primaries— is in discussions about writing a large check in support of Trump, people familiar with the matter said. Trump and his aides have courted Ellison in recent weeks. [Neo-Nazis] Richard Uihlein and Elizabeth Uihlein, conservative billionaires and heirs to the Schlitz brewing fortune, told the Financial Times that they will donate to Trump as well.
…There are some holdouts. Citadel CEO and billionaire Ken Griffin remains resistant to giving money to Trump and has told others he does not have plans to fall in line with Trump, according to people who have spoken to him. Billionaire investor Peter Thiel, at one time Trump’s biggest backer in Silicon Valley, still plans to stay out of politics this cycle and has rebuffed efforts from Trump’s team to garner support, said a person familiar with his thinking, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe his views.
In Silicon Valley, some members of an influential cohort of right-leaning tech investors and leaders who were alienated by Trump’s election-fraud crusade and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack appear to be coming around to him. Many have been put off by Biden’s campaigns against the wealthy, as well as his administration’s criticisms of the tech industry in particular, as well as its efforts to regulate the artificial intelligence boom.
David Sacks, a prominent tech investor, former chief operating officer of PayPal and host of the popular All-In podcast, spent the bulk of last year giving support to candidates running against Trump. He partnered with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) to launch his presidential campaign on Twitter last spring and later threw fundraisers for candidates Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Vivek Ramaswamy in the fall. Privately, he told associates that he was not a believer in Trump’s election fraud crusade and was searching for a more disciplined candidate.
But recently, Sacks has begun to noticeably praise Trump to his more than 800,000 followers on Twitter. In one recent post, he referred to Trump as an “indispensable figure,” praising him for the “massive crowds he draws” and for going “over the heads of the media.” In another, Sacks wrote, “Keep ridiculing [Trump] if you want, I’m going to cut him some slack.”
Joe Lonsdale, co-founder of data-mining firm Palantir and an associate of Sacks, Thiel and other billionaires on the right, was never a vocal Trump supporter. He backed DeSantis and threw a fundraiser for Ramaswamy. This week, Lonsdale told the Washington Post that he planned to vote for Trump because he preferred Trump’s policies to Biden’s. But he said he would not be a heavy donor to any candidate this cycle and that he would stay focused on advocating for policy changes at the state level.
Other business elites once alarmed by Trump’s illiberal tendencies have softened their criticisms. Gary Cohn— a top economic aide in Trump’s White House who quit in 2018 over issues including tariffs and the president’s response to the deadly white nationalist march in Charlottesville— recently sounded positive notes about the former president. A former Goldman Sachs executive who is now vice chair of IBM, Cohn told CBS News regarding the 2024 election: “I think the business community at this point is still open-minded. The business community wants to hear the policies.”
Some of the billionaires who have flipped were particularly outspoken in their criticism of Trump three years ago, at the height of public outcry over the Capitol riot. After Jan. 6, billionaire developer Robert Bigelow said Trump had “lost me as a supporter… He showed that, in that particular hour, he was no commander.” Bigelow has pledged $20 million to a pro-Trump campaign group and has given $1 million to cover the president’s legal costs.
…The arrival of the big-money cavalry comes at an auspicious time for Trump. He is on the hook for $175 million bond in a New York civil fraud case, and the campaign has so far lagged Democrats in raising money.
The calculus on whether to support Trump is not always straightforward. One Trump fundraiser, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations, said many GOP billionaire donors can face blowback from their family members for supporting the former president, along with employees and clients. This fundraiser also pointed out that it’s not clear to what extent GOP billionaires who backed other candidates in the primaries will have Trump’s ear if he is reelected, depending on the size of the check they cut.
But the financial upside of going with the former president may win out.
Trump has also discussed further cutting the corporate tax rate, and he toyed in his administration with unilaterally lowering the capital gains rate paid by investors.
“The Biden tax increase is really viewed with hostility by the people on Wall Street I talk to, even some of the more moderate Republicans on Wall Street who have typically not been conservative in their orientation,” said Stephen Moore, an outside economic adviser to Trump. “The higher rate on capital gains, the higher corporate rate— all that stuff is anathema to these people.”
These people who are financing Trump— especially those who aren’t outright Nazis like the Uihleins and Mercers— would do well to pay attention to what U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton said on CNN yesterday: “It’s very disconcerting to have someone making comments about a judge, and it’s particularly problematic when those comments are in the form of a threat, especially if they’re directed at one’s family,” said Walton, who has also faced threats, as has his daughter. “We do these jobs because we’re committed to the rule of law and we believe in the rule of law, and the rule of law can only function effectively when we have judges who are prepared to carry out their duties without the threat of potential physical harm. I think it’s important in order to preserve our democracy that we maintain the rule of law. And the rule of law can only be maintained if we have independent judicial officers who are able to do their job and ensure that the laws are, in fact, enforced and that the laws are applied equally to everybody who appears in our courthouse. I think it’s important that, as judges, we speak out and say things in reference to things that conceivably are going to impact on the process, because if we don’t have a viable court system that’s able to function efficiently, then we have tyranny. And I don’t think that would be good for the future of our country, and the future of democracy in our country… it is very troubling because I think it is an attack on the rule of law when judges are threatened and particularly when their family is threatened and it’s something that’s wrong and should not happen.”
And Walton, originally appointed to the bench by Reagan, wasn’t the only federal judge warning about Trump. Spencer Hsu reported that “several federal judges in Washington appointed by Republican presidents have spoken with increasing urgency about Trump’s disregard for historical facts and alarmed at his increasingly graphic and at times violent description of defendants prosecuted in the Jan. 6 riot as ‘political prisoners’ and ‘hostages’ who did nothing wrong.” U.S. District Judges Royce Lamberth and Thomas Hogan were also Reagan appointees. At a sentencing in January, Lamberth said, “In my 37 years on the bench, I cannot recall a time when such meritless justifications of criminal activity have gone mainstream. I have been dismayed to see distortions and outright falsehoods seep into the public consciousness. Hogan told a group of Georgetown Law School students in January that false claims that riot defendants were acting like tourists or patriots were destructive rewriting of reality. “There’s a danger that is embedded now in our communities across the country. And we have to wonder where this is going to end up if that’s part of our history, this fraudulent story [by Trump that the 2020 election was stolen].”
Several of the 23 D.C. federal judges who have sentenced Jan. 6 defendants have noted Trump’s role in events, including judges appointed by presidents of both parties. But the recent statements by appointees of Trump’s GOP predecessors is notable in breaking with partisan affiliation. After one Jan. 6 trial last year, Walton called Trump a “charlatan” who led followers into believing unfounded allegations and falsehoods, and who “doesn’t in my view really care about democracy but only about power. And as a result of that, it’s tearing this country apart.”
All three judges have warned of a significant increase in the number of threats they and other judges have faced since the Capitol attack, which Walton called “very, very very concerning.”
…“The rioters interfered with a necessary step in the constitutional process, disrupted the lawful transfer of power and thus jeopardized the American constitutional order. Although the rioters failed in their ultimate goal, their actions nonetheless resulted in the deaths of multiple people, injury to over 140 members of law enforcement and lasting trauma for our entire nation,” Lamberth said in January. “This was not patriotism; it was the antithesis of patriotism.”
