Meanwhile, Musk is reportedly managing his own diplomatic back channels with Vladimir Putin and openly considering the possibility of being arrested or assassinated for his devotion to Trump. In the final stages of the campaign, Trump is beginning to acknowledge that his victory will likely cause an economic crisis and that he deserves a chance to rebuild the country.
But this is not just the story of one MAGA billionaire, however megalomaniacal. In addition to supporting the former president, Bill Ackman, Stephen Schwartzman, and Marc Andreessen frequently speak in Manichean terms about the dangers of the election and the cultural conflict it represents. Last year, Mr. Andreessen said, “Our current society is focused on existential risk,” “sustainability,” “ESG,” “Sustainable Development Goals,” “social responsibility,” “stakeholder capitalism,” and the “precautionary principle.” ” and “risk management.” The entire cultural status quo that he and his technology company had formed seemed to him to be reaching its end. “Our enemy is anti-achievement, anti-ambition, anti-effort, anti-achievement, anti-greatness,” he wrote.
But as Susan Glasser writes for The New Yorker and Jonathan Marler, Ryan Mack and Theodore Shleifer write for The New York Times, all of Trump’s new billionaire supporters are spot on. I’m not that keen on being exposed to light. The single biggest donor to the Trump campaign is Timothy Mellon, a reclusive banking heir who in his autobiography calls America’s social safety net a “reduction of slavery.” . He has donated at least $125 million to PACs supporting Trump, thousands of times more than he donated in 2016.
But the rise of MAGA billionaires is not the only story of money and politics during the Trump administration, as there is still plenty of wealth on the Democratic side. In recent weeks, Bill Gates broke with his long-standing fairness policy by donating $50 million to support Kamala Harris, and Goldman Sachs CEO Jamie Dimon also joined as a supporter. It became. But each made private donations, likely out of fear of retaliation if Trump were re-elected. -Elected. Mark Cuban became less nervous and appeared almost ubiquitously on cable news as Harris’s representative. Longtime conservative boogeymen George and Alexander Soros continue to support Democratic candidates and causes. And Michael Bloomberg (the only Harris supporter on the top 10 list) gave about $50 million.
Overall, this suggests that rather than a uniform shift to the right, a kind of two-level polarization is occurring among the country’s wealthiest people. In fact, Forbes recently calculated that more billionaires are supporting Harris than Trump this term, and as a new study by Columbia Law School’s Riley Steele suggests, corporate executives are It has moved significantly to the left over the past 20 years and enjoys far greater support overall. Although the nation’s leadership is more progressive, there is also a noticeable backlash, perhaps most prominent in Silicon Valley.
