Trump’s campaign team says he raised more than $53 million in the 24 hours after Thursday
Washington:
In an electoral system where money is the kingmaker, Donald Trump has been courting the country’s billionaires – and they have their checkbooks ready.
The 77-year-old presumptive Republican presidential candidate’s ability to raise money from ordinary Americans is undisputed, and his historic criminal conviction in New York has not hampered the operation in any way.
Trump’s campaign team says he raised more than $53 million in the 24 hours after Thursday’s verdict, which found him guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in a conspiracy to illegally influence the 2016 election .
But for big donors, the light has dimmed some of Trump’s powerful aura following the chaos that surrounded his 2020 election defeat to Joe Biden.
On January 7, 2021, the day after Trump supporters ransacked the U.S. Capitol, billionaire businessman and investor Nelson Peltz said he regretted supporting the real estate mogul turned world leader.
“What happened yesterday is a shame. As an American, I am embarrassed,” the CEO of Trian Partners told CNBC.
But just over a year later, last March, Peltz welcomed Trump to his Florida home for breakfast with other high rollers, including Tesla, SpaceX and X chief Elon Musk, reported the The Washington Post.
And in an interview with the Financial Times, Peltz said he would “probably” vote for Trump again in November, although he admitted: “I’m not happy about it.”
Why? Peltz, 81, cited an explosion in the number of migrants entering the United States illegally and the “really scary” mental health of Biden, who is also 81.
Steve Schwarzman, the billionaire chairman and co-founder of the Blackstone Group, one of the world’s most important investment firms, similarly criticized the events of January 6, condemning the “mob’s attempt to undermine our Constitution.”
But on May 24, the powerful Wall Street actor also publicly supported Trump, also naming the US-Mexico border crisis as a key concern.
And Miriam Adelson, widow of casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson and a big supporter of Israel, is planning to invest tens of millions of dollars in a massive political action committee for Trump, according to Politico.
During his first term, Trump awarded Miriam Adelson the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
– Taxes –
With U.S. stock markets routinely reaching historic highs and the world’s largest economy growing despite persistent inflation, why would business moguls support a convicted felon considered a source of national instability?
Economist Paul Krugman believes these heavyweights are making their political choices based on personal interests rather than the health of the nation.
“A simple answer is that the rich will almost certainly pay lower taxes — and businesses will be less regulated — if Trump wins than if Biden stays in office,” Nobel Prize winner Krugman wrote in April in The New York Times .
Biden has made no secret of the idea that, if he is re-elected and his Democrats obtain an absolute majority in both houses of Congress, he would impose a new tax on the super-rich.
In 2022, it attempted to establish a minimum income tax for billionaires – 20% for those whose household income exceeds $100 million, or just 0.01% of the population. But his account failed.
Since succeeding Trump in the Oval Office in 2021, Biden has regularly emphasized the need for more regulation in the world of finance – which could explain why some mega-wealthy businesspeople have not offered him their support.
‘Drill, darling, drill’
The Biden administration’s efforts to combat climate change have also made it less popular among Big Oil.
“Trump’s ‘drill, drill, drill’ philosophy aligns much better with the oil patch than Biden’s green energy approach. It’s obvious,” Dan Eberhart, chief executive of oilfield services company Canary, recently told The Washington Post. .
Biden’s campaign team regularly attacks his Republican rival’s ties to the super-rich, suggesting compensation is expected.
“Trump’s billionaire friends are supporting a white-collar crook’s campaign because they know the deal – they gave him checks and he cut his taxes while working and middle class people foot the bill,” said the campaign spokesperson, Ammar Moussa.
Of course, Biden isn’t exactly left out of the billion-dollar campaign donation lottery.
Vinod Khosla, co-founder of Sun Microsystems and major venture capitalist, recently hosted a fundraising reception for Biden at his California home.
In the end, Wall Street and Big Oil are mostly in the Trump camp, while Silicon Valley tends to support Biden.
On November 5th, voters – perhaps influenced by ads paid for with millions of dollars of billionaire money – will have the final say.
(Except the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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