The billionaires who abandoned Trump return to support him despite his criminal cases

Donald Trump has turned his problems with justice into a cash register. Barely a few minutes had passed since the popular jury found him guilty of the 34 crimes of which he was accused in a New York court, when his campaign’s online donation platform collapsed. The avalanche of money overwhelmed the system. In 24 hours, the campaign received 53 million dollars (49 million euros). Along with contributions from individuals, the former president has been recovering other support: that of the big billionaires who turned their backs on him after the assault on the Capitol and who have now returned to support him despite his criminal proceedings.

As soon as he left the courthouse on Thursday, and after a brief two-minute intervention, Trump headed to a fundraising event on the Upper East Side, the most noble area of ​​Manhattan. Among those attending was the co-founder and CEO of the Blackstone group, Steve Schwarzman, one of the most important figures on Wall Street, with an estimated fortune of $41 billion. Schwarzman is one of the businessmen who distanced himself from Trump after the assault on the Capitol on January 6, recognized Biden’s victory and called for a peaceful transfer of power, but now he criticizes Biden’s economic, immigration and foreign policy. “I plan to vote for change and support Donald Trump as president,” he said in a recent statement.

Many billionaires care more about Trump’s promise to lower taxes on the rich and big businesses than about the former president’s honesty and democratic commitment. Others, like Schwarzman himself, are Jewish donors who finance Trump because they perceive in him a stronger support for Israel and the Government of Benjamin Netanyahu. Some subscribe to Trump’s thesis that he is the victim of political persecution to justify supporting a convicted criminal.

“This verdict will have less than zero impact on my support,” Omeed Malik, president of 1789 Capital, a Republican donor and host of another fundraiser for Trump that the former president attended two weeks ago at the exclusive Pierre hotel, Malik considers that the trial has been an “instrumentalization of the legal system.” At the event at the Pierre Hotel, located on Fifth Avenue, across from Central Park, on the same sidewalk as Trump Tower, a few blocks north, the assembled Wall Street billionaires handed down their own verdict, according to the agency: even If the jury found the former president guilty, he would continue to be their candidate for the White House.

“The democratic commitment of Americans is not as deep as we believe. The proof is the businessmen, who know very well what is happening, they are not ignorant. People who on January 7, 2021 said that they would never finance or support someone like Trump, today they are giving him money, positioning themselves in case Trump wins. Their commitment to democracy is very superficial,” Steven Levitsky, professor of Political Science at Harvard and author of How democracies die.

The second richest man in the world, Elon Musk, with a fortune valued at more than $200 billion, also came out in defense of the former president after hearing the jury’s verdict: “Today great damage has been done to the public’s faith in the American legal system. If a former president can be criminally convicted for such a trivial matter — motivated by politics and not justice — then anyone risks the same fate.” The latter is a phrase almost identical to the one Trump uttered when opening his appearance this Friday at Trump Tower. Both magnates have also gone from distancing themselves to having fluid communication and Trump is even considering assigning her a position in his cabinet.

Billionaire Nelson Peltz, founding partner of Trian Partners, said after the assault on the Capitol: “I voted for Trump in November. Today, I’m sorry I did it.” After those public apologies and despite the fact that Trump’s authoritarian drift has gone further and that he calls those convicted of the assault on the Capitol “hostages”, Peltz announced last March his support for the former president and that he will vote for him again.

The founder and CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management, Bill Ackman, retweeted several pro-Trump messages after the verdict was announced. In particular, He agreed with a long message from Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, which began: “Today’s verdict represents the culmination of a legal process that has bowed to the political will of the actors involved: a left-wing prosecutor, a partisan judge and a jury reflective of one of the most liberal enclaves in the United States. , all in an effort to ‘catch’ Donald Trump.”

The Jewish businessman, who was very active in the controversy over the pro-Palestinian protests on campuses and contributed to the fall of the Harvard president, supported Nikki Haley in the primaries, but is preparing to openly express his support for Trump, as published by Financial Times.

Israeli-born Miriam Adelson, widow of casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, a top Republican donor, plans to play a major role in funding Preserve America, a Trump-supporting political action committee founded during the re-election campaign. of the former president in 2020, as he advanced Political. The group is now being reconstituted with the purpose of helping Trump’s candidacy for the November presidential elections and the idea is to surpass the 90 million that the Adelsons contributed in the elections four years ago and that made them the main donors of their Campaign. Adelson preferred to stay out of the Republican primary battle.

Tech investors David Sacks and Chamath Palihapitiya host a Silicon Valley fundraiser for Trump on June 6. As soon as the verdict was known, Sacks tweeted: “Now there is only one question in this election: whether the American people will tolerate America becoming a Banana Republic.”

Although Trump has abundant contributions from the party’s bases, it has been the growing support of billionaires that allowed his campaign to raise some 76 million dollars in April, the first month in which it surpassed Biden’s, which achieved 51 million. Trump raised more than $50 million at a single event with billionaires earlier that month.

In another recent event organized by his super PAC (a parallel political action committee) at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s mansion in Palm Beach (Florida), the former president asked oil company executives to contribute $1 billion to his campaign. Following reports that Trump had asked for that sum of money in exchange for rolling back environmental regulations, speeding up permit and lease approvals, and preserving or improving the tax benefits the oil and gas industry enjoys if it returns the White House, several Democratic senators have opened an investigation. They have sent letters with info
rmation requests to the directors of companies such as ExxonMobil, Chevron, Occidental and Cheniere, among others. “Such an obvious policy-for-money transaction reeks of cronyism and corruption,” the letters say.

Trump has lost any kind of qualms when it comes to asking for money. According to The Washington Post, at that meeting last month at the Pierre Hotel, Trump told the group of billionaires present that a businessman had recently offered a million dollars to his presidential campaign and wanted to have lunch with him. “I’m not going to lunch,” Trump said he responded. “You have to make it $25 million.”

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