Why billionaires donate megabucks

At a Mar-A-Lago dinner in April with a well-heeled group that included oil executives, GOP candidate Donald Trump urged them to donate $1 billion in support of his candidacy. In exchange, Trump — who was then lagging behind Joe Biden and the Democrats in fund raising — promised to roll back environmental regulations imposed by the Biden administration, approve more offshore drilling, and suspend Biden’s moratorium on permits for new liquefied natural gas exports.

Earlier this month, at the powerful Business Roundtable lobby group’s annual meeting in Washington attended by some of the country’s wealthiest CEOs, including JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon and Apple’s Tim Cook, Trump proposed to cut corporate tax rates and said that if he lost the election in November, taxes would go up for them under Biden who, he said, had vowed to let Trump-era cuts on the wealthy and corporations expire by end 2025.

“Tax cuts will all expire for the wealthy and the poor and the middle-income and everything else,” he said, according to a Washington Post report, “but they expire in another seven months and he (Biden) is not going to renew them, which means taxes are going to go up by four times.”

“You’re going to have the biggest tax increase in history,” said Trump, exaggerating the size of his cuts, according to news reports.

Generally, with rare exceptions, the rich want to stay so, and they’d support any measure — or individual — that promises to maintain or enhance their wealth. This, in simple straightforward fashion, explains why a handful of billionaires, including some of those who had denounced Trump for his attempts to overturn the 2020 election result and the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol by his MAGA supporters, have plunked down huge amounts of money into his campaign coffers.

Who are some of these money bags who have donated money even after Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts in New York last May?

Well, there’s Blackstone chairman Stephen Schwarzman (estimated worth: $37.7 billion), for one, who cited economic migration and foreign policy concerns in explaining why he’s backing the GOP candidate.

There’s also Continental Resources founder Harold Hamm (estimated worth: $18.1 billion), Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus ($9.6 billion), Energy Transfer Pipeline founder Keley Warren ($6 billion), former Marvel chairman and CEO Isaac Perlmutter ($4.3 billion); TD Armitrade chairman J. Joe Ricketts ($4 billion), hedge fund billionaire John Paulson ($3.5 billion), real estate magnate Geoffrey Palmer ($3.1 billion), World Wrestling Entertainment co-founder Linda McMahon ($2.9 billion); Trump’s Trump International Las Vegas hotel co-owner Phil Ruffin ($2.6 billion), and Texas oilman Timothy Dunn ($2.2 billion).

And then, of course, there’s Elon Musk, reputedly the richest man on the planet (estimated worth: $210.4 billion), who said he will but hasn’t yet donated cash, and the reclusive blue-chip old rich billionaire Timothy Mellon ($14.1 billion), whose family founded Aluminium Company of America (Alcoa), Gulf Oil, and Mellon Bank, now Bank of New York, who, at $50 million, is so far the single biggest donor to Trump’s campaign kitty.

All donating megabucks, not so much to make America great again, as to keep themselves rich, and richer still.

With the funds fueling his campaign now exceeding Biden’s longstanding cash advantage — $116.6 million at the end of May compared to Biden’s $91.6 million — expect a pumped-up Trump to show up at the first debate for the November presidential polls.

Still and all, campaign finance expert, Professor Justin Buchler of Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, points out that despite all the fundraising, “money won’t be the determinative factor in this election. The primary role of money in a campaign is to increase name recognition. Well, everybody by now knows who Donald Trump and Joe Biden are.”

And, as Trump himself declared as he left the New York City courtroom on 30 May, “The real verdict is going to be on 5 November, by the people.” Indeed.