Politics

Meet the billionaires cowering to Trump

Published

1 year ago

November 11, 2024

Moral fortitude has never been a prominent character trait of the obscenely wealthy. Even so, as the White House remains up for grabs, it has been discouraging to see multiple billionaires and CEOs hedging their bets to avoid being found on a future President Donald Trump’s bad side.

In one light, trying to stay in the good graces of a president is business as usual for the corporate elite. They like to spread out donations between parties, ensuring favor from whoever comes out on top. But banking on a second Trump administration to deliver similar results this time around could prove a bad bet by America’s 1%, one that could leave them bankrupt not just morally but financially, as well.

The obsequious fanboy behavior by Tesla and SpaceX owner Elon Musk is in a category of its own among the billionaire class. But others among his financial stratum have been speaking volumes through their silence. Midwest magnate Warren Buffet and JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, for example, are refusing to endorse either candidate publicly. Even if Trump weren’t a threat to American democracy, you’d think the threat he poses to the health of the U.S. economy would be enough for them to take sides.

The spinelessness on display is even more obvious when it comes to those billionaires who own major media outlets. Los Angeles Times publisher Patrick Soon-Shiong caused an uproar last week when he nixed his paper’s endorsement. It paled in comparison, though, to the outrage directed at Amazon owner Jeff Bezos, whose decision to spike The Washington Post’s endorsement of Harris has caused a mass exodus of the newspaper’s subscribers.

Their decisions are especially telling because of the business their companies has with the federal government.

Their decisions are especially telling because of the business their companies has with the federal government. Soon-Shiong has reason to stay on the good side of regulators with the Food and Drug Administration even if Trump mass fires civil servants to be replaced with cronies. Amazon’s cloud computing contracts with the Defense Department and the National Security Agency alone are worth around $20 billion. Trump also reportedly met with executives from Blue Origin, Bezos’ rocketry company and a rival to Musk’s SpaceX, the same day the Post announced it wouldn’t make a presidential endorsement.

Bezos wrote in an opinion piece published on Monday that he didn’t know about the meeting before it took place. But regardless of the timing, the Blue Origin meeting is an example of big business titans — especially those in Silicon Valley — attempting to ingratiate themselves with Trump in case he wins. There was plenty of discussion about the danger another Trump presidency would present at a recent meeting of the Business Council, a high-level gathering of CEOs.

Two Trump campaign advisers, who went unnamed, recently told the Post that “numerous executives” had been reaching out. One of those advisers hinted at retribution for perceived disloyalty from business leaders, all but warning that their time is running short to appease Trump:

“I’ve told CEOs to engage as fast as possible because the clock is ticking. … If you’re somebody who has endorsed Harris, and we’ve never heard from you at any point until after the election, you’ve got an uphill battle,” the Trump adviser said. “People are back-channeling, looking at their networks — they’re talking to lobbyists to see what they can do to connect with the president and his team.”

Trump has been outlandishly transparent in his promises to various business sectors about how well he’ll treat them once in office. The “quo” in this quid pro quo would be donations to his campaign, in the form of either massive outpourings of cash (as in the case of the crypto cabal) or in-kind contributions such as mailers to voters declaring Trump’s newfound love of the vaping industry.

With Trump, there is no such thing as an ironclad deal that doesn’t benefit him personally.

In one sense, this could be seen as a return to form for America. For much of the 19th century this was how politics worked. The patronage system greased the wheels for robber barons to accumulate fortunes on the backs of poor laborers. A wave of anti-corruption laws were passed in the 20th century, but lax campaign finance regulations have made it easy for tycoons to place their chips on whoever might win regardless of party. And Trump speaks to their long-standing interests in deregulation and massive tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. But these billionaires might be putting too much faith in the continuation of the rule of law.

With Trump, there is no such thing as an ironclad deal that doesn’t benefit him personally. His appetite for retribution is well-established, and any slight or perceived disloyalty is enough to curry his disfavor. Instead, the system that Trump would preside over would likely more closely resemble how Russian President Vladimir Putin has handled his country’s oligarchs.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the onetime party apparatchiks who seized control of formerly state-run industries were at one point more powerful than the Kremlin. But over his time in power, Putin brought them to heel, targeting his detractors for arrest and show trials, stripping them of their assets and doling them out to loyalists or pocketing them himself. Billionaires who still exist within Russia do so only through Putin’s grace.

One of Trump’s former officials, Russia expert Fiona Hill, who served on the National Security Council, noted in a recent interview with Politico that Trump “has already made an example of Jeff Bezos, who was punished for his criticisms when Trump was in power previously by Trump trying to deny Amazon major government contracts. That’s exactly a hallmark of an oligarchy or of an autocracy.”

It seems doubtful at this late stage of the game that many of the titans of industry fearful of Trump will heed Hill’s warnings about how Trump’s vision of power can be turned against them. There’s no free market in a world of kings, as there can be no fair dealings in a world where one man’s word is law. There’s likewise no guarantee that Trump will lose, which may be forcing these billionaires to make their own self-preservation paramount. But their willingness to potentially sacrifice the rest of us, and the well-being of the country, in the process is the true mark of cowardice.

Hayes Brown

Hayes Brown is a writer and editor for BLN Daily, where he helps frame the news of the day for readers. He was previously at BuzzFeed News and holds a degree in international relations from Michigan State University.

Politics

Republicans need Susan Collins to win reelection. Trump keeps going after her.

Published

15 hours ago

January 9, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Donald Trump said Thursday a Republican senator who is crucial to the party’s chances of keeping the Senate this year should “never be elected to office again.” Susan Collins has seen it before.

Trump issued the Truth Social broadside against the longtime Maine senator and four other Republicans on Thursday after they voted with Democrats to rein in his powers to carry out future military actions against Venezuela, a sharp rebuke of the White House’s unilateral outlook following the capture of Nicolás Maduro.

The president’s online salvo comes as the Maine senator navigates a tough reelection in a blue state that Trump lost by 7 points in 2024. Her bid will rely on a coalition that includes independents and Democrats, many of whom have backed her in the past because of her breaks from Trump and other GOP leaders. But she also needs to turn out Trump’s MAGA base in a year he won’t be on the ticket to juice turnout — a tougher challenge if they’re actively feuding.

Collins told reporters after Trump’s post that she guessed Trump “would prefer to have Gov. Mills or somebody else with whom he’s not had a great relationship” than her — alluding to a confrontation between Maine Gov. Janet Mills and Trump when the governor visited the White House last year. Mills, who is now running to challenge Collins, told Trump she would sue to fight his administration’s actions to restrict transgender youth from sports.

Trump’s attack on Collins was met with laughs from Democrats who said that they, too, would like to see Collins never elected again. She is their top target on a tough Senate map, and if they have any hopes of flipping the upper chamber they need to defeat the shrewd senator.

Mills painted the vote as one of election-year political expediency.

“Susan never does the right or hard thing the first time when it’s needed most — only when it serves her politically. She is always a day late and a dollar short,” Mills said in a statement to Blue Light News. “To the President, I say ‘See you in the Senate!’ Wait until you see what I’ve got in store for your MAGA agenda.”

The campaign of Graham Platner, the other prominent Democrat challenging Collins, did not respond to requests for comment.

Trump’s anger at fellow Republicans has been enough to drive others from office. There is no indication so far the White House is serious about finding a primary challenger to Collins, and they are quickly running out of time if they were to try to do so. But any sustained animosity from Trump toward Collins could still spell trouble for her reelection.

A source close to the Trump administrations granted anonymity to speak candidly told Blue Light News that the general thinking is Republicans will hold the Senate with or without Collins, but didn’t predict a sustained campaign against her: “Like a lot with the president, this is a moment in time, and what is said today does not necessarily hold for tomorrow.”

This is far from the first time Trump has gone after Collins. And criticism from the president ahead of her last reelection bid in 2020 was not enough to tank her.

“Trump has caused no end of problems for Sen. Collins,” said Mary Small, a Republican former state lawmaker in Maine and Collins ally. “I think she’d be in the 70th percentile right now of approval rating if we didn’t have Donald Trump as president. So she’s had to walk a very cautious line.”

Still, blowback from voters loyal to Trump in Maine might be offset by independents and Democrats who appreciate Collins setting her own path, Small said.

“Republicans have never been able to elect someone just on their own,” she said. “She has to have independents support her to get elected, and Democrats.”

Some who’ve been in similar spots say that’s not so easy to manage.

Mike Coffman, the Aurora, Colorado mayor and former five-term GOP congressman, empathized with Collins’ tricky electoral position. Coffman kept Trump at arm’s length during his 2018 reelection bid in hopes of siphoning Democrat support in his swing district, but it wasn’t enough: He lost that race to Democratic Rep. Jason Crow by 11 points in a state that voted for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton two years prior.

“That’s very hard to navigate,” Coffman said of Collins’ relationship to the president. “Because when you distance yourself from Trump you might pick up some support in the middle but you’re going to lose the hardcore Trump supporters whose loyalty is to Trump and not to the Republican Party.”

In Trump’s first term, Collins broke with Senate Republicans to help sink the attempted Affordable Care Act repeal. Then, weeks before the 2020 election — the toughest reelect campaign of her career — Trump blasted her for not supporting his nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. (Collins argued the winner of the 2020 presidential election should get to appoint a new justice.)

Collins still sailed to victory a few weeks later, winning 52 percent of the vote statewide while Trump won just 44 percent.

Democrats are hopeful that the 2026 midterms won’t let her replicate that success. Collins has not had to run for reelection in a midterm with a Republican president since 2002. Trump’s approval rating was 19 points underwater in a Maine poll last month, while Collins didn’t fare much better, at 17 points underwater. That same poll found her tied with both Mills and Platner in hypothetical general election matchups.

When Collins voted in 2021 to convict Trump in his second Senate impeachment trial, she avoided some of the blowback that other GOP senators encountered: Maine Republicans opted not to censure her. No primary challengers have emerged ahead of her 2026 run, with some in the state acknowledging that any alternative to Collins was far more likely to be a Democrat than another Republican.

That hasn’t stopped Trump from criticizing Collins. Just last summer, he posted on Truth Social that Republicans should typically vote “the exact opposite” of the Maine senator, while White House officials privately discussed who they might want to replace her if she opted not to run again.

Former GOP Sen. Mark Kirk, who distanced himself from Trump before losing a Senate race in blue-leaning Illinois in 2016, said he thinks Collins’ longtime popularity in the state will outweigh any attacks from the president. He recalled joking with Collins during a congressional delegation trip overseas about her winning one of her Senate primaries by a “North Korean percentage.”

“Susan Collins has reached that state of nirvana that all of us in the Senate want to reach, to be synonymous with her state,” Kirk said.

“People will say ‘Well, if Donald Trump’s against her, then I’m gonna vote for her,” he added. “My guess is on edge, he will have actually helped her with this.”

Alex Gangitano contributed reporting to this report.