The Billionaire Donors Behind Trump’s Midterm Superweapon |
Last year, the GOP’s legacy donor class and its newer crop of tech and finance billionaires found common cause: writing enormous checks to support Donald Trump.
In February, billionaire Kelcy Warren and his fossil fuel pipeline company, Energy Transfer, each sent $12.5 million to MAGA Inc., a Trump-aligned super PAC. Just a few months later, OpenAI cofounder and president Greg Brockman and his wife cut checks for $12.5 million each.
That makes Warren and Brockman the biggest individual donors to MAGA Inc. But the roster is deeper than two names and four eight-figure checks. Forbes counts at least 24 billionaires or billionaire families who have given over $1 million, according to Federal Election Commission filings covering through the end of March. (Brockman is not on Forbes’ list of billionaires, but he did claim to be one in testimony related to Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI). Collectively, these ten-figure club members, plus Brockman, donated $118 million, about a third of the $350 million war chest MAGA Inc has built.
After Warren and Brockman, it reads like the donor roll from every modern Republican spending spree: Wall Street trader Jeff Yass ($16 million), private equity tycoon Stephen Schwarzman ($5 million) and Estee Lauder heir Ronald Lauder ($5 million), among others.
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In a few cases, financial support opened doors to actual positions in Donald Trump’s administration. Two billionaires fit that mold: one-time DOGE head Elon Musk ($5 million) and Small Business Administration leader Kelly Loeffler ($5 million, including $2.5 million from her husband Jeff Sprecher). There are also non-billionaire donors who later landed roles, like NASA administrator Jared Isaacman ($2 million), ambassador to Singapore Anjani Sinha ($1 million) and nominee to be ambassador to Hungary Benjamin Landa ($5 million).
For others, the donations to MAGA Inc. came before or alongside favorable policy moves from the administration. Take Brockman’s OpenAI, which has built a close relationship with the Trump administration and recently swooped in to capture a federal contract following a row between AI rival Anthropic and the Department of Defense. Or consider the crypto industry. Three of the top billionaire MAGA Inc. donors—the Winklevoss twins ($1 million each) and venture capitalist Tim Draper ($1 million)—made fortunes in crypto, and the single largest donor of any type is Crypto.com’s parent company Foris Dax, which has cut four checks totaling $35 million. Crypto firms have pushed hard for lighter regulation—and Trump’s own crypto ventures, which have made him some $1.8 billion wealthier since his reelection, don’t exactly make that pitch harder to deliver.
Trump’s off-ballot money........