Here Are 56 Billionaires Backing Trump as He Promises to Slash Taxes for the Wealthy

Dozens of billionaires, from tech to finance to real estate, are backing Trump as he promises at high-dollar fundraisers to extend tax cuts for the wealthiest 1%.

By David Moore and Donald Shaw

Throughout the contentious 2024 Republican presidential primaries, many wealthy conservative donors avoided backing former President Donald Trump, either siding with candidates like Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis or staying completely on the sidelines. But that is now rapidly changing as billionaire donors seem to be coming out for Trump on a daily basis. 

From Miriam Adelson to Stephen Schwarzman and Elon Musk, many of those most powerful American oligarchs are now either fully behind Trump or backing him privately. According to a Sludge/More Perfect Union analysis, more than 50 billionaires and billionaire family members have gotten behind Donald Trump’s 2024 re-election, either by donating, hosting fundraisers, or making statements of support. 

Among the billionaires who disavowed Trump following the Jan. 6, 2021 events and are now backing him is the uber-rich private equity titan Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of Blackstone, whose net worth is estimated to be $36.9 billion. Schwarzman called January 6 “an affront to the democratic values we hold dear as Americans” and in 2022 said he would not support him. In late May, however, Schwarzman told Axios he would support Trump, calling his support “a vote for change.” Other billionaires who are now behind Trump after having shunned his refusal to admit defeat in 2020 include oil executive Harold Hamm, investment manager Nelson Peltz, and real estate mogul Robert Bigelow. 

Trump’s billionaire backers come from a wide range of industries, but include strong contingencies from tech, finance, and fossil fuels. In his gala fundraiser speeches, Trump has promised to keep tax rates low for billionaires by extending the 2017 Republican-passed tax cuts he signed into law beyond 2025, when they are set to expire. President Biden’s plan would continue tax cuts for those making less than $400,000 a year, but allow the pre-2017 tax rates to come back into effect for those earning more. 

We’ve tracked down 56 of Trump’s billionaire backers—an interactive version of this chart can be accessed here, and our article continues below.

Permanently extending the Trump tax cuts would cost $4 trillion over the next 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office, and the cuts would benefit extremely rich households more than everyone else. Roughly the wealthiest 2% of households by income—those with incomes of more than $500,000—would see larger tax cuts both in dollars and as a percent of their after-tax income than Americans of all other tax brackets, a Center for American Progress analysis found. Under the intial Trump tax laws, the wealth of more than 800 billionaire families in the U.S. has nearly doubled, from $2.9 trillion to $5.8 trillion, according to a pre-Tax Day report by the coalition Americans for Tax Fairness.

A few billionaires have been backing Trump behind the scenes, without yet donating directly to his campaign or making a public declaration. In March, Elon Musk joined a breakfast with Trump at billionaire Nelson Peltz’s Palm Beach estate, the Wall Street Journal reported, where they discussed a potential advisory role for Musk in a Trump administration. Rather than making a super PAC donation for Trump, Musk “has elected to use his clout in elite business and technology circles to help defeat Biden by galvanizing the support of influential allies,” according to the Journal. Jeff Yass, the financier and Republican megadonor, heads the investment firm that previously held the largest stake in the Digital World Acquisition Corporation that merged with Trump’s media company in March, a deal that sent Trump’s paper worth soaring by billions of dollars. The Trump campaign told the New York Times that Yass planned to make a large donation to a pro-Trump group, but a Yass spokesperson said he had no such plans. 

Trump’s billionaire backers from the finance sector include longtime allies like Schwarzman, Peltz, and Robert Mercer. A couple of other money-moving Trump donors include hedge fund founder Kenneth Garschina and Douglas Leone, a California venture capitalist who popped up to endorse Trump in a recent social media post.

In a fundraising swing through California earlier this month, Trump’s Silicon Valley event was hosted by tech entrepreneur David Sacks and attended by tech executive Chamath Palihapitiya, among dozens of others. In supporting Trump, the podcast co-hosts join other billionaire tech entrepreneurs: Palmer Luckey, founder of Oculus; Darwin Deason, founder of Affiliated Computer Services; and Kenny Troutt, founder of telecom company Excel Communications.

In an April private dinner at Mar-a-Lago, Trump pitched to a room of oil executives that they raise $1 billion for his re-election, promising to slash environmental regulations opposed by the fossil fuel industry. Along with allies like Hamm and pipeline king Kelcy Warren, billionaire fracker Tim Dunn has showered more than $6 million on pro-Trump super PACs this election cycle. 

Other billionaires behind Trump include the following: Gary Rollins, the Georgia-based president of pest control company Orkin; Igor Olenicoff, a real estate developer in California; and spouses Kelly Loeffler, former U.S. senator, and Jeff Sprecher, of financial company Intercontinental Exchange.

For more, watch our new deep dive into one of the biggest lies in history — the idea that cutting taxes for corporations and the rich is good for everyone. This theory became Reaganomics, and then Trump’s tax bill. And we’re all paying the price.