As we approach the final days of the 2024 election, both campaigns are firing on all cylinders to try and secure as many Americans’ votes as possible. So much of this momentum is feasible from various billionaire backers helping with the campaigns – whether it be through endorsements, in-person appearances, or donations to super-PACs.
In this week’s episode of Capitol Gains, Washington correspondent Ben Werschkul talks to host Rachelle Akuffo and senior columnist Rick Newman about the key billionaires surrounding the 2024 election and the roles they’re playing (or not playing) in trying to get Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump elected. Werschkul breaks the billionaires down into two main categories: loud billionaires vs. shy billionaires.
The shy billionaires include people like Jamie Dimon and Warren Buffett, who remain in focus during the election, but have not yet outright endorsed a candidate.
There’s Bill Gates, who Werschkul refers to as a “shy, but impactful” billionaire, who quietly gave $50 million to the Future Forward USA Action super-PAC supporting the Harris campaign. There are also billionaires like Tim Mellon and Miriam Adelson who have donated hefty sums to pro-Trump super-PACs, but who are not as well known to the public.
As for your “loud billionaires”, these are people like Elon Musk. Not only is Musk donating large sums of money to pro-Trump super-PACs, but he’s also putting himself out in the field attending Trump rallies and regularly making news headlines.
The final group Werschkul refers to are the “loud but cheap billionaires.” These are billionaires like Mark Cuban and Bill Ackman who people hear a lot about, but it’s unclear how they are financially contributing to the Harris and Trump campaigns.
To find out more, listen to the full episode of Capitol Gains here.
This post was written by Lauren Pokedoff.
Video Transcript
Yeah, so I’ve got my note card.
I’ve got two.
I’ve got more billionaires on my note card though.
So I got, I had to do two of them.
I, I’ve broken them down into this sort of shy and loud billionaires.
I’ll start with the, um, the kind of shy ones, these poor retiring billionaires.
Um, a lot of news on this front this week.
Um, as I’m alluding to there is Jamie Dimond is a big one.
He is a, as we’ve sort of learned this week and I’ve been doing reporting with my colleague David Poll on this.
He’s leaning towards Harris behind closed doors, but he’s unlikely to say anything in person.
He’s still doing a lot of events, he’s giving speeches, doing all these things, but he’s sort of staying out of presidential politics.
But, and, and this is one of the, obviously one of the big endorsements that could happen, but it seemed increasingly unlikely to another kind of shy billionaire, uh, is that we learned about this week is Bill Gates.
He, um, he gave $50 billion.50 million dollars, excuse me.
But it was to a dark money group and he was intended to, he quieted eventually, the, the New York Times unearthed it.
So we kind of know he’s doing it and this is, uh, he was supporting Harris.
Um, but, but sort of didn’t want folks to know about it and now, and now, and now people do.
There’s a kind of a middle group here that are kind of shy but impactful groups.
A third, a third shy one for you is, uh, Warren Buffett.
He, um this is a guy who eight years ago was um campaigning with Hillary Clinton this year.
He announced he’s not doing any presidential endorsement.
So he’s, he’s always been a big one to watch in this space and he’s sticking out the kind of shy but impactful folks.
Bill Gates could probably fall into that category.
Another one is just these overall billionaires, the top five billionaires, believe it or not.
Um, have, are all Republicans.
They’re not Elon Musk.
Interestingly, and they’ve given about $600 million to Republicans, both Trump and the candidate.
So that these are folks like Tim Mellon, um Miriam Adel and folks like that that are giving a ton of money, historic amounts.
But, but you kind of less know their names.
And then the third group real quickly is the loud ones.
You can guess.
My very first one, it’s everyone’s Elon Musk.
Elon Musk, he’s everywhere.
He’s, he’s campaigning.
He’s, he’s, he’s Tim walls calls him Donald Trump’s running mate, which honestly isn’t that far from true at this point.
He, he’s barnstorming pen mania.
It looks like he may travel elsewhere and he’s just dumping a ton of money into the race and he’s very prominent and, oh, just the last, the very last on my list is, um, loud but cheap billionaires.
Or we don’t know how much they’re giving.
At least Mark Cuban and Bill Achmed are sort of folks in this group who would hear a lot about but they are, they’re less involved financial groups.
So it’s a lot of different ways for billionaires to get involved.