When President Donald J. Trump left office, some of the biggest names on Wall Street, who had embraced him during his first term in the White House, swore they would leave him for good. They were fatigued by his leadership style, disappointed by some of his policies and shocked by the riots at the US Capitol. Some of them even attacked him publicly.
His declared displeasure did not last. With Trump leading in the polls, financiers on Wall Street, Silicon Valley and elsewhere are closing in on his corner, according to interviews with more than a dozen people who sought anonymity because they did not want their personal views to be linked. to his employers.
The motivations are multiple. In many cases, it’s less that they are enthusiastic about Trump (“I still hate that man,” said one hedge fund billionaire) and more that they are exasperated with President Biden’s economic and immigration policies. In other cases, the willingness to support Trump’s return reflects growing dissatisfaction with what many big Wall Street donors see as the White House’s increasingly tough stance against Israel in its war on Gaza.
A prominent example of this about-face is Kenneth Griffin, a hedge fund mogul and political mega-donor who publicly mocked Trump as a “three-time loser” less than two years ago. In recent weeks, the Citadel founder has been in communication with the former president’s campaign about the possibility of making a significant donation, which would amount to millions of dollars.
When asked by The New York Times whether he would support Trump for the first time in 2024, Griffin said, “It’s a question I’m seriously considering.”
In an interview with Bloomberg News on Tuesday, Griffin said Trump “will exude a level of strength” that would help resolve foreign policy issues, among others.
Griffin and his representatives have told the Trump campaign that the billionaire is waiting to see who the former president chooses as his vice presidential candidate. He hopes for an election with close ties to the traditional Republican establishment, such as Nikki Haley, former governor of South Carolina. Griffin donated millions to Haley’s failed presidential campaign in the Republican primary.
More than a dozen bankers, asset managers, hedge fund titans, lawyers and venture capitalists, including attendees at the Milken Institute’s $25,000-a-head Global Conference this month, said they were disappointed by economic policies. and Biden’s border control. They asked that their names and positions be withheld so they could share their views freely.
Their concerns reflect long-standing complaints about inflation and rising illegal immigration that have long hurt the president’s approval ratings. More recently, however, some have added exhaustion over the various legal proceedings against Trump (not all of which involve the federal government) and dismay over the Biden administration’s weakening support for Israel in the Gaza conflict.
The potential surge of deep-pocketed support for Trump could be critical for his campaign, given that his fundraising lags considerably behind Biden’s. At the same time, any redirection of funds from Biden’s campaign could hurt it even more, given the president’s political situation: Many big donors are discouraged by his declining support for Israel, even as other voters want him to be much tougher on Israel during its invasion of Gaza.
Poll results released this week by The New York Times, Siena College and The Philadelphia Inquirer showed that young and non-white voters were turning away from the incumbent president because they viewed his policies as too supportive of Israel.
The millionaire and billionaire political donors who are reconsidering Trump include not only longtime Republican supporters returning to back the party’s presumptive nominee, but also donors like Griffin, who stayed away from the former president in his two previous runs for the White House. .
In some ways, the affluent class is not that different from the electorate, as polls have shown Trump leading in most battleground states. Those numbers have remained virtually unchanged since late last year. Additionally, big donors of all political stripes often act to support major candidates in elections.
Big business was barely part of Trump’s political base in either 2016 or 2020. Corporate leaders came out vociferously in early 2021 against his attempts to interfere with the transfer of power; America’s largest bank, JPMorgan Chase, responded by suspending all political donations, and its chief executive, Jamie Dimon, said Trump had been “gassing a mob.”
Dimon drew attention across Wall Street in January when he told CNBC from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that Trump had been “a little bit right” on a number of issues, including taking a tougher stance toward China. and the approval of tax cuts. Since then, the bank’s political action committee, funded by employees including Dimon, has resumed its donations and has given more this election cycle to Republicans than Democrats.
In interviews, other top Wall Street executives and political donors said they felt Dimon’s comments had given them cover to support Trump more openly.
Dimon declined to provide further details through a spokesman. A Trump campaign spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment. A Biden campaign spokeswoman pointed to the president’s recent fundraising trip to the West Coast, which she said had raised $10 million from Silicon Valley founders and executives.
There remains a difference between what some prominent businessmen will say publicly and privately about Trump, who has defied norms by promising to investigate his political rivals if he returns to the Oval Office.
Last month, a group of tech heavyweights, including Elon Musk, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen and investor Peter Thiel, met for a dinner during which they discussed how best to oppose a second term. of Biden, said two people briefed on the matter. The dinner was previously reported by the Puck newsletter.
Later, in a meeting with Middle East investors, Andreessen said he would not support Biden, said a person who spoke to investors. Andreessen, who once said Trump’s immigration plans made him “sick” to his stomach, later told Middle Eastern investors that he would not support Biden, said a person briefed on the meeting. That goes beyond what Andreessen has said publicly.
A spokeswoman for Andreessen declined to comment on those comments and said he would not take sides publicly. “Marc talks about current events all the time in informal settings, just like any other normal human being,” said spokeswoman Margit Wennmachers.
Thiel, one of Trump’s biggest boosters in 2016, has said he does not plan to donate this time, although he has privately vented about Biden’s management of the economy, according to three people who have spoken to him about the issue. However, Thiel’s data analytics firm, Palantir Technologies, recently met with a representative of the Trump campaign to discuss the candidate’s possible return to the White House, two people briefed on the meeting said.
The political environment is also creating some strange bedfellows for Trump. Take Cliff Asness, a billionaire hedge fund manager and self-described libertarian who as recently as this year called the Republican Party a “cult” during the former president’s administration.
Last week, after the White House halted a shipment of weapons to Israel to prevent them from being used in an assault on the densely populated Gaza city of Rafah, Asness wrote in X that it was “dangerously close to the previously (and still is) unthinkable: #TRUMP2024.”