‘I still hate the man’: Wall Street’s billionaires can’t resist Trump

When President Donald Trump left office, some of Wall Street’s biggest names, who had taken to him during his first term in the White House, swore they were moving on from him for good. They were fatigued by his leadership style, disappointed by some of his policies and shocked by the US Capitol riot. Some of them even savaged him publicly.

Their stated distaste didn’t last. With Trump leading in the polls, big financiers on Wall Street, in Silicon Valley and elsewhere are edging into his corner, according to interviews with more than a dozen people who sought anonymity because they didn’t want their personal views to be tied to their employers.

Trump is feeling the love from Wall Street’s billionaires.Credit: AP

The motivations are manifold. In many instances, it’s less that they’re enthusiastic about Trump — “I still hate the man,” one hedge fund billionaire said — and more that they’re exasperated with the economic and immigration policies of President Joe Biden. In other cases, the willingness to support a return of Trump reflects a growing dissatisfaction with what many big Wall Street donors see as the White House’s hardening stance against Israel in its war in the Gaza Strip.

A prominent example of the about-face is Ken Griffin, a hedge fund magnate and political megadonor who publicly derided 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 potentially making a major donation, which would amount to millions of dollars.

Asked by The New York Times if he would support Trump for the first time in 2024, Griffin said: “It’s a question I’m giving serious consideration to.”

In an interview with Bloomberg News on Tuesday, Griffin said Trump “will exude a level of strength” that would help settle foreign policy issues, among others.

Griffin and his representatives have told the Trump campaign that the billionaire is waiting to see whom the former president selects as his vice presidential candidate. He is hoping for a pick with close ties to the traditional Republican apparatus, such as Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina. Griffin donated millions to Haley’s unsuccessful presidential campaign in the Republican primary race.

More than a dozen bankers, asset managers, hedge fund titans, lawyers and venture capitalists, including attendees of the $US25,000 ($37,370) -a-head Milken Institute Global Conference this month, said that they were disappointed by Biden’s economic and border control policies. They requested that their names and titles be withheld so that they could share their views freely.

Their concerns reflect long-standing gripes about inflation and a rise in illegal immigration that have long dragged on the president’s approval ratings. More recently, however, some have added exhaustion at the various legal proceedings against Trump (not all of which involve the federal government) and dismay over the Biden administration’s flagging support for Israel in the Gaza conflict.

The potential groundswell of deep-pocketed support for Trump could be critical for his campaign, given that its fundraising considerably lags Biden’s. At the same time, any redirection of funds from the Biden campaign could hurt it further, given the president’s political predicament: Many big donors are put off by his softening support for Israel, even as other voters want him to be far tougher on Israel for its invasion of Gaza.

In recent weeks, Citadel founder Ken Griffin has been in communication with the former president’s campaign about potentially making a major donation, which would amount to millions of dollars.Credit: Bloomberg

Millionaire and billionaire political donors who are reconsidering Trump include not just longtime Republican boosters returning to back the party’s presumptive nominee but donors like Griffin who steered clear of the former president in his two prior runs for the White House.

In some ways, the well-to-do class isn’t so different from the electorate, as polls have shown Trump leading in the majority of battleground states. Those figures have been largely unchanged since late last year. Also, big-time donors of all political stripes often move to support leading candidates in races.

Big business was hardly 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; the largest bank in America, JPMorgan Chase, responded by pausing all political donations, and its CEO, Jamie Dimon, said Trump had been “gassing up a mob.”

Dimon turned heads across Wall Street in January when he told CNBC from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that Trump had been “kind of right” about a number of issues, including taking a tougher stance toward China and passing tax cuts. The bank’s political action committee, funded by employees including Dimon, has since resumed its giving and handed out more this election cycle to Republicans than to Democrats.

In interviews, other senior Wall Street executives and political donors said they felt that Dimon’s comments had provided cover for them to back Trump more openly.

Dimon declined through a spokesperson to elaborate. A Trump campaign spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment. A Biden campaign spokesperson pointed to the president’s recent fundraising trip to the West Coast, which she said had raised $US10 million from Silicon Valley founders and executives.

There remains a difference between what some prominent businesspeople will say publicly and privately about Trump, who has challenged norms by vowing to investigate political rivals if he is returned to the Oval Office.

Last month, a group of technology heavyweights including Elon Musk, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen and investor Peter Thiel gathered for a dinner during which they discussed how best to oppose a second Biden term, two people briefed on it said. The dinner was reported earlier by the newsletter Puck.

Jamie Dimon, chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase chief Jamie Dimon turned heads across Wall Street in January when he said that Trump had been “kind of right” about a number of issues.Credit: Bloomberg

Andreessen, who once said Trump’s immigration plans left him “sick” to his stomach, later told investors from the Middle East that he would not support Biden, one person who was told of the meeting said. That’s further than what Andreessen has said publicly.

A spokesperson for Andreessen declined to comment on those remarks and said he wouldn’t take sides publicly. “Marc talks about current events in casual settings all the time, like every other normal human being,” said the spokesperson, Margit Wennmachers.

Thiel, one of Trump’s biggest boosters in 2016, has said he does not plan to donate this time around, although he has vented privately about Biden’s management of the economy, according to three people who have spoken with him about the topic. Yet Thiel’s data analytics firm, Palantir Technologies, recently met with a representative of the Trump campaign to discuss the candidate’s potential return to the White House, two people briefed on the sit-down said.

The political environment is also creating some odd 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” under the former president.

Last week, after the White House paused an arms shipment to Israel to prevent the weapons from being used in an assault on the tightly populated Gaza city of Rafah, Asness wrote on social platform X that he was “perilously close to the formerly (and still kind of) unthinkable: #TRUMP2024.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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