A possibly half-baked theory of why billionaires are backing Trump

It's not about money. It's about power.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio:

Billionaire support for Donald Trump makes sense to me: He’s rich and he’ll protect the interests of the rich.

But also it doesn’t: He’s capricious and undermines the rule of law — and don’t the rich guys know how much their fortunes are built on a stable system?

Reading Susan B. Glasser’s account of billionaire support for Trump in the New Yorker, though, another thought occurred to me.

Here’s the passage that produced the lightbulb:

Trump was fund-raising off his conviction with small-dollar donors as well; his campaign, which portrayed him as the victim of a politicized justice system, brought in nearly $53 million in the twenty-four hours after the verdict. Several megadonors who had held back from endorsing Trump announced that they were now supporting him, including Miriam Adelson, the widow of the late casino mogul Sheldon Adelson; the Silicon Valley investor David Sacks, who said that the case against Trump was a sign of America turning into a “Banana Republic”; and the venture capitalist Shaun Maguire, who, less than an hour after the verdict, posted on X that he was donating $300,000 to Trump, calling the prosecution a “radicalizing experience.” A day later, Timothy Mellon, the banking-family scion, wrote a $50-million check to the Make America Great Again super PAC.

Being super-rich or powerful in America has generally meant impunity. Nobody ever went to jail for the Great Recession. Nobody (above a certain level) in the George W. Bush administration was prosecuted for war crimes. Nixon even got a pardon.

And what I think is this: Trump’s conviction — and the ongoing charges for his other “alleged” crimes — probably frightened the billionaire class. If he could be held accountable for wrongdoing, maybe they could too.

That was a bridge too far. Jail is for other people. Poor people. Backing Trump, then, might just be a way of asserting their continued impunity.

Just a guess.