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If Donald Trump represents an insurgency against elites then why do so many billionaires support him?

An insidious idea that I’ve encountered more frequently in recent years, particularly amongst people travelling in a post-left direction, is that Donald Trump represents an insurgency against elites even if he might in other respects have undesirable characteristics. If that’s the case then why do so many billionaires, as well as the foundations they fund, actively support him?

By one count, more than 60 billionaires have donated to Trump’s campaign. They include Bernard Marcus, a co-founder of Home Depot, the Winklevoss twins, who founded the crypto exchange Gemini, and Nelson Peltz, an activist investor who recently endorsed Trump even though he, shortly after the January 6 assault on the Capitol, said he regretted voting for Trump in 2020. Timothy Mellon, an heir to the Gilded Age Mellon fortune, recently gave an astronomical $125m to a Trump Super Pac, while Miriam Adelson, majority owner of the Las Vegas Sands casino company, has donated $5m to help Trump’s campaign and is expected to give tens of millions more.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/sep/06/trump-billionaires-2024-campaign

This isn’t an insurgency against elites, it’s one section of that elite increasingly flirting with fascism in contrast with other sections of that elite (e.g. CEOs of large corporations) who feel more constrained. This point is so obvious that I can’t believe it needs to be pointed out but I really worry about the structural drivers of a red/brown alliance driven by the defeat of actual socialist insurgencies in the UK and the US, as well as understandable disgust at the geopolitical machinery of Nato and the genocide being committed in Gaza.

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