Steven Greenhouse writes:

As Elon Musk’s rabid pro-Trump mania makes clear, billionaires are wielding their financial might in this year’s presidential election far more than in any previous campaign—and far more openly, too. More than 60 billionaires have opened their wallets to help elect Donald Trump, with some giving $10 million, $20 million, or more, indicating that many plutocrats are far more worried about the prospect of Democrats increasing their taxes than about the threat that Trump poses to our democracy.

There’s no denying that billionaires are trying to bend society to their will. America’s 800-plus billionaires hold over $6 trillion in wealth, more wealth than the bottom half of U.S. households. The super wealthy own a greater share of the nation’s wealth today than they did during the Gilded Age of the Rockefellers and Carnegies. And they will do whatever they have to do to keep things that way.

Timothy Mellon, the billionaire heir to a Gilded Age fortune, has given an astounding amount—$125 million—to a pro-Trump super PAC. That’s more than the combined donations of 3 million typical Americans giving $40 each. Miriam Adelson, the widow of casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson, has contributed $100 million to, among other things, help finance a flood of pro-Trump ad buys in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. (Trump has reportedly pressed her to cough up $250 million on his behalf.) Rupert Murdoch, a billionaire immigrant from Australia, has helped Trump day after day by turning Fox News into a truth-bending, immigrant-bashing, pro-Trump propaganda machine.

Dick Uihlein, an Illinois billionaire who runs a cardboard and paper-goods empire, gave $49 million to a pro-Trump super PAC that he runs. Ike Perlmutter, the former chairman of Marvel Entertainment, and his wife contributed $25 million to another pro-Trump super PAC, Right for America. Jeff Yass, a major investor in TikTok’s parent company, and his wife have given $70 million to conservative causes this election cycle, including $25 million to the Club for Growth, a free-market group that is backing Trump. (Trump reversed his position on banning TikTok earlier this year, not long after he held a meeting with Yass.)

Billionaires are also flexing their muscle in Senate and House races. For instance, Brian Armstrong and his company, CoinBase, the largest crypto exchange, have helped lead their industry’s $40 million effort to defeat Sherrod Brown, a Democratic senator from Ohio and crypto critic who is running for reelection.

As for the $250 billion man, Elon Musk has invested at least $75 million in a super PAC that he created to run much of Trump’s get-out-the-vote operation. He has also used his $44 billion investment in Twitter to turn it into a Trump fanboy site that promotes disinformation and conspiracy theories to help move as many people as possible to the right and into Trump’s camp. Musk evidently hopes that a Trump victory will help SpaceX and other companies he’s involved in continue to win billions of dollars in federal contracts while also helping get federal agencies to stop bringing so many actions that accuse Musk’s companies of breaking the law.

Without the enormous aid from these and other billionaires, Trump’s race against Kamala Harris wouldn’t even be close—he’d be well behind. These plutocrats’ efforts underline the wisdom of something that Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once said: “We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” [Continue reading…]