The Trump oligarchy is moving to Washington, and buying up prime property
President Biden warned in his farewell address to the nation last week that an oligarchy is taking shape in America. In Washington, the oligarchs are already here, buying big houses.
Counting President-elect Donald J. Trump himself, there are at least a dozen billionaires among his cabinet picks and those headed for senior roles in the new administration. Elon Musk tops the list with a $429 billion net worth, according to Forbes, making him the world’s richest man. Mr. Trump weighs in with an estimated $6.8 billion.
It is an extraordinary concentration of wealth in a city where power has always been more important than money, but is now more than ever intertwined with it. Mr. Trump campaigned as a populist defender of the American working class, but he has put some of his richest donors in commanding roles in the top reaches of government. A number will oversee the very industries that produced their fortunes.
“It’s tempting to liken this to the Gilded Age, but John D. Rockefeller didn’t actually run McKinley’s campaign or move into the White House,” said Michael Waldman, who was President Bill Clinton’s chief speechwriter and is now president and chief executive of the Brennan Center for Justice, which promotes legal system reforms and works to curb money in politics. He was referring to Mr. Musk, who spent more than $250 million to help Mr. Trump win and is now expected to have an office in the White House complex.
One of the most immediate effects in Washington has been an explosion in the luxury real estate market.
The financier Howard Lutnick, Mr. Trump’s choice to be commerce secretary (worth $1.5 billion, according to Forbes), last month closed on the French Chateau-style home of the Fox anchor Bret Baier on Foxhall Road for $25 million, a record for the area. Scott Bessent, the nominee for Treasury secretary (his financial disclosure statement shows he is worth in excess of $700 million) has looked at a $7 million Federal-style house on N Street in Georgetown, once the home of the syndicated columnist Joseph Alsop.
The 1850 Italianate-style Georgetown home of the late Boyden Gray, an influential lawyer for Republican presidents, sold last month for $10.5 million. Real estate agents would not disclose the buyer, but they did say they were running short of trophy houses in Washington because of a second-term Trump bump. [Continue reading…]