Billionaires Don't Seem To Think Biden and Trump Are The Same

Some old-money Gilded Era rich guy gave Donald Trump fifty million dollars last week. 

Timothy Mellon, the 77-year-old heir to the Mellon fortune who once wrote a book so racist it was later scrubbed from the internet, is now essentially self-funding the 2024 Trump campaign; he’s given more than $75 million to Trump-aligned Super PACs, which are legal because right-wing Supreme Court justices believe in bad faith that money equals speech. 

Mellon – a recluse who believes modest government benefits constitute slavery – joins a growing list of ultra-wealthy, powerful people who are pulling hard for Trump’s return to the White House (that Mellon was a prolific giver to Tulsi Gabbard’s tragic 2020 presidential run tells you all you need to know about the queen of bad faith politics). You might remember old Tim from when he donated $53 million to build Trump’s border wall. It’s a big hunk of cash for the sole purpose of owning the libs. 

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Mellon’s $50 million injection into the Trump campaign is just the latest sign that right-wing millionaire and billionaires believe there is, in fact, a big difference between Trump and Joe Biden. This stands in stark contrast to the political dogma of (understandably) bitter and disaffected young voters who have largely decided there is zero difference between the 2024 presidential candidate. Because good and bad things are the same, you idiot, you moron. 

Mariam Adelson, the widow of far-right casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, has reportedly given nearly $100 million to a Trump PAC first created during his 2020 re-election campaign. Rabidly pro-Trump Silicon Valley billionaire David Sacks – please remember Silicon Valley is a fascist wonderland – and Elon Musk, who manages PR for the international fascist movement, recently held a fundraiser for the Big Boy. The event reportedly included Rubert Murdoch, Steve Mnuchin, and a host of the most powerful, committed enemies of democracy. I could go on, naming ultra-wealthy people with disgusting politics investing tens of millions in hopes of re-installing Trump as president, but I’m bored with this.

Suffice it to say the billionaire class is doing anything it can to deliver the White House to Trump in 2024, which, if you believe Big Boy, will be America’s final free election. 

Along with a veritable army of billionaires shoveling oceans of cash into Trump’s pockets, there are thousands upon thousands of conservative ideologues who see an opportunity, starting in 2025, to roll back rights and freedoms that have become part of the fabric of American life. There are plans – with Donnie back in the saddle – to force same-sex marriage before the right-wing majority Supreme Court, which will undoubtedly rule against it and instantly strip millions of basic human rights. There are plans to pass a national abortion ban – something for which Senate Republicans will absolutely nuke the filibuster to achieve. There are plans to pass draconian voting rights laws that will eviscerate whatever remains of the hard-won victories of the Civil Rights movement. The folks with these plans are all too happy to see the billionaire class go all in on a return to Trump’s America. 

Meanwhile, we have untold millions of voters – or likely voters, as it were – who have done nothing but wave a dismissive hand at the presidential candidates. They are the same, according to these folks, who claim to be horrified by Trump while refusing to do the one thing they can do to keep him out of power. There is zero difference between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, the thinking goes: A proclamation that stands in stark contrast to the ultra-wealthy shoveling unprecedented amounts of money into Trump’s campaign. 

As a former idealistic young person, I get it. I protested against George W. Bush and his wretched administration in the early 2000s, participating in various anti-Iraq war actions when a traumatized and vengeful American public still had overwhelming support for the post-9/11 war effort. I recall placing anti-war pamphlets on people’s cars and having a Ford F-150 driver reach into his glove compartment, pull out a gun, and tell me in so many words to leave him alone. I remember trying to tell my parents and uncles and aunts and friends how wrong they were about the war, and about Bush as the leader we needed after 9/11. I remember them lashing out at me and asking why I had not yet joined Al Qaeda. Some of them reminded me that Al Qaeda executed gay folks, and that my support for them was curious since I seemed OK with gay rights. The discourse was never better. 

I recall being devastated when the Democratic Party nominated the one guy who was guaranteed to lose to Bush, a fancy-boy New Englander married to a hoity-toity French billionaire. I considered sitting out the election or voting third party – Ralph Nader was running again for some reason – or maybe writing in Howard Dean, who, like all college kids in 2004, I very much supported. On Election Day, I held my nose, voted for Kerry, and ended the night despondent as Bush – installed as president by Supreme Court conservatives – took Ohio and with it, a second term in the White House. 

So I can relate to younger people who do not want to cast a vote for either candidate this year. There’s something so righteous about standing tall and dismissing both major party candidates as the same people with the same goals and same backers. It feels wonderful to point out both major American political parties have been long captured by capital, and that both will do capital’s bidding when in power. As a college sophomore, this felt like breaking news. It felt as if my third eye had been pried open and I could see American politics for what they were: A game played between two parties that would never implement any meaningful change and would do anything and everything to expand capital, even if it meant crushing underfoot every single working person in the United States. It all made me feel so virtuous, so above the masses. I could see what they refused to see. Both parties are the exact same. 

That was truer in 2004 than it is today. Back then, Democrats and Republicans mostly played politics between the 20s, agreeing not to push anything too radical into the political mainstream. They had done this throughout the Reagan and Clinton years, though that between-the-20s agreement began to unravel with Newt Gingrich introducing a virulently anti-democratic strain of conservative politics into Congress in the mid-90s. Today, a full decade into the Trump era, it is simply not true that the Democratic and Republican parties are playing the same game, largely advocating for the same policy outcomes. If someone says this, they are either terribly misinformed or saying so because it makes them feel high and mighty about their refusal to back either party in an existential election (I have bad news: all elections for the foreseeable future will be existential in nature). 

The New York Times did a good job this week in outlining each candidates’ policy preferences in a truthful and good faith manner. You can read them for yourself with this NYT gift link. Beyond the anti-democratic bent of the Trump coalition, which Bad Faith Times has covered extensively, there are myriad economic positions that stand in stark contrast to each other. 

The issue of labor unions and their rising power in the 21st century American workplace is simmering beneath the headline-grabbing shit about Trump and his allies desperately wanting to end representative democracy. Unions, as you may have noticed, have made great gains since COVID exposed labor-capital imbalances inherent in our unregulated capitalist system. This has really pissed off rich folks who became accustomed to trampling on labor whenever they wanted with little or no government pushback. The Biden administration has drawn the ire of bosses nationwide for supporting labor unions more than any administration since FDR.

For all his (many) flaws, Biden has turned out to be an overtly pro-union president. He was, in case you missed it, the first president in U.S. history to stand side by side with striking union workers. Trump responded to this by standing side by side with bosses and workers who had refused to join unions and worked for companies whose explicit goal is to dismantle any and all labor organizing efforts. The Biden administration has been aggressive in punishing companies that have illegally stopped union organizing efforts.

This all goes away with a Trump victory. His administration was the most hostile to organized labor in American history, even more so than Reagan. Billionaires are not forking over hundreds of millions of dollars just because they want to trigger the libs. This is a transaction, and Trump – the most transactional human alive today – understands that. Billionaires are backing Trump because they want him to undo the labor gains of the past four years and use the federal government as a cudgel against their enemies: Namely, people who work for money.

There are massive differences between the candidates if you care to look. As a washed 40 year old with two kids who remembers the allure of rejecting both major political parties as identical, rotten, capital-worshipping twins, I can only hope disaffected young voters grasp the stakes of the coming election. No amount of feeling good about one's principles is worth what we will face if Timothy Mellon and the billionaire class gets its way.

Follow Denny Carter on BlueSky at @cdcarter13.bsky.social and on Threads and X at @CDCarter13.