Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.
Trump is in a bubble. Billionaires are inside it.
Aaron Schaffer and Clara Ence Morse at WP:
The world’s richest man. The owner of the Houston Rockets. The former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment. These are just some of the 12 billionaires — not including Trump — who have held roles in the Trump administration this year.
In total, they’re worth $390.6 billion as of March. While previous administrations have included the ultrarich, the wealth held by this group is larger than even the first Trump administration, previously the wealthiest in U.S. history.
Excluding Elon Musk — who poured more than $294 million into contributions boosting Trump and other Republicans in 2024 — the billionaires in the Trump administration, along with their spouses, gave more than $52 million to Trump, pro-Trump PACs and the Republican National Committee in the 2024 campaign alone, according to a Washington Post analysis.
- Elon Musk, Leader, U.S. DOGE Service (resigned in late May)/ Net worth: $342 billion
- Tilman Fertitta. Ambassador to Italy and San Marino. Net worth: $11.3 billion
- Joe Gebbia, Chief design officer. Net worth: $8.3 billion
- Melinda Hildebrand, Ambassador to Costa Rica. Net worth: $7.7 billion/
- Stephen Feinberg, Deputy secretary, Defense Department. Net worth: $5 billion.
- Warren Stephens, Ambassador to Britain. Net worth: $3.4 billion
- Howard Lutnick, Secretary, Commerce Department Net worth: $3.2 billion
- Linda McMahon, Secretary, Education Department. Net worth: $3 billion
- Antonio Gracias. Volunteer, DOGE (left in July). Net worth: $2.2 billion
- Steve Witkoff, Assistant to the president and special envoy for peace missions, Net worth: $2 billion
- Kelly Loeffler, Administrator, Small Business Administration. Net worth: $1.3 billion
- Paul Atkins, Chairman, Securities and Exchange Commission. Net worth: $1.2 billion
At Politico, Jack Blanchard and Dasha Burns report on a Pennsylvania speech that illsutrates Trump's cluelessness on economic woes:
...President Donald Trump kicked off his so-called affordability tour in Pennsylvania last night, jump-starting what White House aides say will be a relentless campaign on the economy for the next 11 months. Trump, of course, has just rated the U.S. economy as “A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus” in his big interview Monday with Playbook’s Dasha Burns, telling Dasha not to be “dramatic” when she pointed out families are buying presents and juggling budgets at this time of year.
...
To be clear: Trump did deliver his lines, mostly. Prices are too high, he said — because Democrats made them high. Making America Affordable Again is, he said, his “highest priority.” He lauded GOP tax cuts and the falling price of gas. He read out a pre-written joke that “Democrats talking about affordability is like Bonnie and Clyde preaching about public safety.” And he unveiled graphs intended to back up his case, showing that prices and interest rates were higher when Joe Biden was president.
But Trump is still Trump — and so he said a lot more. The opening night of this loosely defined tour was a rambling, 97-minute speech that leapt from topic to topic, and lurched from convivial humor about colleagues to rants about foreign migrants. The MAGA crowd lapped it all up, and aides said Trump was “in his element.” But the president offered up all the ammo — and all the social media clips — his critics need.
A few examples:
- Trump veered off message, twice calling affordability a “hoax” — before admitting he’s no longer “allowed” to use the phrase.
- Trump revived his ill-advised line that it’s fine if parents can’t afford so many toys and pencils for their kids now prices are higher due to tariffs. “You don’t need 37 dolls for your daughter,” he told the crowd. “Two or three is nice.”
- More broadly, Trump made clear his lack of conviction in the whole premise — mocking the word “affordability,” mocking his own price charts, mocking his pre-prepared speech — and admitting he was only on tour at the urging of chief of staff Susie Wiles.
- And Trump strayed way off topic, revealing his team had asked him not to discuss the border — before doing exactly that.
- In one of several long passages on immigration, Trump launched his most vitriolic attack yet on America’s Somali community, describing their homeland as “filthy, dirty, disgusting” and wondering why the U.S. couldn’t take migrants from Scandinavia instead. (The clip’s going viral, and he’s being heavily criticized for this language today.)
- In the same breath, Trump confirmed 2018 reports — denied at the time — that he’d described certain African and Asian nations as “shithole countries.”
