During his term as US president, there was an established routine to Donald Trump’s evenings in public service. When he got into bed at 6.30pm with the big cheeseburger and the bucket of Diet Coke – boudoir TVs set to “channels talking about me” – Trump liked nothing more than yakking on the phone to this billionaire or that. He whined, he bitched, he divulged, and when they finally ended the call, whichever billionaire had been on the other end of the line promptly called one of the other billionaires to laugh about it all behind his back.
“What a fucking idiot,” Rupert Murdoch once remarked after getting off a call with Trump in which Murdoch had had to explain that actually, the Silicon Valley elite did not “need” Trump’s help, as he imagined, having just enjoyed eight years where they “practically ran” the Obama administration. Obviously, Murdoch’s a notorious bitch; almost the Regina George of it all. But – also obviously – he was one of the special guys officially given “cleared caller” status in Trump’s White House, meaning they could get through to him any time. Plastics gotta plastic.
So yes – much as I am enjoying all the miles of complex in-depth coverage wondering what it is the current crop of Trump-backing billionaires want from him, I can’t help being reminded of a remark by the tech billionaire in Succession who is attempting to buy into American power and is attending a pre-election party. “I thought these people would be very complicated,” he reflects. “But they’re not. It’s basically just money and gossip.” “Oh yeah, that’s all there is,” comes the reply. “Money and gossip.”
Kamala Harris has more billionaires backing her, we keep hearing in news I think is supposed to be a matter of accomplishment for the vice-president. But the particular billionaires pulling for Trump stand on the potential threshold of huge money-and-gossip times. Among the mogul class’s truths-universally-acknowledged is the idea that money is best obtained via deregulation and tax cuts – and, in the case of, say, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, ever-more lucrative government contracts. As for how gossip is obtained … People say showbiz is mean and gossipy, but there really is no business as mean and gossipy as “mogul”. Money does not buy you happiness but it totally buys you a better quality of gossip, with the likes of Murdoch, Bezos, Steve Wynn, Stephen Schwarzman and all the others operating at an absolute weapons-grade level.
The gossip-money continuum is sort of everything to these guys, and most of them see Trump as their useful idiot. Or useful fucking idiot, in Murdoch’s case. Consider Nelson Peltz, the infamous activist investor (who British people may know as the father-in-law of would-be hot sauce mogul Brooklyn Beckham). Three years ago, Nelson was telling everyone that Trump would carry the disgrace of the 6 January insurrection for ever. “We had people shooting at each other in Congress,” Peltz fumed. “I mean, it’s beyond belief. And how could you say that is anything but his legacy?” Oh but you could, it turns out. In fact, by early this year, Nelson could be found throwing wildly lucrative fundraisers for Trump at his home. And why not? All manner of things could be in it for him. Peltz spent a chunk of Trump’s first term covertly trying to push him to launch an antitrust investigation into Amazon on account of its effect on the US Postal Service. Trump didn’t go that far that time, but he did launch a number of aggressive tweets about it. And rest assured, meanwhile, that the Amazon founder, Bezos, will have bitched a lot on the phone about that. Everybody’s always talking about everybody, in the in-crowd.
Why would you ever want to cast yourself out of this high-rollers circle jerk by appearing to have a principle or – even worse – allowing the help at one of your most junior businesses to appear to have one? In fact, speaking of Bezos, take his insistence last week that his Washington Post forgo its traditional candidate endorsement editorial, a decision which has thus far seen members of its editorial board resign and caused a reported 250,000 readers to cancel their subscriptions.
Or take Howard Lutnick, the Cantor Fitzgerald CEO, who is moonlighting as a senior official on Trump’s campaign, and who recently floated the idea that all government appointees to any pending Trump administration would have to prove “fidelity and loyalty” to him. Hey – Howard’s just saying whatever needs to be said to stay in the loopy-loop. It’s not like government workers are going to be making any of the decisions anyway.
The only billionaire who doesn’t quite fit in the gang is Elon Musk. My gut says the other billionaires are not at all sure about Musk. At the Allen & Co Sun Valley conference, that annual retreat for the point-nought-nought-nought-nought-nought per cent, you suspect none of them would like to get stuck in the barefoot yurt with Elon. He’s weird, he’s creepy (but not in the Monty Burns way they’ve all legitimised), and – this is the worst part – he comes off like he might somehow take their money. Not clear how, just … vibes. His billionaire vibes are off. I would kill to hear what they say about him in the mogul phone call circle. At the very least I expect Elon to one day make an aggressive attempt to acquire WhatsApp off Mark Zuckerberg, purely so he can read all their messages slagging him off.
In the meantime, as the election bears down on the US and the wider world, we must while away our time wondering why these extremely transactional mega-rich men back this other extremely transactional mega-rich man. It would be lovely, come Wednesday morning, not to have to put one’s finger on it.
Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
