Perhaps one of the most interesting factors in the race for the White House in 2016 is not the candidates themselves, but who their donors are — specifically, their most financially endowed donors.
When it comes to individuals — at least in the case of Democrat Hillary Clinton — those donors are virtually all billionaires, and out of the world’s (and the U.S.’s) wealthiest people, more than 99 percent are lined up behind Clinton.
It doesn’t take a genius to guess why that is — because, almost indisputably, Clinton will make sure that these people will get everything they want politically and more; she will allow them to gain increased wealth, to face decreased regulation and allow them to exploit more of the world’s middle-class and poor earners to enrich themselves.
During the tenure of Barack Obama as president, virtually all of the gains in income in the United States went to the top 1 percent of citizens, whose annual earnings are defined as $434,682 or more. Under Clinton, not only would that trend continue, it would be almost certain to accelerate.
Just a brief examination reveals that billionaires backing Clinton compose a “Who’s Who” of America’s richest people. Here’s a brief rundown:
Bill Gates
The Microsoft billionaire has been a backer of Clinton since she announced her candidacy. Gates’ development initiatives in third-world countries dovetail neatly with the globalist goals of the Clinton Foundation and billionaire George Soros (see below).
Even though Gates no longer has any day-to-day role in Microsoft, the company he co-founded 41 years ago, he stands to benefit from any gains in its stock, and like other tech billionaires on this list, he favors Clinton (and Barack Obama) because they seek to rewrite rules on H-1B visas, allowing foreign-born engineers from India and elsewhere to take jobs from American workers (who in the worst cases will have to train their own replacements).
Jeff Bezos
The founder of Amazon.com is also the owner of the Washington Post, a paper that has been an unabashed supporter of Clinton since the beginning of her campaign.
Bezos’ ambitions seem to know no bound as his company will benefit from not only more H-1B visa workers (see above) but also from labor deregulation that will allow his massive warehousing operation to operate at even lower costs, driving more brick-and-mortar stores out of business.
Bezos will also be a big benefactor if the Transpacific Partnership or other free-trade agreements get signed because it will lower prices on his products and ramp up sales as American jobs get shipped overseas.
Warren Buffett
The legendary Nebraskan billionaire in theory would be taxed more under the so-called “Buffett rule” of Hillary Clinton’s tax plan that would impose a 30 percent tax on individuals earning $5 million or more annually. But Buffett surely has tax lawyers who are ready for such an eventuality.
Buffett has been the biggest indirect beneficiary of government bank bailouts, seeing $13 billion of his fortune saved when the Obama administration rescued Wall Street financial houses in the economic crisis of 2008.
Like Jeff Bezos, above, many of the companies Buffett has invested in would benefit from the Transpacific Partnership and/or other free-trade agreements passed by Obama and Hillary Clinton.
Also, Wall Street deregulation and the anticipated private management of Social Security funds would benefit Buffett, who’s invested deeply in financial heavyweights Wells Fargo, Bank of New York and Goldman Sachs.
Mark Zuckerberg
The Facebook co-founder has been one of Hillary Clinton’s biggest donors, giving her campaign more than $43 million so far in 2016 alone. Like other tech company founders (see Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, above), Zuckerberg is likely counting on favorable changes to the H-1B visa program that will reduce his labor costs, which are likely Facebook’s largest expense.
Simple math says that $43 million is a drop in the bucket for this young billionaire who at age 32 is the country’s fourth-wealthiest person. But Zuckerberg also has international ambitions, and Clinton’s globalist allegiances will give Zuckerberg’s company massive gains in users outside the U.S., in countries such as India and Brazil.
Not only has Zuckerberg donated money to the Clinton campaign, he’s also tilted the scales of his social media platform heavily toward the Democrats, giving huge exposure to George Soros-backed anti-GOP and anti-Donald Trump propaganda (see below), which Facebook’s millennial audiences can’t seem to get enough of.
Michael Bloomberg
The former mayor of New York City and founder of the financial news network that bears his name was a speaker at the Democratic National Convention after deciding not to enter the presidential race himself.
Though he was officially a Republican when he ran for mayor, Bloomberg was acknowledged by almost all parties to be the ultimate RiNO (Republican in Name Only), who is so in favor of gun control that he’s personally pledged $50 million toward the effort. Bloomberg strongly supports efforts of the United Nations to limit gun sales in the U.S.
The Koch Brothers
The two brothers responsible for some of the heaviest pollution in the United States are less-than-avid fans of Hillary Clinton, but have publicly said that they will not spend any money advertising against her. After being reviled by Donald Trump when the business magnate won the GOP nomination, the brothers have stopped funding down-ticket candidates who ally themselves with Trump, deciding to save big spending for elections in 2018 and 2020.
Clinton’s efforts with free-trade agreements would definitely benefit the Koch brothers in a big way, and they’ve spent more than $42 million lobbying for the TPP so far. Any aggressive military action by Clinton in the South China Sea would also likely benefit the brothers due to their oil interests.
Larry Page, Sergei Brin, and Eric Schmidt
Larry Page and Sergei Brin, the two co-founders of Google, are solid Clinton supporters like the other tech billionaires in this list, again for the H-1B visa reasons, but also because Clinton’s globalist agenda would give them greater control over the world’s information, operating systems, telecommunications infrastructure and geo-mapping.
Government contracts with intelligence agencies and a tight integration with the nation’s NSA apparatus are also likely a huge factor in their endorsement of Clinton. Google currently employs one of the best-funded lobbying efforts in Washington.
Eric Schmidt, the billionaire chairman of Google and a member of the Bilderberg Group and the Trilateral Commission, who doesn’t appear in this list but nonetheless is America’s 36th-wealthiest person, is also a Clinton supporter. In fact, Schmidt is the founder of political group The Groundwork, which plays a pivotal part in the Clinton campaign’s digital outreach and analytics efforts.
There are whispers that Google has skewed its search results to favor Clinton-friendly stories at Schmidt’s urging. In 2012, Schmidt was the head of the Obama campaign’s technology team, and some give him personal credit for as much as half of Obama’s margin of victory in the 2012 presidential race.
The Walton Family
The Walton family, heirs to the Walmart fortune established by retail whiz Sam Walton, includes Sam’s 67-year-old daughter Alice Walton, who is purportedly an alcoholic (she killed a driver in 1998 while intoxicated and has multiple DUIs on her record, some 22 years apart). Alice is one of Clinton’s largest individual donors.
Hillary Clinton served on the board of Walmart for six years and since has said nothing about the retail giant’s union-crushing efforts, racial discrimination or effect on small businesses. Like Jeff Bezos’ Amazon, Walmart would be a huge benefactor of the TPP and other free-trade agreements.
Phil Knight
The Nike founder would love it if foreign labor costs were reduced, so his company could lower costs at its overseas factories. The TPP and other such agreements would help it do just that. “I do believe that international trade agreements benefit both nations, always,” said Knight earlier this year.
George Soros
Out of all the billionaires in this list, Soros is by far the most involved in this election. Soros has been a longtime supporter of both Clintons, giving money to Bill and Hillary’s campaigns as far back as 1992.
But Soros isn’t merely a partisan fighter; his efforts in backing Clinton in this election go far deeper than that; any watchers of Soros over the last decades know that his mind is always working to calculate any possible financial benefits can be had by adjusting the levers of power all over the world.
Soros has his tentacles in elections and administrations not just in the U.S., but in European, Asian and Middle Eastern countries and wars.
Through his Open Society Foundation, Soros is funding a massive propaganda campaign in this election, the size and scope of which has yet to be matched, particularly on the Internet, and particularly in social media. Soros has donated millions to social justice warrior groups in the U.S. which may be called upon to stir up violence in inner cities in the near future.
He is funding media and outreach efforts to bring more refugees into the U.S. — vetted or not — particularly from the Middle East. Soros won’t say it explicitly, but his goal is to destabilize Western democracies so their economies crash and he can profit from their ruin. He has already demonstrated this in 1992 when he made more than $1 billion in one day by speculating against the British pound.
Soros’ agenda as regards the U.S. economy should be of especial concern to American voters. Even at age 86, this troublesome man has more influence over the nation’s politics than whole blocs of the nation’s voter groups.
Laurene Powell Jobs
The widow of Steve Jobs is Apple’s largest shareholder and also sides with the other tech billionaires on this list on H-1B visas but also, she has an interest in lower foreign labor and manufacturing costs as well, so it’s safe to say that free-trade agreements intrigue her from a financial perspective.
Also attractive to her is allowing Apple to pay very little tax despite its tremendous profits, which it does by keeping the bulk of its earnings overseas in Europe and elsewhere.
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have both made noise about corporate repatriation of taxable profits, but it’s safe to say that Donald Trump is far more serious about this issue than Hillary Clinton.
Abigail Johnson
The scion and now-CEO of her family’s financial company Fidelity Investments, Johnson is a Wall Street connection and funder of Clinton who would benefit from watered-down banking reform under Clinton and from any mandatory savings account plans if Social Security were to be transformed.
Steven Cohen
One of the best-known founders of a hedge-fund company, Cohen runs S.A.C. Capital Advisors and its successor firm, Point72 Asset Management, created after the former firm paid a $1.8 billion fine for insider trading. Like Abigail Johnson, Cohen’s Wall Street connections and likely lust for Social Security money, as well as weakened banking regulation, make him a Clinton backer.
Elon Musk
The founder of Tesla is a futurist who would benefit from environmental deals enacted by a Clinton administration. Clinton’s support for global warming initiatives (while simultaneously taking donations from many of the world’s biggest polluters) makes many speculate exactly where his interests lie specifically, but at least publicly, the Clinton campaign’s policies coincide with Musk’s.
In addition to the above billionaires, more than 90 percent of the remaining American billionaires on the Forbes 400 list of the wealthiest Americans favor Clinton for president, as do a huge percentage of the world’s billionaires outside the U.S.
Many of these billionaires reside in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Great Britain, Ireland, China, India, Mexico, Monaco, Switzerland and Brunei.
Although these billionaires are unable to vote in the U.S. election, their affiliated companies have given money to the Clinton Foundation and in many cases, sponsored speeches of either Hillary or Bill Clinton or gave money to the couple in other ways.
Note that only 23 percent of Hillary Clinton’s campaign donations have come from individuals thus far; the rest are from companies — particularly the business interests of the wealthiest members of society.
Meanwhile, in Donald Trump’s camp, there are a mere six billionaires who have publicly announced their support for Trump. When you read the list below take note of the difference in the billionaire’s who support Trump vs. Hillary Clinton—the billionaire’s below are not voting for a candidate solely based on their own business interests, they are voting for the candidate they think can best help the middle class and stimulate the economy.
Sheldon Adelson
Sheldon Adelson is a casino entrepreneur who famously dumped $100 million into the 2012 presidential race when he supported Mitt Romney. Adelson is a hardcore supporter of the state of Israel and politicians who are friendly towards it.
It’s safe to say that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not a fan of the Obama administration or of Hilary Clinton, both of whom he feels conspired to craft the U.S. nuclear deal with Israel’s enemy, Iran.
It also doesn’t help that Obama and Clinton both appear to be in bed with Saudi Arabia, with the Clinton Foundation taking in up to $25 million from the kingdom.
The Mercer Family
The family of billionaire Robert Mercer announced that they would be funding Trump’s campaign to the tune of $1 million in August, in something of a surprise announcement. Previously supporters of Texas Senator Ted Cruz, the Mercers are one of the primary backers of the film version of author Peter Schweizer’s book “Clinton Cash.”
Carl Icahn
The famous takeover investor has been a Trump fan for some time, expressing his support for the colorful candidate in 2015. Icahn favors corporate tax money repatriation to the U.S., and Trump, in turn, hinted at making Icahn Secretary of the Treasury if he’s elected.
Peter Thiel
The co-founder of Paypal spoke at the Republican National Convention in July, becoming the first gay man to do so publicly. “I don’t pretend to agree with every plank in our party’s platform. But fake culture wars only serve to distract us from our economic decline. And no one is being honest about it but Donald Trump,” said Thiel to applause.
Joe Ricketts
The founder and former CEO and chairman of TD Ameritrade is bucking the trend of Wall Street managers and financiers to support Donald Trump. Ricketts has made statements that electing a Democrat “represents four more years of the Obama-Clinton economic policies that continue to cripple the middle class.” Ricketts has served on the board of conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute and has funded anti-Obama ads in the past.
T. Boone Pickens
The Texas oilman who became known as a takeover investor has been a staunch Republican for decades and served on the executive committee to nominate close Trump associate and former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani for president in 2007. “I’m ready to take a chance on [Trump],” Pickens has said.
