Date: Thursday, 29 October 2026
https://ericzuesse.substack.com/p/the-billionaires-who-made-and-make
https://theduran.com/the-billionaires-who-made-and-make-trumps-presidency/
The Billionaires who Made and Make Trump’s Presidency
28 October 2026, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)
https://www.opensecrets.org/outside-spending-2026/top-donors
Top Donors to Outside Groups: Individuals, 2026 cycle
Rank
Donor Name
Total Contribution to Recipient Viewpoint
1
Musk, Elon
$368,675,885 to REPUBLICANS
2
Uihlein, Richard
$129,618,068 to REPUBLICANS
3
Yass, Jeff
$110,600,000 to REPUBLICANS
4
Adelson, Miriam
$66,097,500 to REPUBLICANS
5
Horowitz, Benjamin
$55,780,000 to REPUBLICANS
6
Singer, Paul
$48,712,400 to REPUBLICANS
7
Andreessen, Marc
$43,880,000 to REPUBLICANS
8
Griffin, Kenneth, C.
$32,000,000 to REPUBLICANS
9
Mandel, Stephen
$28,218,000 to DEMOCRATS
10
Bloomberg, Michael
$27,878,998 to DEMOCRATS
——
Top 100 Donors Account for 61.4% of Contributions to Outside Groups, 2026 Cycle [I.e., billionaires control both Parties]
100 donors out of 1,220,232 total (0.008%) contributed $3.29B of $5.36B in tracked outside spending. [I.e., no more than 0.008% of donors dominate both Parties]
DONOR CATEGORY
RECIPIENT GROUP VIEWPOINT
Top 1% of Donors Account for 98.2% of Contributions to Outside Groups, 2026 Cycle
Top 1% of donors contributed $5.26B of $5.36B in tracked outside spending.
——
TOTAL from the top 10 donors to each Party:
$1,293,775,453 to Republicans from those 8.
$56,096,998 to Democrats from those 2.
Musk was 28.5% of the top 8 Republican Party donors, and gave 6.67 times as much as both of the Democratic Party’s biggest donors gave together.
Clearly, then, the vast majority of billionaires want the Republican Party to beat the Democratic Party.
On October 28th, the Washington Post headlined “Breaking down the cash fueling Democrats and Republicans in the midterms” and reported:
Democratic campaigns have dominated small-dollar fundraising this election cycle, raising four times as much as Republicans from small-dollar donors ahead of next week’s midterm elections, according to a Washington Post review of federal fundraising data.
Democratic House and Senate campaigns reported about $574 million from people who cumulatively gave less than $200, according to the fundraising data, compared with $143 million reported by similar Republican committees. Republicans, however, have dominated unlimited giving to outside groups. …
Republicans have retained a financial edge over Democrats because a small number of wealthy donors give to outside groups, with contributions dwarfing the small donations fueling the Democrats. Federal rules cap contributions to individual candidates, but there are no caps on giving to outside groups that run ads supporting candidates.
Three of the four individual donors who have given more than $100 million this midterm cycle mainly back Republican candidates. For example, Elon Musk has contributed $446 million to Republican-aligned PACs, making him the largest individual political donor in modern American history. Overall, the 50 biggest donors have contributed $1.7 billion to back Republicans compared with $832 million to support Democrats.
The fourth-biggest donor this cycle is billionaire George Soros, a prolific Democratic donor who has given $102 million to Democracy PAC, a liberal super PAC.
For some reason, Soros, who is the biggest of all lifetime Democratic Party donors, and is famous for his neoconservatism (which all billionaires apparently share) and for his neoliberalism (though less extreme about that than Republican Party megadonors are), isn’t yet shown in the opensecrets report for this year. Perhaps, the Washington Post’s report is based upon more-recent figures that aren’t yet at opensecrets; this would explain the Post’s mention of Soros, and its citing of $446 million from Musk to Republicans instead of opensecrets’ figure of $368,675,885. If Soros really is the biggest Democratic Party donor this year, then probably he will be what the Democratic Party’s winners on November 3rd will be mainly representing, whereas, clearly, Musk will be mainly what the Republican Party winners will be representing. America’s voters are choosing between Musk’s U.S. Government, or else perhaps Soros’s U.S. Government. But, in either case, would that be a democracy?
—————
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.
