By BILL BARROW
ATLANTA (AP) — President Donald Trump’s brash populism has at all times concerned incongruence: the billionaire businessman-politician stirring the passions of hundreds of thousands who, whatever the U.S. financial system’s trajectory, may by no means afford to stay in his Manhattan skyscraper or go to his membership in south Florida.
His second White Home is trying so much like the within of Mar-a-Lago, with extraordinarily rich Individuals taking key roles in his administration.
The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, is overseeing a brand new Division of Authorities Effectivity. Billionaires or mega-millionaires are lined as much as run the treasury, commerce, inside and schooling departments, NASA and the Small Enterprise Administration, and fill key international posts.
“He’s bringing in folks who have had great success in the private sector,” mentioned Debbie Dooley, an early 2015 Trump supporter and onetime nationwide organizer within the anti-establishment Tea Social gathering motion. “If you need to have brain surgery, you want the proven brain surgeons.”
Linda McMahon and Elon Musk attend the America First Coverage Institute Gala held at Mar-a-Lago on November 14, 2024 in Palm Seaside, Florida. (Joe Raedle/Getty Photographs)
Others increase considerations about conflicts of curiosity at odds with Trump’s pledge to battle for “forgotten men and women” in a rustic the place the median family internet price is about $193,000 and median annual family revenue is about $81,000.
“It’s hard to conceive how the wealthiest set of Cabinet nominees and White House appointments in history will understand what average working people are going through,” mentioned former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, who served underneath President Invoice Clinton and has warned for many years concerning the nation’s widening wealth and wage gaps.
Countered Dooley: “Trump sets the agenda. If they won’t enact his policies, then they will hear him say what we hear on ‘The Apprentice’ all the time: ‘You’re fired!’”
Here’s a nearer have a look at a few of Trump’s picks, their internet price based on Forbes, and what the alternatives may imply:
Elon Musk
Musk (internet price estimated above $400 billion) is chairing the brand new Division of Authorities Effectivity, which is a particular fee charged with slashing federal spending. The in depth ties his companies must the federal government have raised questions on Musk’s potential conflicts within the position.
Linda McMahon
Then-President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to be Secretary of Schooling Linda McMahon arrives to satisfy with Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) within the Russell Senate Workplace Constructing on December 09, 2024 in Washington, DC. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Photographs)
McMahon was picked to be Trump’s secretary of schooling. She is the spouse of Vince McMahon, who’s price at the very least $3 billion.
The previous WWE wrestling govt will lead an company that many conservatives have known as for abolishing altogether. Whereas that’s a heavy elevate politically, McMahon and Trump have endorsed an enlargement of “school choice,” applications that steer taxpayer cash to non-public faculty tuition. She additionally might be answerable for implementing Trump’s proposals to withhold federal cash from public faculties — Okay-12 and better schooling — that don’t meet White Home calls for to change or scrap range applications.
Doug Burgum
The North Dakota governor (estimated internet price $1.1 billion) made his cash as a software program entrepreneur. Burgum impressed Trump throughout his personal failed bid for the GOP’s 2024 presidential nomination. As inside secretary, Burgum can be charged with implementing Trump’s “Drill, baby, drill” promise — making it even simpler for vitality firms to faucet fossil gas assets, together with from public lands.
Scott Bessent
US investor and hedge fund supervisor Scott Bessent testifies earlier than the Senate Finance Committee on his nomination to be Secretary of the Treasury, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on January 16, 2025. (ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP through Getty Photographs)
Forbes has not but recognized Bessent as a billionaire, however the veteran hedge fund supervisor confirmed Monday as treasury secretary definitely is price many a whole bunch of hundreds of thousands. At Treasury, he’ll play key roles in promoting and implementing a lot of Trump’s signature insurance policies: reinstating the 2017 tax cuts tilted to companies and rich people, imposing tariffs on many imports and chopping taxes on time beyond regulation wages, Social Safety advantages and tip revenue.
Reich, the previous labor secretary, famous that Bessent and his fellow rich Cupboard designees stand to profit personally from Trump’s tax concepts. Trump tax insurance policies, which helped widen the deficit in Trump’s first time period, are juxtaposed with Bessent’s warnings concerning the risks of rising U.S. debt and the price of annual curiosity funds to the federal government’s bond holders.
Howard Lutnick
An obvious runner-up to move Treasury, Lutnick (estimated internet price $1.5 billion) has been nominated to be secretary of commerce. Lutnick, who made his fortune as a monetary companies govt, remains to be slated for a high-profile publish that may put him on the heart of Trump’s promised commerce wars with China and different nations, together with Mexico and Canada. Commerce additionally oversees a number of businesses, together with the Census Bureau, whose calculations are key to figuring out the funding distributions of applications throughout the federal authorities.
Kelly Loeffler
Former Sen., Kelly Loeffler. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Photographs)
The Georgia businesswoman named to steer the Small Enterprise Administration was the wealthiest member of the Senate throughout her temporary keep on Capitol Hill. Loeffler is married to Jeffrey Sprecher, CEO of Intercontinental Change, the publicly traded agency that owns the New York Inventory Change. That’s not the middle of commerce for the SBA’s normal clientele. The company was based in 1953 and describes itself as “the only cabinet-level federal agency fully dedicated to small business” by offering “counseling, capital, and contracting expertise as the nation’s only go-to resource and voice for small businesses.”
As a senator, Loeffler confronted ethics complaints over alleged insider buying and selling tied to inventory trades she and her husband made as members of Congress first began receiving briefings associated to the coronavirus pandemic. The trades occurred weeks earlier than the pandemic induced markets to plummet. Justice Division and Senate inquiries later discovered no wrongdoing on Loeffler’s half.
Jared Isaacman
Isaacman, one other monetary companies billionaire, was the primary rich particular person to take an area stroll by way of Musk’s firm, SpaceX. This alternative, as a lot as any, illustrates Trump’s lean to the rich non-public sector, provided that billionaires like Musk and Amazon chief Jeff Bezos at the moment are competing in an area sector that was as soon as the province of the federal authorities and the company that Isaacman would lead as NASA administrator.
