As billionaire President-elect Donald Trump announced more cabinet nominations this week, his selections to co-head a new federal agency — billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy — met with members of Congress to discuss their plans for their fledgling Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Beyond the staggering fortune belonging to Musk, who is said to have spent more than a quarter billion dollars to help elect Trump, the President-elect’s cabinet nominations and high-level appointees are notable for their wealth.
Other Trump billionaire appointments include his daughter’s father-in-law Charles Kushner (Ambassador to France); former WWE exec Linda McMahon (Education); Howard Lutnick (Commerce); Doug Burgum (Interior); Scott Bessent (Treasury), and Warren Stephens (Ambassador to UK), among others.
I’m tired of the word “billionaire”.
And even more tired of them.
And tired of the increasingly accepted notion that they have some special skills or insights simply because they know how to legitimately/illegitimately accumulate money.
They ain’t all that.
— Eric Holder (@EricHolder) December 6, 2024
Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder responded this week on X and wrote: “I’m tired of the word ‘billionaire.’ And even more tired of them. And tired of the increasingly accepted notion that they have some special skills or insights simply because they know how to legitimately/illegitimately accumulate money. They ain’t all that.”
MAGA supporters on X are responding with photos of Holder and President Barack Obama shaking hands with Alexander Soros, son of billionaire Democratic donor George Soros.
Even Elon Musk replied to Holder’s post on his social media platform X by writing: “cc @Alexander Soros” with a laughing crying emoji.
cc @AlexanderSoros 😂
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 7, 2024
Liberal political activist and donor Alexander Soros chairs the Board of Directors of the Open Society Foundation his father founded and sits on the investment committee for Soros Fund Management.
The Soros family and their enterprises donated heavily to help elect Kamala Harris and other Democrats in 2024, as they have done historically. Soros reportedly gave $128.5 million to support the Democratic Party in the 2022 election cycle — and that was during the midterms, when spending usually dips — making him the country’s largest donor.
Both parties, of course, rely on billionaire donors, as the concentration of wealth at the top continues to grow globally — a reliance that has been especially prominent since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, opening the political spending floodgates.
Holder’s clumsily phrased objection wasn’t, in fact, a statement about billionaire donors, but instead a critique of the belief that billionaires have skill sets that make them more suitable than others to run governmental departments and conduct diplomacy, as cabinet members and ambassadors are charged with doing.
To the former AG’s point, which he unfortunately articulates in adolescent, petulant verbiage (“I’m sick of…they ain’t all that”), neither Soros, father or son, has been nominated for a cabinet position nor put in charge of a federal government agency.
