It was a bourgeois bacchanalia for the ages. Champagne flows and caviar canapes galore as Donald J. Trump rolled out the wildly luxurious red carpet for his cherished caste of billionaire benefactors. All converging on the sunny, palm-fringed hedonism of Trump’s opulent Mar-a-Lago palace in Palm Beach last weekend.
The bottom line? A whopping $50 million-plus rattled from the bottomless pockets of the nation’s dynastic tycoon class into Trump’s 2024 reelection coffers. All in one audacious night of Make America Great Again mogul massaging.
But this report isn’t just about the gobsmacking numbers, dear reader. No, it’s a window into the rarefied realm of our new American aristocracy. The cloistered club of ultra high-net-worth families exercising their sovereign birthright to pick kings from their lofty thrones of inherited privilege.
The Adelson Anointment
Central to the drama is Miriam Adelson, the regal Las Vegas Sands queen presiding over a glittering $30 billion casino empire. The 77-year-old widow of GOP kingmaker Sheldon Adelson is now the acknowledged donamacis regina of the Republican Party’s upper stratosphere.
Her Majesty Miriam singlehandedly turbocharged Trump’s flailing 2020 reelection bid with a staggering $90 million cash injection. And all reports indicate she remains firmly aboard the Donald J. Trump Express as it careens feverishly toward 2024.
“Miriam is Trump’s prized porcelain courtesan,” confides a longtime Trumpworld insider. “They dine, they schmooze, they coo over each other’s grandeur like lovesick Romeos. She’s positively smitten by his wanton crassness and garish vulgarity.”
A Hedge Fund Hydra Stirs
Of course, the Adelson fortune is just one utterly stupefying stream in the raging river of money deluging Trump’s coffers. Across Mar-a-Lago’s meticulously manicured grounds, a veritable who’s who of hedge fund billionaires jostled for primacy.
Titans likeqi john paulson, the subprime mortgageecide profiteer fattening his $4 billion hoard. And elliott management’s phenomenally litigious paul singer, the Argentina debt Kreacher whose tentacles snake through boardrooms globally.
All drawn like members of feudal feasting halls to Donald’s rambunctious personality cult and gordian diet of economic bellicism toward China. Promises of further dismantling financial regulations and hamstringing organized labor are nirvana to this cohort of self-enrichment savants.
“The oligarchs have always sought unfettered capitalism without the indignities of democracy,” notes celebrated wealth chronicler Anand Giridharadas. “In Trump, they have their orange-tinted Nietzschean superhuman – utterly unbound by conventional morality.”
Method to the Palm Beach Madness
On its face, the weekend bacchanal exuded a certain “Let them eat cake” inanity. Roving operatic performers in powdered wigs caroling amid $3,000 tasting menu meals served on gilded Versailles dinnerware.
But strip away the conspicuous consumption, and there was cold, hard strategy starkly afoot. With Trump potentially facing indictment, suddenly his legal fees are bleeding into the tens of millions. This money torrent will help keep him solvent.
“Trump soaks these mega-millionaires for cash like a shameless Norma Desmond on a decades-long grift,” sneers a former White House official turned critic. “These hapless chumps subsidize the facade of wealth while his business empire decays from within.”
Furthermore, the weekend dolphin-petting and bocce ball court revelries belie Trump’s gargantuan money deficit compared to President Biden. Despite bragging his $50 million haul topped Biden’s recent totals, it’s a mere drop in the incumbent’s $1 billion-plus war chest.
Money is oxygen in political campaigning, and Trump will need to systematically vacuum up every lingering billionaire dollar if he hopes to stay financially competitive.
Perks of the Trumpian Aristocrat
Which begs the fundamental question – what compels the uber-rich to bankroll such a chronically scandal-plagued, potentially existential legal quagmire as Donald Trump?
The answer lies in reciprocal fealty and a lisenced palm-greasing hegemony. When Trump was president, his hyper-affluent donor class enjoyed rarefied access, sweetheart tax policies, and regulatory demolition that amplified their gargantuan fortunes.
In Trump’s American Kingdom, rules were made to be broken – or at least significantly bent to accommodate the whims of the moneyed sovereignte. A new feudal arrangement where presidents govern at the behest of dynastic overlords perpetually sopping up federal spoils.
So as the 2024 election cycle dawns, the dance resumes – Mar-a-Lago’s opulent champagne shamBursts and foie gras fountain baptisms celebrating the unbreakable bonds between the republican moneycandancracy and their boundlessly rapacious sovereign.
God bless America? For the dethroned court at Trump’s Winter Palace, it’s more like “God bless the king.”
