PALM BEACH — It’s a mild day with a gentle breeze blowing off the coast, and a procession of Bentleys, Aston Martins, and Range Rovers lines up in front of 1840 South Ocean Blvd. John Paulson, an American billionaire and hedge fund manager, has invited guests to a private fundraising event for Donald Trump during the early phase of the U.S. presidential election campaign.
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The venue was Paulson’s sprawling estate, featuring endive and frisée salad, filet au poivre, and pavlova with berries for dessert. According to Politico, 117 guests attended, including casino operator Steve Wynn, fracking pioneer Harold Hamm, pharmaceutical heir Woody Johnson, and sugar baron Pepe Fanjul. In total, $50 million was raised to finance Trump’s election campaign. “Biggest night in fundraising of ALL TIME!!!” Trump later wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social.
Neither Trump nor most of the generous donors had to travel far for the event. The presidential candidate could have simply strolled down the street from his residence at the lavish Mar-a-Lago resort, accompanied by his wife, Melania, who wore a high-necked pink dress that evening.
Nowhere in the U.S. are so many of the super-rich clustered as tightly as in Palm Beach, Florida, where at least 58 billionaires own homes on this narrow, 15-mile-long strip, according to The Palm Beach Post
Since Trump made Mar-a-Lago his permanent home, the island has become the heartbeat of the MAGA movement. Trump’s loyalists have dubbed the Spanish colonial-style estate, with its massive U.S. flag waving above, the “White House in Exile.” Republican leaders and candidates for various offices flock to Palm Beach from Washington, all hoping for Trump’s endorsement or at least a photo opportunity.
Nowhere else do money and political power intertwine so blatantly.
This is particularly relevant in the election campaign, as Trump needs millions of dollars in local support, and the wealthy residents of Palm Beach expect significant returns on their investments.
According to Forbes magazine, at least 26 billionaires with a combined fortune of $143 billion are currently supporting Trump’s campaign financially. Some of them are known to have backed “Project 2025,” a controversial policy program intended to outline Trump’s second term. However, it became so radical that Trump had to distance himself from it.
Some of the 922 pages resemble a wish list for the super-rich: eliminating supervisory authorities for the financial sector and environmental protection agencies, firing many civil servants in ministries and federal agencies, and replacing them with temporary employees selected by the president.
Taking care of the super-rich
To access the island of the super-rich, one must cross one of the three drawbridges connecting it to the mainland. Police cameras monitor who comes and goes day and night. An exotic dream awaits on the other side: royal palms swaying in the wind, purple bougainvillea, neatly trimmed lawns, and Mediterranean-style palaces. However, you usually only see distant terracotta roofs, as meter-high manicured hedges block the view.
Behind one of these green protective walls, at 1768 South Ocean Blvd., sits the residence of Stephen A. Schwarzman. The 77-year-old, with an estimated fortune of billion according to Forbes, founded Blackstone, the world’s largest private equity firm — often referred to as “locusts” by German Social Democratic Party leader Franz Müntefering for their aggressive business practices. Private equity firms acquire struggling companies, dismantle them, and sell the parts for profit.
When Schwarzman purchased the property, it housed a historic villa called Four Winds, which measured 1,200 square meters and was designated a landmark. However, it lacked sufficient space for the financial professional. Despite protests, he had it demolished in 2004 and replaced with a new mansion.
We will get richer if Trump wins.
Schwarzman supported Trump during his first term in office. After the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, he distanced himself from Trump, like many bankers and major investors, but now he’s back on board.
“Like most Americans, I’m concerned that our economic, immigration, and foreign policies are taking the country in the wrong direction,” he told Axios in May. “That’s why I’m voting for change and supporting Donald Trump.” Like his financial colleagues, Schwarzman likely has a business interest in Trump’s election victory. After all, Trump provided generous tax cuts in 2017, but those cuts will expire if not renewed in 2025.
Trump has promised to take care of this as president — even if it would cost the U.S. federal budget at least trillion in lost tax revenue over 10 years. A private equity manager, who did not want to be mentioned told the Financial Times that Trump’s re-election was an “absolute must” for his industry, saying “we will get richer if he wins”.
How it all began
One of the few Palm Beach villas that is open to the public is the Henry Morrison Flagler Museum: a dazzling white neoclassical 75-room temple called Whitehall. It was “more wonderful than any palace in Europe, larger and more magnificent than any other private house in the world,” the New York Herald wrote when it was completed in 1902.
Flagler, co-founder of Standard Oil and one of the greats of the American Gilded Age, had chosen Palm Beach as the location for the palace, and that’s where it all began. A volunteer guide glides through endless suites of rooms in a green sheath dress: there’s damask wallpaper, Italian paintings and Russian marble. Flagler, the guide says, was the real head of Standard Oil, not Rockefeller.
In any case, Flagler had invested his oil money very profitably in railways and hotels. He turned Florida, which at the time still a swampland infested with mosquitoes and alligators, into the American Riviera and Palm Beach into the winter home of New York‘s moneyed aristocracy.
The tour guide does not mention that he forced black prisoners and delinquent debtors to do forced labor. Instead, visitors learn that Flagler worshipped Julius Caesar at the time, “just as Elon Musk has Napoleon as his role model today.”
Major profits and donations
Musk, currently the richest man in the world, is also a big fan of Trump. He just donated million to his campaign and could get a place in a future Trump administration.
But nobody has spent as much money on Palm Beach real estate as Kenneth C. Griffin. The hedge fund manager and securities trader, whose personal fortune Forbes estimates at billion, has gradually acquired half a dozen properties along South Ocean Boulevard through shell companies. It is said to have cost him 0 million, according to the Palm Beach Post.
The place where Griffin bought his property is still a major construction site, but soon the most expensive residential building in the world will be built here. It is expected to cost billion, and according to the plans, a modern, low-rise building will be grouped around a “gorgeous swimming pool with windows on both sides that will offer a fascinating view of the Atlantic Ocean,” according to the New York Post.
Trump has offered several of his Palm Beach neighbors the position of Treasury Secretary.
Griffin does not support Trump’s election campaign, at least not directly. “I’m very torn,” he recently told journalists. But the 55-year-old is one of the most important campaign donors for Trump’s Republican party colleagues who are running for Congress.
Since 2015, according to OpenSecrets, an organization that analyzes campaign donations, he has distributed around 0 million to conservative candidates, million for the current election alone. He can afford it. The crisis year of 2022 — with war in Europe, pandemic, recession concerns — was the most successful business year of Griffin’s life because he had bet on price increases in energy and raw materials. His hedge fund made billion in profits.
Favors for donors
Over the years, Trump has offered several of his Palm Beach neighbors the position of Treasury Secretary in a future government. Jeffrey Yass, a passionate poker player and competitor of Griffin in the stock and derivatives business, is also said to have received an offer. One of Yass’ most valuable investments is a share in TikTok’s Chinese parent company, the Beijing-based company ByteDance.
That’s an interesting detail, because until recently Trump had declared that he would ban the popular social media platform as soon as he was back in office. This may have led to Yass supporting Trump’s rival in the primaries.
The story took a turn in March when the Club for Growth Action, an organization whose primary goal is to “fight big government politicians” invited Trump to a meeting. Yass is one of the organization’s main donors. The event took place — where else? — in Palm Beach, in the luxury hotel The Breakers, founded by Flagler.
Six days later, Trump announced that he was now against a TikTok ban. And Yass promised to support Trump.
The most generous of all
The most generous campaign donor, however, is Timothy Mellon, scion of one of the oldest financial dynasties in the country. He alone has given more than 5 million to the pro-Trump super PAC Make America Great Again.
In a now-unavailable autobiography that Mellon himself published as an e-book in 2015, he explained his worldview: Black people have become “aggressive and unwilling to improve their situation themselves.” This is due to increasing social benefits.
Mellon owes his fortune to his grandfather, Andrew William Mellon, who served as treasury secretary under three Republican presidents (Harding, Coolidge and Hoover) from 1921 to 1932. During this time, he halved the inheritance tax rate and reduced income tax rates for top earners from 73 to 25%.
Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich recently lambasted Timothy Mellon in an essay, calling him “the product of a tax system pioneered by his grandfather that allows the perpetuation of dynastic wealth and the maintenance of its political power… [he] rages against only handouts that go to those born without silver spoons.”
The poolside brunch at the Colony Hotel, a Palm Beach institution, where the British royals have been known to stay. From here, it’s not far to Worth Avenue, a shopping street with luxury stores; if you don’t have your own Palm Beach property, you can spend the night here. Waiters in pink shorts serve coffee () and avocado toast ().
A man in his mid-fifties wearing stylish faded jeans is loudly talking on the phone with his broker. So loudly that the guests at the next table can hear everything he is saying. His companion is sipping a mimosa. When the man spots a sparrow, he throws a few crumbs at it and says: “Here, you can have some too.”
