The New Age of Trump: Protection Money and FU You Money
How our billionaires are responding.
Today’s Secret show is a banger. I’m just going to give you one quote from Sarah as your teaser:
“I see how they get away with it now.”
Go listen to this thing right now. It’s really good.
1. Protection Money
This week we got word that two of the world’s most consequential billionaires have decided to pay tribute—literally—to Donald Trump. Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg are each gifting $1 million to Trump’s “inauguration committee.”
A president’s “inauguration committee” or “inauguration fund” is a slush fund, pure and simple. In theory, it is used to cover expenses relating to the inaugural celebrations. In practice, it’s dark money. The inaugural fund is required to disclose who gives money to it, but is not required to disclose what the money is spent on. And in cases where there is a surplus—where it raises more money than it spends on the inauguration festivities—it is not required to refund or dispose of the money in any particular way.
In other words: It’s pure tribute. The inauguration fund is a way for rich people to funnel money to the incoming president that he can then use however he sees fit, completely unfettered and under cover of darkness. The inauguration fund is no different than feudal lords approaching the new king with gifts of rubies, or mobsters showering a new mayor with envelopes of cash.
It has always been thus. Trump didn’t invent the corruption of the inauguration fund. But he is an innovator and his genius was to turn the inauguration scheme from ritualized tribute from supporters into a protection racket aimed at opponents, too.
Bezos and Zuckerberg have had troubled histories with Trump.
During his first term Trump explicitly targeted Bezos’s main businesses (both Amazon and Blue Origin) because he did not like the coverage he received from Bezos’s media holding (the Washington Post).1
Trump’s beef with Zuckerberg was mostly in relation to his unhappiness with being deplatformed from Facebook for spreading election-related lies and calls for violence. In response, Trump has threatened to send Zuckerberg to prison. For life.
“We are watching him closely, and if he does anything illegal this time he will spend the rest of his life in prison—as will others who cheat in the 2024 Presidential Election,” Trump wrote in his book Save America, which was published in August.
Zuckerberg and Bezos responded to Trump’s threats to themselves and their businesses by literally journeying to Mar-a-Lago and figuratively handing Trump envelopes of cash while publicly praising the incoming president.
There is no way to view this except as a protection racket. They are paying Trump and praising Trump in the hopes that Trump will make sure nothing unfortunate happens to their nice little businesses.
You may be thinking to yourself, “But this is so brazen! Everyone can see exactly what’s happening!”
That is the point. Trump has reached the position—elected by a plurality of his fellow citizens, immunized from all criminal activity by the Supreme Court—where he wants the protection racket to be out in the open. He wants everyone to see it.
Because these are the new rules and he wants to be sure that everyone whose life could be touched by his government—meaning: everyone—understands this reality.
And that, so long as they pay, they’ll be fine.
But there’s another kind of money floating around our new reality, too. Let’s talk about it.