Pay to Play?

Big donors are lining up for jobs in Washington.

In the waning days of the campaign, the richest man in the world poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Donald Trump’s campaign. It was an attempt to help him win the state of Pennsylvania, which political prognosticators predicted could be the state that decided the election.

In the end, Trump didn’t need Pennsylvania to beat Kamala Harris, but Elon Musk’s generous gesture wasn’t forgotten. Within days of his electoral win, President-elect Trump rewarded Musk with a role in his administration.

Musk isn’t the only billionaire who helped Trump achieve success with personal donations and fundraisers. And as a thank you, some of them will stand by his side in Washington.

Linda McMahon – Secretary of Education

WWE founder and billionaire Linda McMahon (no relation to me) has been a longtime Trump supporter, and has donated to all of his presidential runs. In fact, before Trump even ran for office, the McMahons gave the Trump Foundation $5 million, according to Open Secrets, an organization that tracks political donations.

For years, Linda McMahon has had her own political aspirations, giving up her position as CEO of WWE in 2009 to run for a seat in the US Senate. She lost that race, and another bid after that, spending $100 million of her own money to fund her campaigns.

In 2016, McMahon donated $7 million to Donald Trump’s presidential run, including $1 million in the final weeks of the election.

Afterward, McMahon got her first big job in politics when Trump picked her to run the Small Business Administration. She served as the SBA administrator from 2017 until 2019 when she resigned to help run a pro-Trump Super PAC.

McMahon proved to be a valuable asset to Trump in her new role at the Super PAC. During the 2020 election cycle, America First Action raised $150 million, thanks in large part to McMahon’s fundraising efforts. After that election, she went on to work at a pro-Trump think tank, the America First Policy Institute.

This time around, the McMahons gave just under $23 million to help Trump get elected, which put them in the top 20 of all Republican donors.

Before Trump picked Linda McMahon to head the Department of Education, he asked her to co-chair his presidential transition team, which vets potential political appointees, helps set the new president’s policy agenda, and coordinates with the outgoing administration.

McMahon’s selection as Education secretary wasn’t expected, in part because her name had been floated for Commerce secretary, but also because her experience in education is basically nonexistent.

She served in an appointed role on the Connecticut state Board of Education in 2009 but resigned in 2010 a day after the Hartford Courant told her they were going to release an article showing she lied on her vetting documents for the role. She said on the form that she had a degree in education, which she did not. She also discovered that she wasn’t allowed to fundraise for her senate campaign while serving on the state Board of Education — another reason to leave the post.

In his statement announcing McMahon’s role, Trump said, “We will send Education BACK TO THE STATES, and Linda will spearhead that effort.”

Trump has promised to eliminate the Department of Education (which he can’t do without Congressional approval), so it’s unclear exactly what McMahon will be doing moving forward.

Howard Lutnick – Secretary of Commerce

As the other co-chair of the presidential transition team, Howard Lutnick has been heavily involved in the planning for the new Trump administration, and fought hard for a role he really wanted and didn’t get: Treasury Secretary. He had to settle for heading the less desirable Department of Commerce.

Before he was nominated for that job, the billionaire was a major donor and fundraiser for Trump. According to Forbes, Lutnick himself donated more than $10 million to Trump’s presidential campaign, and also coordinated high ticket fundraisers, including one at his Hamptons home that raised $15 million.

The New York Times says through his personal donations and fundraisers, Lutnick contributed $75 million to Trump’s 2024 run.

Unlike McMahon, Lutnick has not been a longtime donor to Trump. He has supported Democratic candidates for Senate in the past, and donated to Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush in 2015.

Lutnick is the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald. The financial firm lost the most employees of any company on 9/11, since its headquarters were located right above where one of the planes hit the World Trade Center. Lutnick only survived because he took his son to his first day of kindergarten and showed up late to work that day. In total, 658 Cantor Fitzgerald employees died on 9/11, including Lutnick’s 36 year old brother.

According to Fox Business, Lutnick really wanted the role of Treasury Secretary, and engaged in a “nasty, hunger-games style, and weeks-long attempt… to block another Wall Street executive, hedge fund manager Scott Bessent, from being named Treasury Secretary, and get the job himself.”

Ultimately Lutnick had to settle for Commerce Secretary, but Trump also agreed to give him additional responsibilities, saying Lutnick would also “lead our Tariff and Trade agenda, with additional direct responsibility for the Office of the United States Trade Representative.”

Scott Bessent – Secretary of the Treasury

The man who beat out Lutnick for the coveted Treasury job, Scott Bessent, was also a donor and fundraiser for the Trump campaign. He personally wrote checks for more than $1 million to MAGA Inc, and donated nearly $700,000 to Trump’s campaign and organizations that supported him.

Bessent is the founder of the hedge fund Key Square Capital Management, which controls $4.5 billion. Before starting his own company, Bessent worked for major Democratic donor George Soros’ investment company, Soros Fund Management.

Bessent was a close personal friend to Trump’s late brother Robert for decades, and he gave Trump $1 million for his inauguration in 2016. Over the years he has given around $15 million to Republicans.

He has also brought in big money for Trump through fundraising. Bessent grew up in South Carolina, and during the Republican primary last year, he held an event for Trump in the state. Trump went on to beat Nikki Haley there (her home state), and wrapped up the Republican nomination shortly thereafter.

Trump says Bessent has “long been a strong advocate of the America First Agenda. He will help me usher in a new Golden Age for the United States, as we fortify our position as the World’s leading economy.”

If confirmed, Bessent will be the first openly gay Treasury secretary in history.

Elon Musk – DOGE

Of course, the biggest donor to receive a spot in Trump’s administration is the richest man in the world, Elon Musk. According to the AP, Musk’s Super PAC spent around $200 million to try to get Trump elected.

Musk paid voters in Pennsylvania $47 for every person they got to register to vote and sign a petition to “support the Constitution.” The personal information they collected then allowed Musk’s PAC to target them to convince them to vote for Trump. Near the end of the election cycle, Musk offered $1 million a day in giveaways to voters in Pennsylvania.

Now, Trump has picked Musk to lead an advisory panel in an agency Trump is calling the Department of Government Efficiency. It’s not an actual federal agency, so Musk won’t need Senate confirmation.

Musk will be tasked with finding cuts in the federal government, and making recommendations to the Trump administration. He has claimed he can cut $2 trillion, but experts don’t see a way to get close to that without touching very popular programs like Social Security and Medicare.

Musk, and his counterpart Vivek Ramaswamy, have said nothing is off limits, including cutting entire agencies, and Musk says his appointment will “send shockwaves through the system.” But given the principle of, “If Congress created it, only Congress can destroy it,” it’s unlikely that the boys of DOGE will be able to snap their fingers and make one-third of the federal government disappear.

Chris Wright – Secretary of Energy

Trump has nominated oil executive Chris Wright to lead the Department of Energy.

While he has personally given less than the others in this list, Wright did donate just under $230,000 to Trump and his political action committees. He also helped Trump with fundraising.

Wright is the CEO of Liberty Energy, which is a fracking company based in Denver. Fracking involves using chemicals and water to blast into the ground to extract oil and natural gas.

He’s also connected to one of Trump’s mega donors. Wright is a close friend of billionaire Harold Hamm, who gave $5 million to Trump this election cycle.

In April, Trump held a private meeting at his Mar-a-Lago resort for several oil executives. At that meeting, Trump told the attendees they should donate $1 billion to his campaign, because as president he would be able to undo environmental rules that they disliked.

Hamm organized the event, which was attended by North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, who is Trump’s choice to head the Department of the Interior.

Hamm donated to Burgum’s two gubernatorial campaigns, and last year, he donated $50 million to build the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in North Dakota. His company has also invested $250 million for a North Dakota pipeline project that Burgum supports.

Who will stay?

Of course, this is just Trump’s starting lineup. During his first term in office, there was major turnover in the administration, including his cabinet. In fact, several members of his cabinet had the shortest tenures in history, some of them lasting less than a month.

All of these nominees (other than Musk and Ramaswamy) will need Senate confirmation before they are officially part of Trump’s bench. But if history repeats itself, the likelihood that all of them will be there on his last day in office is very, very small.