The president likes to criticize Trump for being too cozy with his fellow billionaires. But Biden’s biggest backers are worth roughly $170 billion—more than triple the collective net worth of Trump’s top tycoons.
Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/leokamin/2024/06/27/here-are-bidens-top-10-biggest-billionaire-donors-bloomberg-reid-hoffman/
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Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/leokamin/2024/06/27/here-are-bidens-top-10-biggest-billionaire-donors-bloomberg-reid-hoffman/
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Today on Forbes, here are Biden's top 10 biggest billionaire donors.
00:07Joe Biden's big cash advantage over Donald Trump is gone.
00:10Trump's main super PAC, which entered May trailing Biden's operation by $20 million,
00:15made up ground after a New York jury convicted the former president on 34 felony counts.
00:21No one donated more than Timothy Mellon, a banking heir,
00:25who, as we told you last week, shelled out $50 million the day after the verdict.
00:30But Biden has rich friends, too.
00:33He's now trying to reassure his big donors after what many called a shaky debate performance last week.
00:38These donors are concentrated in Silicon Valley and New York,
00:42and they have already funneled $77 million to groups backing the president,
00:46and in some cases, his allies.
00:49None of the president's donors are richer or more generous than Michael Bloomberg,
00:54who has spent more money on federal elections than anyone in American history.
00:59Having given $20 million so far this cycle,
01:02the former New York City mayor, whose current net worth is $106.2 billion,
01:07is already at the top of Biden's list of donors.
01:10Still, his 2024 outlay amounts to less than 2% of the total he spent during the 2020 election,
01:18when Bloomberg mounted his own bid for president.
01:21Bloomberg blew more than $1 billion on his own campaign in 2020,
01:26got knocked out, then threw his weight behind Biden,
01:29contributing over $100 million to groups that backed him.
01:33He donated $19 million to Biden's main super PAC at the end of May.
01:38Bloomberg, who got rich selling data-packed machines to virtually everyone on Wall Street,
01:43has given billions of dollars to charitable organizations.
01:46Yet his fortune continues to balloon.
01:49Bloomberg entered the exclusive $100 billion club earlier this year.
01:54At number two is Reid Hoffman, whose net worth is $2.5 billion,
02:00and who has given $17.7 million in donations to Biden groups.
02:05A venture capitalist with Greylock Partners,
02:07Hoffman co-founded PayPal with Elon Musk and Peter Thiel before starting LinkedIn,
02:12which he sold to Microsoft for $26 billion in 2016.
02:17While other members of the so-called PayPal mafia have drifted to the right in recent years,
02:22Hoffman has become one of the nation's biggest Democratic donors.
02:25He has already poured more than $40 million into left-leaning groups since 2020,
02:30with nearly half of that going to groups supporting Biden.
02:33Hoffman said, quote,
02:35America has the best economy in the world under Biden,
02:38and he is running against a convicted felon who has a history of bankrupting businesses.
02:44At number three was Jim Simons, who passed away in May
02:48and had given $10.2 million to Biden groups.
02:52Simons, whose net worth was $31.4 billion,
02:56left his position in Stony Brook University's math department
02:59to start the pioneering quantitative trading firm Renaissance Technologies.
03:04He died on May 10th at 86 years old and is survived by his wife, Marilyn.
03:09The couple had been liberal donors for decades,
03:12and Jim continued to give major sums in the last months of his life,
03:15including a $6.6 million donation to Biden's Super PAC just a week before he died.
03:22At number four is Michael Moritz,
03:25whose net worth is $6.2 billion and who has given $8.3 million to Biden groups.
03:31A native of Wales, Moritz worked in Time magazine's San Francisco offices in the 1980s
03:37when he sensed something brewing in Silicon Valley and jumped to venture capital.
03:42He eventually became a partner at Sequoia Capital, one of the world's most renowned VC firms.
03:47Early investments in companies like Google, Yahoo, and PayPal earned Moritz billions.
03:53He gave large sums to Barack Obama's 2008 campaign,
03:57sat out the 2016 election, then emerged as a major donor in 2020,
04:02giving more than $4 million to pro-Biden groups.
04:05He's going big again, giving more via a single contribution in April
04:09than he did during the entire 2020 cycle.
04:13At number five is Stephen Mandel,
04:16whose net worth is $2.5 billion and who has given $6.8 million to Biden groups.
04:22Mandel founded the hedge fund Lone Pine Capital in 1997.
04:26He cut a $5 million check to Biden's biggest PAC in 2022.
04:30He has also given millions to support the charter school movement,
04:33and he sits on the board of directors of Teach for America.
04:36Long a dependable Democratic donor, Mandel has gotten more generous in recent years,
04:41pitching in $200,000 to support Hillary Clinton in 2016
04:45and nearly $5 million to back Biden in 2020.
04:50For full coverage and to see the rest of the list,
04:53check out Leo Kamen's piece on Forbes.com.
04:57This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes.
04:59Thanks for tuning in.
05:03♪