Donald Trump isn’t a billionaire. He just plays one on TV.
So I was told by the expert on Trump’s magical accounting, David Cay Johnston. The issue here is not the President’s troubled relationship with the truth, the problem is that he needs real billionaires to fund his presidential runs.
But they just weren’t that into him. Mega billionaires Charles and (now deceased) David Koch and Paul “The Vulture” Singer were “Never Trumpers.”
But “Never” is not a long time when there are billions in public treasure to divvy up.
BROTHER BILLY’S FILTH FACTORIES
David and Charles Koch had their beef with Trump, but little brother William “Bill” Koch was the first billionaire to put the big bucks into Trump’s campaign while Trump was still soaping up the rubes with his line that he was financing his campaign from his own pocket.
I filmed the first documentary on the Kochs in 1995, about the richest guys you’ve never heard of. Now you have. You need to know this: Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the Brothers Koch were at each other’s throats. David and Charles had shafted Bill and David’s twin, Fred, out of their share of Koch Industries. Bill, cheated and angry, called a reporter (me) to rat out his older siblings, providing some pretty detailed accounts of various felony crimes they’d committed.
And he gave me an insight into how billionaires operate. As I happened to have my tape recorder on, I’ll share:
Bill Koch: My brother, unfortunately, views himself as above the law, views himself—
GP: Which brother? You have three.
Bill Koch: Charles. Back to his libertarian philosophy where he believes that laws are immoral. He views himself as being above it, and he’ll go out and do whatever he wants, steal oil, pollute the environment, et cetera. Then when he gets caught, or someone’s coming after him, then he goes and buys all the politicians he can to counter that influence, to try to mitigate the cost of the crime, and they’ve been very effective at it. VERY effective.
Bill then detailed two multimillion-dollar under-the-table donations to presidential candidates and, through a fake front, to the GOP. This was pre–Citizens United, when corporate donations were a felony crime. “Buys politicians to mitigate the cost of the crime” refers to wholesale theft of oil. The Justice Department had written up an indictment of Charles and Koch Oil—but after Koch cash flowed, the indictment was quashed.
The point is, billionaires don’t donate to candidates. They invest. And they expect a return.
And Billy, once he cut a deal with his brothers, turned pro himself.
While Koch Industries has become the bête noire among environmentalists, it is Brother Bill who is truly the Goliath of Global Warming. His Oxbow Carbon is the number-one dealer of “PetCoke," the gunk left over from refining oil: compressed, hardened coal tar so filthy, so toxic, it is illegal to burn it in much of the USA. So, Bill Koch makes billions shipping if off to China.
What did Bill Koch want from Trump? What every billionaire wants: another billion—which Trump could deliver by providing more filth for Bill to sell. Trump promised to jam through the authorization of the Keystone XL Pipeline—to hell with environmental studies. The Pipeline will bring down from Canada to Texas the gunkiest, most carbon-heavy oil on the planet. It’s so heavy that the only way this tar-sands oil can get through the pipe is by removing some of the carbon sludge (PetCoke)—providing a steady supply for Oxbow.
But Bill had to move quick to gain the inside track with Trump: Brothers David and Charles had set up a competitor, Koch Carbon, which had already extracted PetCoke from the partly built pipeline, which Koch Carbon had piled up on the banks of the Detroit River in a mound bigger than an Egyptian pyramid.
CARRION INTEREST
Trump plays the “anti-billionaire billionaire”—going after the Big Boys on behalf the Little Man. At least until a billionaire scratches him behind the ear and makes him roll over for a donation.
At his 2016 rallies, Trump talked tough. He said, “The hedge guys are getting away with murder.” Trump said he’d close the “carried interest” tax loophole worth $170 billion to hedge fund moguls.
And for two men, “The Vulture” and “The Foreclosure King,” the loophole is worth more than a billion dollars to each.
So, at first, Paul “The Vulture” Singer was Never Trumper #1.
You don’t get the nickname “Vulture” for your charitable endeavors. I’ve been following this bird for 13 years for BBC Television and the Guardian, from his seizing the money meant to stop a cholera epidemic in the Congo Republic, to his helping the president of Peru escape murder charges, to the suffocation of the economy of Argentina. His so-called Vulture Fund has $40.2 billion at hand.
In 2016, Singer gathered big bucks for the laughable Presidential ambitions of Marco Rubio. My disguise at the Rubio fund-raiser in Manhattan had literally fallen off and his knuckle-draggers, with the Dick Tracy radio watches, grabbed me. I did get the chance to ask him, “Mr. Singer, I just want to ask you how many billions is it worth to buy the White House?” But I had to relay the question through his bodyguard’s wristband radio (very Dick Tracy!).
But I knew the answer: the carried interest tax loophole.
VOTE SUPPRESSION AIN’T CHEAP
In November 2012, the American public re-elected Barack Obama with a mass outpouring of voters of color that overwhelmed all the Jim Crow trickery. Seven months later, the US Supreme Court made sure that mistake would not be repeated: On June 25, 2013, the court issued Shelby v. Holder, gutting the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The Court, 5-4, eliminated the “pre-clearance” clause of the rights act. Until this ruling, Georgia could not simply knock off half a million voters, nor could Shelby County, Alabama, simply eliminate the county board seats held by Black residents unless they first received an OK from the US Justice Department, “clearance” that there was no Jim Crow hanky-panky.
The “pre-clearance” requirement applied to 16 states and parts of states, mostly in the “Deep South”—but also including New York City, Alaska and Arizona. (The pre-clearance requirement applied where less than half of all minority voters were registered when the law was passed. New York once blocked Puerto Rican citizens from voting, Arizona and Alaska shafted American Natives. In other words, you don’t have to eat deep-fried Snickers Bars to have a history of blocking voters of color.)
Kris Kobach’s Crosscheck and other forms of racially poisonous trickery spread like kudzu after the decision. Alabama’s requirement to have a driver’s license to vote—then closing DMVs in Black counties—took effect within hours of the Court decision. You could say the US Supreme Court in June 2013 elected Trump in 2016.
Liberal media was rightly upset with the decision. But I had another question: Where did Shelby County get the millions to take this case to the Supreme Court? This is a big bucks operation. Did the Klan hold a sheet sale? No, the push to gut the VRA was funded by Project on Fair Representation. And in turn, Project is a creature of Donors Trust, in turn funded by Koch money.
Congress had the power to adjust the Act to the Court’s liking. But a vicious, expensive lobbying campaign killed the VRA’s restoration. The bucks behind the lobbying? The Manhattan Institute. The Institute’s Chairman? Paul Singer, The Vulture.
It was the Koch/Vulture hit on the Voting Rights Act, not a couple of Russian Facebook ads, that gave us an unelected President.