Timothy Mellon donated more to Trump than Elon Musk did

In the 2024 election cycle, Mellon, 82, has donated $125 million to the super PAC Make America Great Again, Inc. Which supported Trump, according to Federal Election Commission documents.

Including donations to help Republican congressional candidates and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Mellon has donated a total of $165 million, according to campaign finance trackers. Open secrets.

Mellon wasn’t the only billionaire to provide nine-figure expenditures to Trump. Tesla CEO Elon Musk He made at least $119 million To the political action committee he created to re-elect Trump. When including money allocated to other Republicans, Musk gave at least $132 million.

But he did so in a much more public way than Mellon, who is known to avoid the spotlight. Mellon is the grandson of Andrew Mellon and a reclusive billionaire who has in the past expressed specific views on federal entitlement programs, which he has called the “resurgence of slavery.”

Mellon rarely speaks to the press and seems to have little interest in communicating with the politicians he donates to. Although he distributed huge sums of money to political groups and politicians, many never met him. During the 2020 election, Republican staffers had to Google him to find out who he was when he reached out with a large donation offer. According to to New York Times.

Mellon did not respond to requests made through his family foundation. Other efforts to reach him, including inquiries to his publisher, were unsuccessful. A lawyer who worked with him in the past said he no longer represents him.

In a Rare interview from 2020Mellon told Bloomberg that he believed Trump had done what he said on the stump.

“He did the things he promised, or tried to do the things he promised…on trade and redressing the balance between our country and the rest of the world, especially China,” Mellon said.

Mellon donated to RFK Jr. Before withdrawing from the study

In addition to Trump, Mellon donated to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s bid for president. He also gave $25 million to the American Values ​​2024 political action committee that supported Kennedy.

Kennedy defaced Mellon’s self-published autobiography panam. captain Released in 2015.

Kennedy wrote of Mellon: “Tim Mellon is a maverick businessman who embodies the most admirable qualities that Franklin Roosevelt called the American industrial genius.” (Mellon and Kennedy share a publisher in Skyhorse Publishing.)

For about a hundred years, the Mellon family has been heavily involved in American politics. Mellon’s grandfather, Andrew, was Secretary of the Treasury from 1921 to 1932. In that position, he cut taxes for America’s wealthiest and campaigned successfully to eliminate any estate taxes so he could leave his fortune to his heirs. Prior to his work in the public sector, the elder Mellon made his money in banking, manufacturing, and investing in early-stage companies.

Mellon family remains One of the richest people in the country with a net worth of $14 billion, According to to Forbes. The exact financial holdings of Timothy Mellon are not well understood. In a 2014 filing, he said his net worth was About 700 million dollars. the London times This was estimated by 1 billion dollars. close He said Vanity gallery Mellon didn’t want people to know his true net worth, which put it closer to $4.2 billion.

The younger Mellon appears to have entered politics later in life. From 1996 to 2018, Mellon donated about $350,000. According to to Wall Street JournalThis is far less than the hundreds of millions he pumped into supporting Republicans during the Trump era. In the 2020 election, Mellon donated $60 million to Republican candidates, including $20 million to Trump, according to Open Secrets. In the 2022 midterm elections, he gave $41.7 million to candidates.

“He doesn’t want anyone to tax him.”

In addition to donating to candidates and their political action committees, Mellon has also given money to other conservative causes.

In 2021, Mellon donated $53 million to Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s fund to build a wall on the state’s border with Mexico. According to To reports from Texas Tribune. Mellon’s donation amounted to 98% of the money the fund ended up raising. The donation was likely tax deductible because it was given to the state government for use in public works.

Other members of the Mellon family were shocked, even dismayed, by their relative’s support for Trump, although some suspected it might have something to do with taxes.

“I think it’s just that he wants to be left alone, and he doesn’t want anyone to tax him,” a Mellon family member said. Vanity gallery. “It’s this libertarian point of view that’s gone extreme. There’s a lot of really wealthy people who don’t need to think about what’s best for America anymore.”

Although he inherited one of America’s great industrial fortunes, Mellon continued to be self-employed. In the 1980s, he took over management of a railway company called… Guilford Transportation Industries which purchased several smaller railroads in the Northeast. Several years later he rebranded it Pan Am Systems after purchasing the logo and name from the defunct airline. In 2020, Mellon sold the company to CSX Transportation for $600 million.

Politically Melun is “to the right of Attila the Hun”

Like the men he donated to, Mellon is the scion of a wealthy family that has over the years seen his eccentric tendencies morph into virulent right-wing views.

Years ago, Mellon was so fascinated by the disappearance of aviator Amelia Earhardt that he donated $1 million to explorer Rick Gillespie who was trying to find her missing plane. In exchange for the donation, Gillespie allowed Mellon to join the expedition. Mellon’s posts in an online forum about Earhardt, moderated by Gillespie, eventually devolved into boring political tirades against the IRS, intelligence agencies, and climate change. Gillespie had to limit his ability to post on the site.

“His views were somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun,” Gillespie said He said the New York Times.

Mellon later sued Gillespie, claiming that the latter already knew the whereabouts of Earhardt’s plane when he received the $1 million donation.

In his 2015 autobiography, Mellon explained his political views. In one segment, Mellon took a particularly strong issue with government programs, which he believes make recipients rely on welfare rather than working to get by.

“In exchange for casting ballots in federal elections, they are being given more and more freebies: food stamps, cell phones, WIC payments, Obamacare, etc.,” Mellon wrote. “Generosity is financed by hard-working people, increasingly fewer in number, who are too honest or too proud to allow themselves to sink into this quagmire.”

Throughout the book he refers to black people having racial stereotypes that they have a bad work ethic and are aggressive. “Despite the establishment’s heroic efforts to right the wrongs of the past, blacks have become more aggressive and unwilling to intervene to improve their lot,” Mellon said in his book.

Mellon stands by the comments he made in his book. “I said everything I wanted to say. I have no regrets,” he said in a 2020 interview with Bloomberg.

Since Mellon rarely appears in public, it is difficult to predict his intentions behind the donations he made. Many of the candidates he has donated to report they have never met him, despite receiving contributions in the millions.

Although this isolation is not surprising to some in his family. Quoted from family members Vanity gallery He described him as “socially awkward” and “not a very sociable person.”

A book published in 1978 about family history entitled The Mellon Family: A Fortune in History Written by Burton Hirsch alludes to Mellon’s isolation. “My view of families is that it’s an anachronism. The family unit is not a functioning entity anymore. It no longer serves an economic need. I think it’s interesting as a social phenomenon,” Mellon told Hirsch.