"Is Corporate America in Denial About Trump?" read a headline in the New York Times Magazine over the weekend. In it, staff writer Jonathan Mahler details how wealthy corporate executives, many of whom distanced themselves from Donald Trump after his attempted coup, are now talking themselves into backing his current presidential campaign. Noting that the erratic nature of far-right leaders is often destabilizing, Mahler warns that authoritarian leaders have a "disastrous effect not just on democracies but on businesses — and business leaders."
Mahler's article is a useful read, particularly in laying out the likely dire consequences of a second Trump term to the economy. But it is built on a questionable premise: That business leaders, in their hearts, are smart enough to loathe Trump, yet are setting aside their reservations to cozy up to the possible next president.
The myth that wealthy people are inherently rational is sewn throughout both the article and coverage of it. MSNBC host Nicole Wallace, for instance, fretted Monday that "smart" people weren't seeing the dangers here. But I would like people to consider another possibility: That many rich people back Trump because they agree with his rancid views. That they don't just see Trump's racist rhetoric as a useful way to bamboozle working-class whites into voting for him, but that they also hold such views. That, beneath all the expensive clothes and fancy automobiles, many in the top economic tier of America have attitudes about race and gender that are no different than what you'd hear from Trump's beloved "poorly educated."
Indeed, consider the possibility that the hyper-wealthy, ensconced in a world of luxury and privilege, might actually be more racist than the fanny pack crowd sitting in the cheap seats at a Trump rally. Certainly, Donald Trump thinks as much and indicated so at a recent fundraiser in Palm Beach, Florida. As reported by the New York Times, the event was held at the home of the billionaire financier John Paulson and attended solely by extremely wealthy people, there to soak up Trump's promises of another tax cut for the rich. It was in this safe space of other rich people that Trump escalated the already hair-raising levels of racist rhetoric he uses at his rallies.
"Why can’t we allow people to come in from nice countries," Trump whined. "Nice countries, you know like Denmark, Switzerland? Do we have any people coming in from Denmark? How about Switzerland? How about Norway?”
Sadly, because the press thinks Trump's white nationalism is "old news," his latest comments didn't get the media play they deserved. His rants painting immigrants from Latin America as criminals are indeed just standard fare from Trump now, but that shouldn't make it less alarming. And this was Trump going even further, explicitly spelling out his vision of the U.S. as a place that should only be welcoming to white people.
The setting matters a lot. Trump went there at a fancy fundraiser because he believed that, as racist as the Bud Light-boycotting crowd at his rallies might be, he'd find an even more appreciative audience for his blunt "whites only" message among the private jet people. He appears to have guessed correctly, as the New York Times reporters registered no complaints about this David Duke-style talk at the upscale shindig. Instead, the rich attendees opened their wallets and rewarded Trump with fat checks.
Because racism is ignorant and because rich people have access to expensive education and worldly experiences, the economic elite often get the benefit of the doubt that they cannot be "really" racist. When billionaires like the Murdoch family fill the airwaves with race-baiting propaganda on Fox News, the assumption is they don't believe any of it and are just cynically manipulating working people to get them to vote against their economic self-interest. But I'd argue that the flip side is often true: Money insulates people from the outside world and intellectual challenge. As easy as it is for a middle class retiree to soak in right-wing propaganda all day, it's even easier for a rich person. They don't need to work jobs that require them to speak to people who are different than they are. They're surrounded by yes-men and rarely have to encounter countervailing evidence to their prejudices. And because they're constantly told their wealth means they're smarter than everyone else, they start to enjoy the smell of their own farts.
We can see this happening in real time to Elon Musk, the head of Tesla and ill-adviser purchaser of Twitter. Musk may be the single best example of an executive whose entire business model depends on the continuing stability of American democracy. Musk is a billionaire largely because of government contracts. Whatever benefit he may get from Trump tax cuts, it pales in comparison to the risks to his business from having to answer to an emotionally volatile wannabe dictator like Trump.
Despite this, Musk has been escalating his very public embrace of racist conspiracy theories meant to stoke MAGA fears that "their" country is being taken over by "illegals." He keeps ignoring the fact that non-citizens can't vote to push the "great replacement" conspiracy theory, which falsely claims Democrats are deliberately "importing" non-white immigrants in order to "replace" white voters and win elections. This conspiracy theory originally hails from neo-Nazi and white nationalist groups and has been used by terrorists to justify multiple mass shootings.
Musk is not just very rich, but also has a first-rate education, having graduated from an Ivy League university. None of this prevented him from falling down an internet rabbit hole of racist paranoia based on laughably obvious falsehoods. He's probably not quite dumb enough to believe the lie about undocumented people voting. But it's also likely that he, like most people who spread this disinformation, is doing so primarily to demonize Latinx immigrants and foster a view that the U.S. is meant to be a "white" country.
None of this serves Musk's economic self-interest, especially since it's breeding political instability that could come back to bite him. No, the likeliest explanation is he's buried himself in racist propaganda because he likes it, and likes how it flatters his prejudices. The biggest difference between Musk and his less-monied MAGA brethren is he's way less used to being confronted about his nonsense. Witness the way he reacted to rather gentle questioning about the "great replacement" from Don Lemon: By flipping out and canceling the former CNN host's Twitter-based show before it even really began.
This process has been very publicly witnessed by the world when it comes to "Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling. Her favorite poison is transphobia, not racism, but it's the same basic principle. Years of unbelievable wealth and flattering celebrity appear to have convinced Rowling to mistake her kneejerk reactions for facts. Unable to tolerate the possibility she could be wrong, she's spent years doubling and tripling and quadrupling down on her ugly opinions, to the point where she's now where no one smart should want to be: downplaying Nazi crimes. None of this is rational behavior, much less economically sensible. It's probably just lost her book sales and movie tickets. Yet she keeps on going. It's proof that money doesn't prevent someone from being a full-blown bigot.
