Billionaire mutiny: Trump’s chaotic policies are costing his richest backers billions every day and betrayal is in the air

If you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas. America’s richest men didn’t take this classic bit of homespun advice to heart and, after throwing in their oar with Donald Trump, are seeing their colossal bank balances melt away like ice cream left in the sun.

In the run-up to the 2024 election, United States billionaires dutifully lined up behind Trump. Elon Musk became one of his biggest cheerleaders, funding his campaign and appearing alongside him at campaign events. Jeff Bezos notoriously prevented the Washington Post from endorsing Kamala Harris and has cracked down on opinion writers criticizing the new administration. Then Trump’s inauguration saw a veritable rogues’ gallery of the country’s richest men prostrating themselves before the new president.

Right now they (or at least, their accountants) are doubtless regretting that decision and wishing Kamala Harris was sitting in the Oval Office, as Trump’s chaotic tariffs and economic policies have collectively cost them the GDP of a small country. As per Forbes, who’ve taken into account the crumbling stock market and grim economic prognosis, America’s billionaires are collectively $415 billion poorer than they were when Trump became president.

In a pleasant indication there might be something to the whole karma thing, Elon Musk has been walloped hardest. His unalloyed backing of Trump, combined with his Nazi salute on inauguration day, and the havoc he continues to wreak via DOGE has seen Tesla sales crater amidst demonstrations outside dealerships. That’s added up to a 43% Tesla stock price decline, wiping out $104 billion from Musk’s personal fortune.

But practically every other billionaire has been affected by Trump’s tariffs, which economists predict are rapidly leading the United States into a recession and have prompted consumers to cut personal spending. As such, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos has lost $29 billion, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have lost $26 billion and $24 billion respectively, and poor old Mark Zuckerberg has lost $7.6 billion.

Before you start rooting around in your pockets for some spare change to send them, you can rest assured that these men are still richer than logic or morality should permit. Even these colossal sums are still a few percentage points of their net worth and this won’t affect their living standards in any meaningful way.

However, you don’t get to be a billionaire in the first place by shrugging your shoulders and writing off a massive personal loss. As such, it’s widely considered that the mood is mutinous over in the superyacht owner’s club. Host of the Unfiltered with Brian Joyce podcast Brian Joyce made an appearance on MSNBC over the weekend to give his take, saying:

“How much longer can the MAGA movement — especially the wealthy MAGA movement — tolerate this? … All that matters to these people is money. They don’t care that Trump is a racist, which he is. They don’t care that Trump is a fascist, which he is. All they care about is their bottom line and their bottom line is getting hammered right now. It’s getting killed. How much longer they can afford to be part of this MAGA cult when it’s destroying their own bottom line?”

Joyce summarized the Trump situation as a “sinking ship”, pointing out that the market is down $5 trillion in the last couple of weeks. However, we should remember that Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg appear to be completely on board with the Trump administration’s war on “woke”, so perhaps they’re willing to pay countless billions just so they don’t have to worry about being seen to be inclusive or empathetic any more.

But, at the end of the day, this is about the Benjamins and there’s only so much the billionaire class will tolerate. At which point we may well end up seeing an Aliens vs Predator style battle between billionaires and MAGA. And remember, “whoever wins, we lose”.