Critics decry Musk’s influence with Trump, ignore billionaires’ influence in previous White House
- February 12, 2025
Steven Richards, Just the News
While the administration’s opponents express outrage over the work of Elon Musk and his team, billionaire influence in an administration is nothing new, and certainly was not foreign to the Biden administration.
Since the election, the media has warned about Musk’s role and influence on President Trump. “Elon Musk Is Inaugurating a New Era of Billionaire Rule,” a headline from the left-wing Jacobin Magazine reads. “Elon Musk puts unprecedented outsize influence on display in government funding fight,” another from ABC News reads.
Records obtained by the independent watchdog organization Protect the Public’s Trust during the Biden administration show that billionaires have for years rubbed elbows with senior officials that oversaw areas of interest to them and their companies, indicating that this pattern is not something new.
Billionaire George Soros donated $1 million to an Obama Super PAC in 2012, according to the Times of Israel, but that pales in comparison to the hands-on involvement that billionaires had with the function of the Biden administration.
“What a difference a change in administration makes. Billionaires having access to government was no big deal in the Biden years. Now, it’s a ‘constitutional crisis.’ The double standard is glaring,” Michael Chamberlain, Director of Protect the Public’s Trust, told Just the News.