Many executives on Wall Street are beginning to change their tune on former President Donald Trump, whose stellar performance in the Iowa Caucuses has led them to assume he will become the Republican nominee and therefore the only real contender against President Joe Biden.
Following the campaign suspensions of both runner-up Ron DeSantis and fourth-place maverick Vivek Ramaswamy in the past several days, Trump has cleared all opposition besides Nikki Haley, who still hopes to prove herself in the New Hampshire primary election on Monday.
According to more than a dozen sources contacted by CNBC, some of Wall Street’s power players are considering supporting Trump over Biden.
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“A lot of people on Wall Street have been living in this pipe dream of Trump not getting the nomination. People were in the first stage of [grief], denial. Now they’re trying to get their heads around the fact that Trump could be the nominee,” said an anonymous executive at a private equity firm.
“Large portions” of Wall Street have come to this realization, according to the network.
They also wager that Trump can beat Biden. A polling average released by Real Clear Politics on Sunday showed Trump outperforming Biden by two points in the general election.
Blackstone Group chairman and CEO Steve Schwarzman had positive words for Trump last week, even though he previously said the GOP needed a new generation of leaders in 2022.
“We’ve now got $2 trillion deficits with no end in sight,” he said. “We’ve got our debt to GDP ratio going up. We’ve got open borders with eight million people coming over. You know I don’t know that the country frankly is prepared for four more years [of Biden] because those things all poll very negatively.”
Blackstone CEO Stephen A. Schwarzman tells the Davos crowd that the US is not prepared for four more years of Biden's $2 trillion deficits, 8 million illegals invading America, and a debt-to-GDP ratio going higher and higher.
He's right. pic.twitter.com/PNJNDnsos8
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) January 19, 2024
“It’s painful for me to admit this, but Wall Street is basically nonchalant to this election,” said Anthony Scaramucci, who has worked on Wall Street for decades. “I think they view Donald Trump by and large as benign to somewhat beneficial to the economy and business.” Scaramucci, who was Trump’s communications director for ten days in 2018, expressed his disappointment with Wall Street’s newfound acceptance of Trump.
Biden fundraiser Charles Myers, who also served as vice chairman at investment firm Evercore, said, “I think most of them have resigned themselves to a Trump primary win and don’t want to throw good money after bad trying to stop him … The next question is, ‘will Wall Street work to stop him in the general by supporting Biden?’”
Related: Chase CEO Jamie Dimon Defends Trump Supporters, Criticizes the Media
Other Wall Street executives are keeping their political opinions to themselves, considering it irresponsible to their shareholders and clients to voice their opinion on such controversial topics.
“I think unless there is some catastrophic crisis like the [Jan. 6, 2021] insurrection, they think of themselves as stewards of other people’s money and they don’t want to take a position that divides their workforce, their investors and their customers. They are mindful of their different constituencies,” said senior associate dean of the Yale School of Management Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, who is known as a weathervane for the trends among Fortune 500 execs. “They are not out there to be political ward heelers. They are not out there doing door-to-door campaign solicitations. They are there to run their companies.”
Major investor Ken Langone is planning to co-host a fundraiser for Nikki Haley in New York City on January 30th. He told the Financial Times that he was ready to give the South Carolina governor “a nice sum of money,” but is going to hedge his bets based on the next primary election. “If she doesn’t get traction in New Hampshire, you don’t throw money down a rat hole,” he said.
Shane Devine is a writer covering politics, economics, and culture for Valuetainment. Follow Shane on X (Twitter).
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