Eli Lake
The Free Press, May 14, 2024
“There is clearly a change going on, people who are active in politics with big money, people who were never Trumpers or reluctant ‘hold your nose Trumpers’ are telling me that Trump has to win.”
Joe Biden’s threat last week to freeze arms shipments to Israel along with reports that his administration is withholding intelligence about Hamas leaders’ whereabouts has reverberated throughout U.S. politics. Now, some Never Trump donors say the Biden administration’s policy toward the Jewish state is such a betrayal they’re considering jumping on board the Trump train.
Call it the rise of the Never Bidens, donors who once were more worried about Trump but now see Joe Biden’s bid for a second term the greater threat to America. The Free Press spoke with four donors who contributed tens of millions of dollars in the last election cycle. They say they are reconsidering their political giving in light of the president’s approach to the Israel-Hamas war. All of them expressed their frustration with Biden’s CNN interview last Wednesday, in which he said of Israel, “if they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah.”
Cliff Asness, a Republican donor who says he “spent well over seven figures” to support Trump’s primary opponent Nikki Haley, told The Free Press that “My ‘Never Again’ is trumping my ‘Never Trump’ these days.”
“Biden is a huge disappointment, really a moral outrage with this arms embargo being only the latest and greatest outrage,” continued Asness, the co-founder of AQR Capital Management. “Despite my long opposition to him, this makes me more likely, though I haven’t quite gotten there yet, to see Trump as the better of two bad alternatives.”
