Byline Supplement — ‘Bad Billionaires’
My latest report in Byline Supplement documents the return of the bad billionaires, who swore off Trump post J6 only to quietly return to the trough
Money launderers are just fake rich guys, ergo, if a billionaire made his filthy lucre laundering money for the mob, then he’s just a fake rich guy.
This scientific fact might explain why so many bad billionaires are returning to the scene of the 2016 crime and backing a dead horse.
My report from today in Byline Supplement explains the phenomenon.
Here is an excerpt:
“If you’re a billionaire, he’s on your side. Otherwise, good luck” tweeted Hillary Clinton on X/Twitter recently, sharing leaked footage of Donald Trump addressing a gathering of wealthy donors, announcing “You’re all people that have a lot of money. You’re rich as hell. We’re gonna give you tax cuts”.
There is no bottom, because the depravity is well financed.
When the highest court in the US on Friday revealed its extremist members to be coup friendly in their comments about presidential immunity — it felt like that should qualify as some sort of bottom.
Like a deranged episode of Twilight Zone, Republican justices appeared to support Trump’s coup, a coup that one of the justices’ wives actively participated in.
“If you want to create a fascist society, you get the judges,” retired newsman Tom Carter told Byline Supplement.
As Carter explained to me recently, a lobbyist he worked for named Leonard Leo, who received a $1.6 billion dollar injection of cash from a billionaire named Barre Seid, is responsible for six of the religious extremists on the Supreme Court.
“He helped get Clarence Thomas onto the Supreme Court, Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito. He picked, vetted, campaigned for and got them confirmed. Then Neil Gorsuch, Brett Cavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett — six of nine,” Carter explained. “I don't oppose extreme devout Catholics being involved in the political public square… but six of anything dominating the Supreme Court is not exactly democracy.”
Hillary Clinton did warn us.
On January 12, 2016, she tweeted out:
”A Republican president could stack the Supreme Court with justices who will rip away all of the progress we made.”
So now I type this in a post-Roe world where an extremist court is rolling back environmental protections and protections for women’s health and safety and now the bad billionaires circle around Donald J. Trump again like vultures, coming to collect more of their return on investment.
As Trump taps ex-cons from the class of 2016 Paul Manafort and Roger Stone to help him run his campaign, I am reminded of what fascism scholar Ruth Ben-Ghiat often writes:
“To shape a political culture appropriate for autocracy you need lawless people in the party and bureaucracy. They are already corrupt and can influence and threaten others to do whatever the leader and the party need them to do.”
Last week, a secretive group of pro-Trump donors met in Palm Beach at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club and the Palm Beach Four Seasons, according to multiple reports…
And in another quiet fundraising meeting in March, Trump reportedly had dinner with Robert and Rebekah Mercer, entrepreneur Omeed Malik, real estate billionaire Richard Kurtz, and cosmetics founder Trish McEvoy.
And that is where we find ourselves today.
These clandestine meetings with billionaires are in direct contrast to the extreme distancing billionaires did after January 6, when Trump instigated an attempted coup, a violent insurrection that resulted in multiple deaths and injuries to police officers.
Although I never believed the disingenuous puff pieces that allege such democratic wrecking balls as Mercer and Thiel are tapping out of politics, it still comes as a jolt when reports leak that they’ve returned to the scene of the crime.
Because what was the 2016 US election but a crime scene?
As former President Jimmy Carter said in 2019: “I think a full investigation would show that Trump didn’t actually win the election in 2016. He lost the election, and he was put into office because the Russians interfered on his behalf.”
The Russians, and a lot of helpful billionaires…
Classic Fascist Blunder
Tom Carter said the billionaires that support a corrupt leader like Trump are suffering from a classic fascist blunder, the conceit that they can control the so-called strongman.
Environmental activist Wes Clark Jr said all the money in the world isn’t going to stop the total repudiation of Trumpism this November.
“The crops only need to fail once,” he said. “You can’t eat cash.”
To read the full report, please take out a subscription to Byline Supplement and help support a small, global team of investigative reporters. If you are unable to do so at this time, feel free to reach out to me directly at bettedangerous/gmail to request the report.
If you are new to Bette Dangerous, here is my latest report from my 2016 Election Attack series — this one, on ex-con Paul Manafort — a reminder that corrupt leaders need to surround themselves with criminals, as Ben-Ghiat often reminds us:
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Sorry to ask an account question here but I don't see any other support option. I'm a subscriber to Bette Dangerous, I paid $210 good through February 2025. I assumed I would have access to the links on the home page but when I try to read the whole "Return of the Bad Billionaires" I get message I need to be a paid subscriber. Please advise.....