After Donald Trump was convicted of 34 felonies, the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank that created the Project 2025 agenda as a blueprint for policy if Trump were to win, flew an upside-down American flag, which has become a symbol of support for MAGA in general and election denial in particular.
The move may have shocked some conservatives who still see the Heritage Institute as a serious institution, but it is, after all, just a think tank. People who are expected to uphold the constitutional order, like Supreme Court justices, are not flying an upside-down flag.
Oh, wait a minute.
But Heritage's embrace of what appears to be an attack on democracy represents one of the truly worrying developments as the election reaches its final stages. Heritage calls itself a defender of freedom, but its true mission has always been to present the case for low taxes on the wealthy, often based on shoddy research. And Heritage's tacit endorsement of lawlessness speaks to the way many of America's wealthiest people, both in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street, have rallied to Trump after kowtowing to the maverick candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Why do billionaires support Trump? It's not that they've performed badly under President Biden. Stocks have soared. Trump predicted they would crash if he lost in 2020. High interest rates, which are a burden for many Americans, are actually a boon for the wealthy with money to invest. And it's hard to imagine the super-rich suffering much from rising fast-food prices.
But wealthy Americans are certainly hoping that their taxes will be lower if Trump wins.
Biden and his team have laid out a fairly clear guide to his tax policy: direct tax increases on high-income Americans and higher corporate taxes, which indirectly tax the wealthy primarily. These measures would tax the wealthy much less than the Eisenhower administration, which imposed a 91% top marginal income tax rate and a 77% inheritance tax on large estates. Still, Biden's plan would make the wealthy poorer.
While President Trump hasn't said that explicitly, he has made it clear that he wants to preserve the 2017 tax cuts in full, and his allies in Congress are committed not only to the tax cuts but also to draining the resources of the Internal Revenue Service, which allows even more wealthy Americans to evade the taxes they legally owe.
So billionaires aren't wrong to think that if Trump wins, they'll pay less tax, but why don't they think about the bigger picture?
After all, even if all you care about is money, Trump's policies should make you very worried. His advisory plan to deport millions of immigrants (probably only illegal ones, but do we really believe that many legal residents won't get caught in the deportation net?) would shrink the US workforce and cause major disruptions. His protectionist proposals (quite different from Biden's targeted measures) could mean an all-out global trade war. If he can get it done, his attacks on the independence of the Federal Reserve risk creating inflation more severe than we've seen in recent years.
Not only that, Trump will almost certainly try to weaponize the justice system to go after those he sees as his enemies. Only someone with no history knowledge would think they were safe from such weaponization. Even if you think Trump is on your side now, that could change in an instant.
Anyone who pays attention to Trump's rants will notice that he grows less rational and more vindictive with each passing week, but his popularity among billionaires seems to be only getting stronger.
So what's going on? Here are my thoughts, albeit just speculation.
First, America's oligarchs will believe that their wealth and influence will protect them from the arbitrary exercise of power. Trump and his cohorts may turn corrupt law enforcement and a frightened judiciary against others, but they certainly can't do it against themselves! By the time they realize how wrong they were, it will be too late.
As I've written before, the super-rich can be astonishingly insensitive and ignorant about history.
Secondly, in some sense, I don't think it's about the money. What difference would it make to the quality of life of billionaires if they had to settle for a slightly smaller superyacht? For those at the top of the pyramid, wealth is mostly about status and self-importance. As Tom Wolfe wrote long ago, it's about “watching them soar.”
And when politicians fail to act and treat the wealthy with the respect and admiration they deserve, some grow angry. We saw this firsthand when many Wall Streeters rebelled against President Barack Obama, insulted by his occasional criticism of his efforts to bail out Wall Street during the financial crisis.
Biden is no class warrior, but he certainly doesn't worship the super-rich, many of whom turn to Trump simply out of petty grievances.
