Meet the Trump administration’s 12 billionaires
At a net worth of $390 billion, it’s the wealthiest White House in modern history.
The world’s richest man. The owner of the Houston Rockets. The former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment. These are just some of the 12 billionaires — not including Trump — who have held roles in the Trump administration this year.
In total, they’re worth $390.6 billion as of March. While previous administrations have included the ultrarich, the wealth held by this group is larger than even the first Trump administration, previously the wealthiest in U.S. history.
Billionaire Nation
This Washington Post series examines how the wealthiest have amassed unprecedented political power.
Excluding Elon Musk — who poured more than $294 million into contributions boosting Trump and other Republicans in 2024 — the billionaires in the Trump administration, along with their spouses, gave more than $52 million to Trump, pro-Trump PACs and the Republican National Committee in the 2024 campaign alone, according to a Washington Post analysis.
“The members of President Trump’s team are patriotic outsiders,” White House spokesperson Liz Huston wrote in a statement, “with decades of successful private sector experience who are now proudly serving our country.”
Here’s who they are.
Trump and the Cabinet
Donald Trump
In 2017, the year that Donald Trump was first sworn in as president, Forbes estimated that he was worth around $3.5 billion, with Trump’s net worth falling partly as a result of diminishing profits from his real estate in Midtown Manhattan. Trump’s net worth has since grown to more than $5 billion — largely as a result of ventures beyond real estate, like investments in cryptocurrencies and his social media platform Truth Social.
Howard Lutnick
Trump’s boisterous Commerce secretary was the longtime chief executive of financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald. He and his wife didn’t contribute to Trump’s 2016 campaign, but gave $550,000 to Trump, pro-Trump PACs and the Republican National Committee for the 2020 election. In the 2024 cycle, he gave $8.8 million, and Trump named him a co-chair of his transition. And this year the Lutnick family contributed to Trump’s White House ballroom project, according to the White House.
Linda McMahon
Education Secretary Linda McMahon and her husband, former World Wrestling Entertainment chairman Vince McMahon, made billions by transforming WWE into a juggernaut (the McMahons have separated, Linda’s attorney recently told The Post). She is leading the Education Department, which Trump has vowed to eliminate — though McMahon has acknowledged that congressional action would be required to do so. Still, McMahon has taken steps to dismantle the agency.
McMahon served for just around a year on the Connecticut state school board before stepping down to unsuccessfully run for Senate in 2010, running again in 2012.
But her support for Trump has brought her closer to the spotlight. She and her husband have given more than $47 million to Trump, pro-Trump PACs and the Republican National Committee since 2015, according to a Post analysis of campaign finance filings. She served as the administrator of the Small Business Administration in Trump’s first term, chaired a pro-Trump super PAC in 2020, and co-chaired Trump’s transition last year.
Steve Witkoff
Thirty-nine years ago, Donald Trump forgot his wallet at a New York deli. Steve Witkoff bought him a sandwich. Now, Witkoff — a lawyer turned billionaire real estate mogul — is Trump’s special envoy for peace missions. He was involved in the Hamas-Israel ceasefire deal, talks over the Ukraine war and at least one prisoner swap.
Much of Witkoff’s wealth comes from his real estate development company, according to Forbes. When cryptocurrency firm World Liberty Financial released a corporate document in October 2024, it said the Trump and Witkoff families had financial interests in the venture.
Witkoff has contributed at least $200,000 to Trump, pro-Trump PACs and the RNC in every election cycle since 2016. He gave the most — $930,000 — in 2020. In a sign of the family’s enduring relationship with the president, Witkoff’s son Zach named his son after Trump last year.
Kelly Loeffler
Kelly Loeffler and her husband Jeff Sprecher worked together at Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the financial firm that Sprecher founded and runs. In the two decades since the company went public in 2005, ICE acquired the New York Stock Exchange and Loeffler became a U.S. senator.
When one of Georgia’s Senate seats became vacant in late 2019, Gov. Brian Kemp (R) appointed Loeffler to the seat, though Loeffler wasn’t Trump’s choice for the job. She held the role for around a year.
Loeffler and Sprecher gave less than $100,000 to Trump, pro-Trump PACs and the RNC in 2016; that number shot up to $1.9 million in 2020 and $7.1 million in 2024. Sprecher contributed $1 million to Trump’s 2025 inauguration, and the couple contributed a combined $5 million to a pro-Trump PAC in June. They also contributed to Trump’s White House ballroom project this year.
DOGE
Elon Musk
Musk, the world’s richest man, spent $294 million to boost Trump and other Republicans during the 2024 election cycle. For months, he had a post within the White House as part of the U.S. DOGE Service. But Musk’s time as a “special government employee” ended amid a very public blow-up with Trump when Musk publicly criticized the president’s massive tax and immigration law.
Musk and Trump appear to be on speaking terms once again. However, it’s not clear if he’ll continue to spend vast sums to boost Republicans.
Joe Gebbia
Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia first joined the Trump administration as part of DOGE, where he worked on modernizing the federal retirement system. Now, he’s the U.S. government’s chief design officer, a role Trump created (and quickly picked Gebbia for) in August. Gebbia has said his directive is “to update today’s government services to be as satisfying to use as the Apple Store: beautifully designed, great user experience, run on modern software.”
Gebbia’s politics have shifted over the years. In an X post on the eve of Trump’s 2025 inauguration styled as a letter to his “younger self,” Gebbia wrote that he first voted for Al Gore in 2000 but “those Democrats you’ve voted for your whole life aren’t the same party they used to be.” Gebbia, who has contributed to Democrats, wrote that he did his own research and found that Trump “is not a fascist determined to destroy democracy.”
Antonio Gracias
Valor Equity Partners founder and CEO Antonio Gracias is a longtime ally of Musk who worked alongside him at DOGE, where as a “special government employee” he looked at Social Security. This year, he appeared alongside Musk at a town hall-style event in Wisconsin, where the two billionaires made inaccurate claims about Social Security.
Gracias was an early backer of Tesla and also invested in SpaceX. Gracias contributed $1 million to a pro-Trump super PAC days before his inauguration this year; he also contributed $1 million to Musk’s America PAC. Gracias has historically contributed to Democrats, such as Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Sen. Adam Schiff (D-California).
State Department, Pentagon and SEC
Tilman Fertitta
Restaurateur Tilman Fertitta is perhaps the only reality television star on this list — besides Trump. He was the star of CNBC’s “Billion Dollar Buyer” from 2016 to 2018. Much of his wealth comes from Fertitta Entertainment, which owns Landry’s, the Golden Nugget Hotels and Casinos, and the NBA’s Houston Rockets.
In the first Trump administration, Fertitta visited the White House amid the coronavirus pandemic to lobby Trump to “add a category” to the Paycheck Protection Program for the “larger private restaurateur,” The Post previously reported. At the time, Trump said Fertitta was a “friend” and that his restaurants “paid me rent for a long time.”
Fertitta and his wife contributed around $1 million to Trump, pro-Trump PACs and the RNC in the 2024 election. He also contributed $1 million to Trump’s inauguration on Dec. 17, four days before Trump announced his selection as ambassador.
Melinda Hildebrand
Melinda “Mindy” Hildebrand, who is married to oil drilling giant Hilcorp Energy founder Jeffrey Hildebrand, was president of the Hildebrand Foundation, a family foundation with more than $130 million in assets as of the end of 2024.
The Hildebrands are influential in Texas, where Jeffery was on the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission, the University of Texas System Board of Regents and a special advisory council for Gov. Greg Abbott’s 2020 Strike Force to Open Texas. They contributed a combined $1 million to Trump’s inauguration on Dec. 11; Trump announced her nomination in February.
Stephen Feinberg
Stephen Feinberg is a co-founder of Cerberus Capital Management, a private equity giant. Feinberg’s financial disclosure, which he had to file to comply with ethics rules, stretched over more than 1,800 pages with attachments — longer than any other billionaire nominated for a post in the Trump administration.
Feinberg is deputy secretary of defense, the Pentagon’s No. 2 civilian post. He did not make substantial contributions to Trump in the lead-up to the 2024 election. But he and his wife previously gave financial support to the president and his allies, contributing $2.1 million in 2016 and $1.7 million in 2020 to Trump, pro-Trump committees and the RNC.
Warren Stephens
Warren Stephens ran Stephens Inc., a financial firm that was founded by Stephens’ uncle and later run by his father.
Stephens has a history of contributing to both Trump’s opponents and pro-Trump committees. In 2016, he contributed $2.5 million to an anti-Trump committee. But in 2020 he and his wife contributed $5 million to Trump, pro-Trump committees and the RNC; that rose to $8.6 million in 2024. Stephens and his wife contributed $2.9 million to a pro-Nikki Haley committee from June 2023 to January 2024.
The pro-Trump donations continued after Trump was elected president in 2024. Stephens contributed $4 million to Trump’s inauguration on Dec. 2, the same day Trump announced that Stephens would be his pick for ambassador to the U.K. That same day, Stephens also contributed $1 million to a Trump-allied super PAC.
Paul Atkins
Lawyer Paul Atkins, whose wife is Sarah Humphreys Atkins — a descendant of the founder of roofing company Tamko — now runs the Securities and Exchange Commission, an agency that protects investors and monitors markets.
Atkins previously served as a Republican SEC commissioner under President George W. Bush. Atkins has said he is fast-tracking a Trump proposal that would change the mandated frequency of company financial reports to semiannually, from the current quarterly requirement.
Before Trump nominated him, Atkins consulted for firms like ExxonMobil and Bank of America, according to a financial disclosure. He is seen as friendlier to the cryptocurrency industry than his predecessor, Gary Gensler. He contributed $2,700 to a pro-Trump committee in 2016, and he and his wife contributed just over $100,000 to Trump, pro-Trump committees and the RNC in both 2020 and 2024.
Methodology
For this story, The Post included people who have held executive branch positions since Jan. 20, the day Trump was sworn into office. To qualify, they or their spouse had to be on Forbes’s 2025 billionaires list.
To identify campaign donations supporting Trump, The Post looked at federal giving reported to the Federal Election Commission between 2015 and 2024 by appointees and their spouses. Donations to Trump include giving to the Republican National Committee, campaign committees and affiliated PACs, and any super PACs or hybrid PACs where most independent expenditures went to influence the presidential race.
Net worth reflects wealth as of March 7, 2025, according to the Forbes billionaires list.
About this story
Illustrations by Tucker Harris/The Washington Post; photos by Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post; Chris J. Ratcliffe; Alex Brandon/AP; John Lamparski/Getty Images; Small Business Administration; Theo Wargo/Getty Images; Riccardo Savi/Getty Images; Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg via Getty Images; Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images; Mariam Zuhaib/AP; Ben Curtis/AP; Frank Augstein/AP.
Reporting by Aaron Schaffer, Clara Ence Morse and Beth Reinhard. Design and illustration by Tucker Harris. Illustrations contain prop paper money.
Design editing by Betty Chavarria. Photo editing by Christine T. Nguyen. Editing by Patrick Caldwell and Wendy Galietta.
No comments:
Post a Comment