One of many largest donors to assist President-elect Donald Trump was Timothy Mellon, an inheritor to the generational fortune of Gilded Age tycoon Andrew Mellon.
Within the 2024 election cycle, Mellon, 82, donated $125 million to the tremendous PAC Make America Nice Once more, Inc. that supported Trump, in keeping with Federal Election Fee paperwork.
And together with, donations to assist Republican congressional candidates and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Mellon donated a complete of $165 million, in keeping with the marketing campaign finance tracker Open Secrets and techniques.
Mellon wasn’t the one billionaire to make nine-figure outlays for Trump. Tesla CEO Elon Musk gave at the least $119 million to a PAC he set as much as re-elect Trump. When together with cash for different Republicans, Musk gave at the least $132 million.
However he did so in a way more public method than Mellon, who is thought to eschew the highlight. Mellon is a grandson of Andrew Mellon and reclusive billionaire who up to now expressed pointed views about federal entitlement applications, which he termed “slavery redux.”
Mellon seldom speaks to the press and seems to have little curiosity in hobnobbing with the politicians to whom he donates. Although he’s distributed large sums of cash to political teams and politicians, many have by no means met him. And in the course of the 2020 election, Republican staffers needed to search him on Google to seek out out who he was when he reached out with the provide of a serious donation, in accordance to the New York Occasions.
Mellon didn’t reply to requests made by way of his household’s basis. Different efforts to achieve him have been unsuccessful, together with queries to writer he labored with. A lawyer who labored with him up to now mentioned he doesn’t characterize him anymore.
In a uncommon interview from 2020, Mellon advised Bloomberg he believed Trump had delivered on what he’d mentioned on the stump.
“He’s achieved the issues he promised to, or tried to do the issues he’s promised to…in commerce and righting the steadiness between our nation and the remainder of the world, particularly China,” Mellon mentioned.
Mellon donated to RFK Jr. earlier than he dropped out
Along with Trump, Mellon donated to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s bid for president. He additionally gave $25 million to the political motion committee American Values 2024 that supported Kennedy.
Kennedy blurbed Mellon’s self-published autobiography panam.captain launched in 2015.
“Tim Mellon is a maverick entrepreneur who embodies probably the most admirable qualities of what FDR known as ‘American Industrial genius,’” Kennedy wrote of Mellon. (Mellon and Kennedy share a writer in Skyhorse Publishing).
A few hundred years in the past, the Mellon household was closely concerned in American politics. Mellon’s grandfather Andrew was Treasury secretary from 1921 to 1932. In that function, he reduce taxes for America’s wealthiest and efficiently campaigned to take away any property taxes in order that he might go away his fortune to his heirs. Previous to his time within the public sector, the elder Mellon made his cash in banking, industrials, and investing within the early levels of corporations.
The Mellon household stays one of many nation’s richest with a mixed internet value of $14 billion, in accordance to Forbes. Timothy Mellon’s actual monetary holdings aren’t nicely understood. In a 2014 deposition, he mentioned his internet value was roughly $700 million. The London Occasions has estimated it at $1 billion. A relative advised Vainness Truthful that Mellon didn’t need folks to know his true internet value, placing it nearer to $4.2 billion.
It appears the youthful Mellon got here to politics later in life. From 1996 to 2018, Mellon donated about $350,000, in accordance to the Wall Road Journal, far lower than the tons of of tens of millions he has poured into backing Trump-era Republicans. Within the 2020 election, Mellon donated $60 million to Republican candidates, together with $20 million to Trump, in keeping with Open Secrets and techniques. Within the 2022 midterm elections, he gave $41.7 million to candidates.
‘He needs nobody to tax him’
Along with donating to candidates and their political motion committees, Mellon has additionally given cash to different conservative causes.
In 2021, Mellon donated $53 million to Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s fund to construct a wall on the state’s border with Mexico, in accordance to reporting from the Texas Tribune. Mellon’s donation amounted to 98% of the cash the fund ended up elevating. The donation was doubtless tax deductible as a result of it was made to a state authorities for use for public works.
Different members of the Mellon household have been shocked and, even appalled, at their relative’s assist of Trump, although some suspected it might need to do with taxes.
“I feel what it comes all the way down to is he needs to be left alone, and he needs nobody to tax him,” one member of the Mellon household advised Vainness Truthful. “It’s that libertarian viewpoint that’s turn out to be radicalized. There are lots of actually wealthy folks on the market who simply don’t want to consider what’s greatest for America anymore.”
Although he inherited one of many nice American industrial fortunes, Mellon nonetheless went into enterprise for himself. Within the Nineteen Eighties, he took over a railroad firm known as Guilford Transportation Industries that purchased up a number of smaller rail strains within the Northeast. A number of years later he rebranded it Pan Am Methods after he purchased the emblem and title from the defunct airline. In 2020, Mellon bought the corporate to CSX Transportation for $600 million.
Politically Mellon is ‘to the appropriate of Attila the Hun’
Like the boys he donated to, Mellon is the scion of a rich household who over time noticed his oddball tendencies morph into virulent rightwing views.
Years in the past, Mellon was fascinated by the disappearance of flier Amelia Earhardt, even donating $1 million to explorer Ric Gillespie who was looking for her lacking aircraft. In alternate for the donation, Gillespie let Mellon be part of the expedition. Mellon’s posts on a web based discussion board about Earhardt, moderated by Gillespie, finally became political screeds in opposition to the IRS, the intelligence businesses, and local weather change. Gillespie needed to restrict his capability to submit on the location.
“His views have been someplace to the appropriate of Attila the Hun,” Gillespie advised the New York Occasions.
Mellon later sued Gillespie, alleging the latter already knew the place Earhardt’s aircraft was situated when he obtained the $1 million donation.
In his self-published 2015 autobiography, Mellon expounded on his political opinions. In a single passage, Mellon takes a very robust difficulty with authorities applications, which he believed made their beneficiaries depending on welfare reasonably than work to get by.
“For delivering their votes within the Federal Elections, they’re awarded with but increasingly freebies: meals stamps, cell telephones, WIC funds, Obamacare, and on, and on, and on,” Mellon wrote. “The largess is funded by the hardworking of us, fewer and fewer in quantity, who’re too sincere or too proud to permit themselves to sink into this morass.”
All through the ebook he referred to Black folks with racist stereotypes that they’ve a poor work ethic and are aggressive. “Black folks, regardless of heroic efforts by the ‘Institution’ to proper the wrongs of the previous, turned much more belligerent and unwilling to pitch in to enhance their very own conditions,” Mellon mentioned in his ebook.
Mellon stood by the feedback he made in his ebook. “I mentioned the whole lot I needed to say. I don’t have any regrets,” he mentioned within the 2020 Bloomberg interview.
As a result of Mellon makes few public appearances, it’s troublesome to divine his intentions behind the donations he made. Many candidates he has donated to report by no means having met him, regardless of receiving tens of millions in contributions.
Although for some in his household that reclusiveness isn’t a shock. Relations quoted by Vainness Truthful known as him “socially awkward” and “not a really social individual.”
A 1978 ebook on the household’s historical past titled The Mellon Household: A Fortune in Historical past by Burton Hersh hints at Mellon’s isolation. “My view of households is that they’re an anachronism. The household unit isn’t a functioning entity anymore. It now not serves an financial want. I suppose it’s attention-grabbing as a social phenomenon,” Mellon advised Hersh.
