When it comes to assessing Donald Trump’s post-election personnel decisions, a variety of common denominators connect many of his choices for key posts. The president-elect, for example, has announced plans to nominate a great many contributors to the right-wing Project 2025 blueprint. He’s similarly tapped some people who’ve faced sexual misconduct allegations. He also apparently wants a variety of former television personalities and snake oil salesmen on his team.
The Republican also appears to have an inordinate fondness for people from Florida.
But as this week has unfolded, another common denominator has come into sharper focus: The president-elect seems awfully eager to hire billionaires. NBC News reported on the latest:
President-elect Donald Trump announced Wednesday that he plans to nominate billionaire entrepreneur Jared Isaacman to lead NASA. … Isaacman, 41, is the founder and CEO of the payment processing company Shift4. He has flown to space twice on commercial SpaceX missions, but has not worked at NASA or in the federal government. Isaacman funded both of those spaceflights himself, for an undisclosed sum.
Isaacman will need to be confirmed by the Senate, where he’ll probably face quite a few questions about his qualifications. As writer Kevin Drum summarized, “I hardly need to point out that being rich enough to afford vanity trips to space hardly qualifies you to lead NASA. And being a buddy of Elon Musk is a massive conflict of interest for running an agency that Elon Musk does a lot of business with.”
And while those concerns will no doubt generate some fascinating lines of inquiry on Capitol Hill, it’s also worth pausing to appreciate the fact that if Isaacman is confirmed and members of the second Trump administration decide to form a Billionaires Club, it’s likely to have quite a few members.
The New York Times noted earlier this week that the president-elect has chosen “at least five” billionaires to serve in key roles in his incoming administration — Scott Bessent, Howard Lutnick, Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy and Steven Witkoff — and that article was published before the Isaacman announcement, which raised the total to six. The Times’ report added that Trump’s reliance on billionaires raises questions “about whether his administration will follow through on promises to boost the working class.” It would be foolish to suggest that billionaires should necessarily be excluded from public service, but for all the post-election chatter about Democrats and “elites,” it’s hard not to notice the number of people with net assets above $1,000,000,000 — each with vast and diverse private sector interests — who are slated to join the next Republican administration.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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