“America does best when its leaders are rooted in today and tomorrow, not today and yesterday,” Schwarzman said Wednesday in a statement first reported by Axios. “It’s time for the Republican party to turn to a new generation of leaders, and I plan to support one of them in the presidential primary.” The Blackstone founder is one of several high-profile donors who have publicly criticized Trump in recent weeks, a sign of growing wariness of the former president’s bid to return to the White House. Last week, Ken Griffin, the billionaire founder of Citadel, publicly endorsed Florida Gov. Ron DeSandis as his preferred candidate for 2024. In an interview with Bloomberg News, Griffin called Trump a “three-time loser.” “I’d like to think the Republican party is ready to move on,” Griffin told the newspaper. Griffin has already given $5 million to DeSandis, who won re-election by a landslide in last week’s midterms. Meanwhile, Ronald Lauder, the billionaire New York cosmetics heir and longtime Republican donor, also will not support Trump’s current campaign, according to a spokesman. Lauder donated $100,000 to the Trump Victory Fund in 2017 and then again in 2019 — in addition to his contributions to other Republican campaign initiatives. Most recently, Lauder donated more than $11 million to Lee Zeldin, a pro-Trump congressman who ran a surprisingly strong but ultimately unsuccessful campaign to unseat Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul in this year’s midterm elections. month. Rupert Murdoch, the billionaire owner of News Corp who helped propel Trump to power, also appears to have fallen out with the former president. Since last week’s midterms, the Murdoch media, from the New York Post to Fox News, have taken shots at Trump, choosing instead to exalt DeSantis. On Wednesday, after Trump announced he would run for president again, the New York Post ran a strip at the bottom of its front page that read simply: “Florida man makes announcement.” Neither Murdoch nor his son Lachlan, co-chairman of News Corp, have commented publicly on the split. Schwarzman quickly aligned himself with Trump after the 2016 surprise, helping convene a panel of senior business executives to offer advice on jobs and the economy and accompanying the president on a visit to Saudi Arabia that was the first foreign trip of his tenure. . Their relationship sometimes paid dividends for Schwarzman’s private equity firm. In 2017, Riyadh pledged to contribute up to $20 billion from other investors to a Blackstone fund that planned to invest in power plants, toll roads and similar assets, mostly in the US. But it also caused controversy. After a 2017 far-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia that culminated in the killing of a counter-protester, Schwarzman said he received hundreds of emails accusing him of being a Nazi. Schwartzman’s advisory panel was disbanded shortly after Trump said he was “supporting both sides” of the Charlottesville protests. Schwarzman said he was “not outraged” by the comments. Recommended The Blackstone founder also voiced his support for Trump after his disputed 2020 election loss. Amid widespread concern about Trump’s efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s victory by promoting baseless theories of voter fraud, Schwartzman told fellow Directors that the then president was within his rights to challenge the election results and predicted that the legal process would take its course. Democratic donors said Schwartzman’s public break with Trump could encourage other high-profile donors as well as Republican political leaders to follow suit, potentially blocking Trump’s bid for the White House. “The most important thing is for the party leadership, the donors, the voters to make it clear that we don’t want Trump,” said Eric Levin, a Republican fundraiser. “He’s lost. And it destroys the party and it destroys the brand of the party.” Dan Eberhart, a GOP donor who gave $100,000 to Trump’s re-election campaign, said he is now “on the fence” about supporting him in 2024. “Trump’s donor base is not what it was two years ago,” Eberhart said. “I’ve talked to a few dozen donors over the past couple of days and the consensus seems to be ready for new blood.”
