The Trump billionaires who run the economy and the things they say
- The San Juan Daily Star
- Apr 21
- 5 min read
By Elisabeth Bumiller
Sometimes the billionaires running the federal government sound like they’re talking to other billionaires.
“THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!” President Donald Trump wrote on social media last week, offering a stock tip that appeared aimed at the investor class rather than ordinary Americans watching their plummeting 401(k)s.
Howard Lutnick, the secretary of commerce, has said his mother-in-law wouldn’t be worried if she didn’t get her monthly Social Security check. Elon Musk, who is slashing the Social Security Administration’s staff, has called it a “Ponzi scheme.” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has asserted that Americans aren’t looking at the “day-to-day fluctuations” in their retirement savings.
And if automakers raise their prices because of Trump’s tariffs? “I couldn’t care less,” the president told Kristen Welker of NBC.
Democrats say the comments show how clueless Trump and his friends are about the lives of most Americans, and that this is what happens when billionaires run the economy. Republicans counter that highlighting the quotes is unfair cherry-picking, and that in the long run everyone will benefit from their policies, even if there’s pain now. Psychologists say that extreme wealth does change people and their views of those who have less.
Whoever is right, it is safe to say that almost no one thinks the comments have been politically helpful for Trump, or calming for Americans.
“You have to laugh to keep from crying,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster. “What did they say about the old New York Mets? ‘Can’t anybody here play this game?’” (Ayres was referring to what manager Casey Stengel once said about his hapless 1962 Mets, and the subsequent title of a book by Jimmy Breslin.)
For the record, Forbes put Trump’s net worth at $4.2 billion on April 8, down $500 million from April 2, the day the president rolled out his tariffs. Forbes estimated the net worth of Musk, the world’s richest man, as $364 billion on April 17 and Lutnick’s as $3 billion the same day. Bessent, formerly the top investor for billionaire liberal philanthropist George Soros, listed assets in excess of $700 million on his financial disclosure form this year but is thought to be worth much more.
The opposition has swiftly pounced on their comments. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the minority leader, said that Trump and his rich friends live in a “billionaires’ bubble,” while Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., called out Lutnick on social media.
“Maybe your mother-in-law wouldn’t complain if she didn’t get her Social Security check, but tens of millions of seniors struggling to survive would,” Sanders wrote. “How out of touch are you, not to realize that?”
A lot, at least according to pollsters.
“If someone is concerned about their financial well-being, take them at their word,” said Frank Luntz, a longtime focus group leader, pollster and consultant, speaking about the widespread fears of rising prices and falling stocks brought on by Trump’s tariffs. He said the president understood voters’ anxieties during the 2024 campaign, when he repeatedly promised to bring down grocery prices, but seems to have forgotten them now.
“If you knew they were struggling in October, why do you dismiss their struggling in April?” Luntz asked. He added that “the word that is missing in all of this, from Elon and the president, is empathy.”
Paul K. Piff, an associate professor of psychological science at the University of California, Irvine, has studied the psychology of the rich for nearly two decades. He said that research shows that as a person’s wealth increases, more often than not empathy and compassion for others decreases. Piff cautioned that there are exceptions, and that he was not speaking specifically about the billionaires in the Trump administration.
But he said excessive wealth has profound effects on a person’s character. “You certainly have more power and more influence over people in your life,” he said. Money, he added, “buys you space and distance from people, and alongside that comes this increased focus on your own self. It’s not a difficult stretch to say that you lose touch for what it’s like for lots and lots of people.”
Susan Pinker, a Canadian psychologist who was a writer for The Wall Street Journal’s “Mind & Matter” column about human behavior and earlier wrote “The Business Brain” column for The Globe and Mail, said the rich live in their own world.
“The reason why the super wealthy at the helm of government can’t imagine how people might be distressed by some of their policies is that they don’t really see them that clearly,” she said. “We’re not really built from an evolutionary perspective to feel like we’re at home with everybody. The stronger our in-group, the more likely we are to exclude others.”
Steven Pinker, a Harvard psychologist who is Susan Pinker’s brother, said he was not convinced that the billionaires’ comments were because of their wealth. “A more immediate cause may be cognitive dissonance,” he said, referring to the psychological state that can occur when people’s actions don’t align with their beliefs.
“In the case of the Trump administration,” Pinker said, “they have little choice but to twist themselves into artisanal pretzels in order to defend the indefensible.”
A White House spokesperson, Kush Desai, said in response to the criticism of Trump’s remarks about the stock market and potentially higher prices that “the only special interest guiding President Trump’s decision-making is the best interest of the American people — such as addressing the national emergency posed by our country running chronic trade deficits.” White House officials also point out that Trump has vowed not to cut Social Security benefits.
Recent polls show that Trump’s approval rating has declined since his inauguration, including a Quinnipiac survey conducted in early April that found that 53% disapproved of Trump and 41% approved. It was a significant shift from a Quinnipiac poll at the start of the administration, when 43% disapproved and 46% approved.
Although Trump’s drop in recent polls is similar to those of Presidents Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton at this point in their terms, he has had a sharp decrease in support among independents. In the recent Quinnipiac poll, 58% of independents disapproved of Trump and 36% approved, compared with 46% who disapproved of him in January and 41% who approved.
The polls do not show how much the recent turmoil over tariffs and the stock market has affected voters’ views of Trump. But Democratic pollster Celinda Lake said most current surveys give Trump negative marks on his handling of the economy, a source of his strength against Biden during the 2024 campaign.
In her view, the remarks of the Trump billionaires show how much they talk among themselves.
“They play golf with billionaires, they have dinner with billionaires, they go to Mar-a-Lago,” she said. “When was the last time any of them bought a dozen eggs or a quart of milk?”
Or as Trump said when he kicked off a Mar-a-Lago dinner with friends after his tax cuts became law in December 2017, “You all just got a lot richer.”
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