Background Briefing: November 23, 2025
Trump’s Decades-Long Obsession With Getting On the Forbes 400 List and How Much Saudi Money Has Lined His Pockets
We begin with Trump and his family’s monetization of the presidency and U.S. foreign policy as witnessed this week with the White House state visit of Saudi Arabia’s previously-shunned Crown Prince. Joining us to assess how much money the Saudis have lined Trump’s pockets with and Trump’s decades-long obsession with getting his name on the Forbes 400 list of the wealthiest Americans is Dan Alexander, a senior editor at Forbes, overseeing money-in-politics coverage, as well as the author of White House, Inc.: How Donald Trump Turned the Presidency into a Business. He has investigated the personal finances of Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Wilbur Ross, and others and his work has sparked state and federal investigations, came up repeatedly in Trump’s fraud trial and helped send longtime Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg to jail. His latest articles at Forbes we discuss are “Here’s How Much Trump Received For Hosting Saudi-Backed Golf Events” and “Here’s Everything We Know About Trump’s Financial Ties To Saudi Arabia.”
Musk’s $Trillion Payday and How Billionaires Donated 1 in 13 Dollars Spent in the Last Election, Over 80% of Which Went to Republicans
Then, with the biggest donor to Republicans in the last election Elon Musk getting a $trillion payday from Tesla, we will examine how America’s 902 billionaires with a collective wealth of $6.7 trillion, donated 1 in every 13 dollars spent in last year’s election, over 80% of which went to Republicans. Joining us is William Cohan, a former senior Wall Street investment banker for 17 years at Lazard Frères & Co., Merrill Lynch and JPMorganChase, as well as a New York Times best-selling author whose books include Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World, House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street, and, most recently, Power Failure: The Rise and Fall of an American Icon. He is a founding partner at Puck News and has an article at The New York Times, “The World’s Most Shameless Public Figure Does It Again.”