ICYMI: Bloomberg: Oil Moguls Emerge as Key Cash Source for Trump as Race Nears End

Washington, D.C. – Yesterday, Bloomberg reported that Donald Trump is increasingly reliant on Big Oil fundraising to save his campaign. Bloomberg connects the dots to Trump’s willingness to implement the industry’s wish-list and specifically names his 2020 scheme to bail out the industry’s billionaires by intentionally raising gas prices on the American people.  

Bloomberg: Oil Moguls Emerge as Key Cash Source for Trump as Race Nears End

Oil executives have emerged as an increasingly important source of funding for Donald Trump, as industry titans open their wallets to bolster the Republican nominee’s campaign for a second term in the White House. …

Oil executives and employees have grown in significance for Trump as his fundraising base has narrowed. The industry is now his fourth-biggest source of cash, up six places from the 2020 election cycle, according to campaign data analyzed by OpenSecrets. …

That was never more apparent than in spring 2020, when an oil-price war between Russia and Saudi Arabia, coupled with a pandemic-driven crash in energy demand, triggered the worst crude-market collapse in history. After years of prodding OPEC to pump more crude, Trump pivoted to leading a once unthinkable quest to raise fuel prices, encouraging the world’s top producers to slash output.

Industry leaders gathered at the White House in April 2020 to lay out their concerns.

Hamm, who’d served as an unofficial energy adviser to Trump, praised the president for keeping up his “friendship” with Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. “I know those haven’t been easy sometimes,” Hamm told Trump, “but at this time it is particularly needed.”

Oil titans ringed the table — including Hamm, Warren and Hildebrand.

Many of them had seen their personal fortunes drop along with the price of crude. Since the first signs of a standoff between Russia and OPEC four weeks earlier, Hildebrand’s net worth shrank by almost 90%, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Hamm’s net worth was cut almost in half to $3 billion as Russia and Saudi Arabia flooded global markets with crude in a battle for market share. Warren’s net worth shrank by 38%.

At the White House, Trump promised the oil executives he’d divulge more about his talks with Putin and bin Salman once reporters left the room. “I’ve spoken to both of them, and we’ll tell you about that in a little while,” Trump said.

Within days, Trump had brokered an agreement among the so-called OPEC+ alliance to slash output by at least 10 million barrels a day, shaving a 10th of global supply.

The deal wasn’t enough to prevent the historic price collapse later that month, when benchmark US oil futures tumbled to roughly -$40 a barrel. But in the longer term it effectively curbed supplies through April 2022. Fuel demand recovered as the worst of the pandemic passed, and retail US gasoline prices climbed through summer 2022, becoming a political liability for Biden.

Some of the oil leaders who met with Trump in April 2020 now rank among his largest donors. Warren and his wife have steered $5.8 million to Trump’s campaign, the Republican Party and his allied super PACs this cycle, according to disclosures analyzed by Bloomberg. In 2020, they ultimately contributed more than twice that: $12.2 million. …

Trump still boasts about the 2020 OPEC+ intervention. “Remember that little period when you were getting almost free gasoline?” he asked Iowans last year. “We had to call OPEC and we had to call Russia, frankly, and Saudi Arabia. We said: ‘We have to get the price up.’ But we saved all those companies.”

Congressional Democrats cast a different picture.

“He was brokering his own deals with Russia and Saudi Arabia to keep US oil prices from bottoming out,” said Representative Raul Grijalva, the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee. “Whether he was working on behalf of the American people or his closest ‘Big Oil’ campaign donors, I hardly think we need to ask at this point.”