Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

In a recent column, Don Sorensen claims, without providing any factual support or evidence, that there are more billionaires who are Democrats than Republicans and that these billionaires actually support Democrats more than Republicans. I am sure that this comes as a complete shock to Elon Musk, who gave the Donald Trump 2024 campaign $288 million (Washington Post, Jan. 25, 2025) for which the Trump Administration dropped numerous government investigations against Musk and his companies and awarded him billions of dollars of government contracts from Defense Department and other government departments. Donald Trump has 13 billionaires in his cabinet (US News & World Report). Joe Biden had absolutely no billionaires in his cabinet. (Forbes, June 29, 2021).

Donald Trump had many billionaires standing next to the podium when he gave his inaugural address, all of whom were required to provide the Trump campaign with a $1 million campaign contribution for the privilege of standing there. (Reuters). The combined wealth of just three of these Trump supporters, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, is greater than that of the bottom half of the American people (170 million people). (Newsweek, the Visual Capitalist and the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, Missouri). Is that your idea of fairness Mr. Sorensen?

By far, the highest percentage of the top 100 donors that provided political campaign contributions during the 2024 election were overwhelmingly individuals who had given contributions to Donald Trump and Republican candidates rather than Democrats. Timothy Mellon (whose relatives were “robber barons” — see below) gave Republican candidates – $172 million in the 2024 election, Richard & Elizabeth Ulhlein – $138 million, Mirian Edelson – $136 million, and there were a good number of other billionaires who gave enormous political contributions to Republicans as well. The largest contributor to Democratic candidates was Michael Bloomberg, who gave Democrats $43 million, which is less than half of what the big money Republican contributors gave. (US News and World Report, Nov. 5, 2024).

Donald Trump continually claims that the best economy in the history of the United States occurred between approximately 1870 and 1913. He is totally mistaken because during that time period there were several recessions. This period of time in American history is known as the “Gilded Age” marked by significant economic, social and political upheaval that occurred in America in which a small group of men known as the “robber barons,” such as J.P Morgan (banking); John D. Rockefeller (Standard Oil); Cornelius Vanderbilt (railroads and shipping); and Andrew Carnegie (Carnegie Steel), owned and controlled the vast majority of the wealth of the entire nation. Is that your idea of fairness, Mr. Sorensen? In 1913, the Constitution of the United States was amended to add an income tax.

Don Sorensen has been writing letters and columns here for many years in which he completely fails to provide any factual support or evidence for his claims. Mr. Sorensen is certainly entitled to express his own opinions, but he is not entitled to make claims and present them as facts without providing absolutely any evidence to support them.

Douglas Schiltz
Albert Lea