TIMOTHY MELLON

Trump’s racist billionaire megadonor is now helping to fund the U.S. military.

Timothy Mellon cut a check to pay American troops, and the White House treated it like a patriotic miracle instead of what it actually was: the moment the United States officially bent the knee to private wealth. While the government he bankrolls manufactured a shutdown, this decrepit heir — a man who once compared social programs to “slavery redux” — swooped in with $130 million to pretend he saved the troops. The Pentagon accepted it. The president praised it. And nobody in power had the spine to say the obvious: if a billionaire can fund the military, then democracy is cosmetic.

This is not normal governance. It’s fiscal hostage-taking. Mellon’s “gift” wouldn’t even cover a week of payroll for 1.3 million active-duty troops — it’s a tip, not a solution. But tips come with expectations, and Mellon has decades of reactionary fantasies, racist bile, and authoritarian economics attached to his wallet. He wasn’t anonymous to Trump. He wasn’t anonymous to the Pentagon. He was only anonymous to the public long enough for them to script the photo op.

Let’s be crystal clear about who just bought influence at the exact moment Congress forfeited its constitutional duty: a man whose published worldview sneers that Black Americans are “belligerent” parasites on a “government teat,” who labeled social programs ‘Slavery Redux’ and claimed they were trading votes for government ‘freebies.’ He didn’t stumble into Trumpism — he helped bankroll it, from border wall funds to megadonor super PACs built to keep the country frozen in resentment.

And now he’s paying the troops.

Not the teachers. Not the 730,000 civilian employees working without pay. Not the 670,000 federal workers thrown into desperation by a shutdown made in-house. Just the military — the one institution authoritarians always place on a pedestal, because uniforms carry utility that ballots do not. That’s not generosity. That’s strategy.

Congress is supposed to control the purse. Instead, they stood there — neutered, compliant, irrelevant — while a billionaire test-drove an extralegal payroll stunt that flirts with violating the Antideficiency Act. The Pentagon should never be able to accept a billionaire bailout while elected officials shrug and cable news yawns. Yet that’s exactly what happened, and the administration is daring anyone to stop them.

This is how democracies fall: not with a dramatic takeover, but with a series of humiliating capitulations. A shutdown here. A loophole there. A billionaire quietly wires $130 million and suddenly the constitutional order looks optional. And when the public finally realizes what shifted, it’s too late — because the money has already replaced the law.

Timothy Mellon didn’t save the troops. He bought the illusion that he could, and the government let him — because it no longer knows how to govern without its donors.

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