Multiple Wall Street investors appear to be conceding that former President Donald Trump will likely win the GOP primary for the 2024 presidential race.
Charles Myers, a former vice chairman at investment bank Evercore and a Biden fundraiser, said that many investors “have resigned themselves to a Trump primary win and don’t want to throw good money after bad trying to stop him,” reported CNBC.
That claim was made just before the former president won the New Hampshire primary against former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley. He also secured the first win of the primary season earlier this month in Iowa.
Meanwhile, multiple outlets, citing anonymous sources, reported Wednesday that billionaire LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman paused funding to Ms. Haley after her loss in the state. Neither Mr. Hoffman nor Ms. Haley have publicly commented on the reports.
“I think unless there is some catastrophic crisis like the [Jan. 6, 2021] insurrection, they think of themselves as stewards of other people’s money and they don’t want to take a position that divides their workforce, their investors, and their customers. They are mindful of their different constituencies,” Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a senior associate dean at the Yale School of Management, told the outlet.
“They are not out there to be political ward heelers. They are not out there doing door-to-door campaign solicitations. They are there to run their companies,” he added.
“There is not a conversation you have here, where I am not asked to handicap the election,” Atlantic Council CEO Fred Kempe told CNBC. “People are calling it the ‘Trump put.’ They’re hedging Trump.”
A longtime investor and multi-billionaire, Ken Langone, is slated to host a fundraiser for former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, the outlet reported.
But he told the Financial Times in an interview that he is willing to hand her “a nice sum of money” but it may only come after the New Hampshire primary, which she lost. “If she doesn’t get traction in New Hampshire, you don’t throw money down a rat hole,” Mr. Langone said.
Meanwhile, President Trump’s allies ramped up pressure on Ms. Haley to leave the race before the polls had closed, but she vowed after the results were announced to continue her campaign. Speaking to supporters, she intensified her criticism of the former president, pitching herself as a unifying candidate who would usher in generational change.
At the same time, the former president can now say he is the first Republican presidential candidate to win open races in Iowa and New Hampshire since both states began leading the election calendar in 1976, a striking sign of how rapidly Republicans have rallied around him to make him their nominee for the third consecutive time.
Read More: Wall Street Opposition to Trump Dropping, Investors Say