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'Everybody's Live With John Mulaney' featured Joan Baez alongside Michael Keaton, Fred Armisen and Cypress HillNetflix continues to lean into live programming with the new talk show “Everybody’s Live With John Mulaney.” And although the show takes much inspiration from its home base in Los Angeles, including a performance from hip hop group Cypress Hill, the first episode had a surprisingly big Bay Area presence. The title of the episode was “Lending People Money,” and most of the conversations revolved around financial matters, with San Francisco Chronicle personal finance columnist Jessica Roy earning a place on the couch alongside Fred...

On Tuesday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) declared during MSNBC’s “The Last Word” that President Donald Trump and Elon Musk were “damn billionaires” that want “everybody else to eat dirt.” Warren said, “I don’t ask for the engineering reports on the bridge. What I know is that I have a government I can trust, and an Army Corps of Engineers that makes sure it’s a safe bridge to be able to travel over. The same kind of thing should be true with our financial infrastructure. You should be able to take out a mortgage or buy, use a credit card or...

[snip] Close your eyes and listen to the video clip. If you didn't know better, you might have thought it was Bernie Sanders ranting about "millionaires and billionaires." But no, that was Scarborough on today's Morning Joe. Self-styled "small-government conservative" Scarborough first condemned the Trump administration's plans to reduce the number of IRS agents! Adopting the liberal lexicon, Scarborough complained that "working-class" people can't afford lawyers to take care of the problems with the IRS, unlike "millionaires and billionaires."A bit later, Scarborough condemned proposed tax cuts for "billionaires and millionaires. This is not about protecting Medicare or Medicaid of Social...

On Wednesday night in Miami, billionaires and royals waited in line to get a seat for President Trump’s speech at the Saudi Arabia-backed Future Investment Initiative (FII) summit. Everyone from Trump’s former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin to former Google CEO Eric Schmidt to WeWork founder Adam Neumann queued to get a seat in the conference hall, or even in the overflow area. Moguls texted FII organizers and PR reps for seats directly in the President’s sightline or near some of his most important allies — namely Elon Musk. Neumann, sources said, didn’t have much luck getting inside either room. “You...

Top Democratic elected officials and billionaire donors found out they don’t have much pull at the Democratic National Committee, where party insiders on Saturday chose a steady hand — Ken Martin — over their preferred choice for chair. Neither Martin nor the pick of much of the establishment, Ben Wikler of Wisconsin, were promising a major overhaul of the party. And in selecting Martin, Democrats did little to answer some of the deepest questions their party faces as they search for a path out of the political wilderness. Instead, inside a hotel ballroom at National Harbor in Maryland on Saturday,...

President-elect Donald Trump has assembled the wealthiest presidential administration in modern history, with at least 13 billionaires set to take on government posts. They include a wrestling magnate, a private space pioneer, a New York real estate developer, the heir to a small appliance empire, and the wealthiest man on the planet -- with several being donors and close personal friends of the incoming president. In total, the combined net worth of the wealthiest members of his administration could surpass $460 billion, including Department of Government Efficiency co-head Elon Musk -- whose net worth of more than $400 billion exceeds...

Former Clinton administration Labor Secretary Robert Reich said Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that democracy cannot survive if there was “great wealth in the hands of few people.” Reich said, “I think the biggest problem with having so many billionaires at the top of government is that billionaires don’t exactly know how normal people live, but secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the way people get to the top of the Trump administration is by providing a lot of money.”

SNIP Casually dressed — but costing more than the sirloin — he said, “Our new push will be outer space. We’ll put all the Mexicans on the rockets.” A very short set. Barely minutes when he saw something the audience did not. We faced the stage. He faced us. Behind us the back walls and exit doors. Whatever he saw — or thought he saw — upset him. Like he went momentarily ape and shouted something like he wasn’t supposed to be taped, videoed, reported or whatever else wasn’t supposed to happen. Didn’t complain. Didn’t explain. Didn’t do one more...

In October of 2022, Smith filed a lawsuit against a publisher called All Seasons Press (ASP), to whom he had sold the rights to a book proposal based on a February 2021 essay he had written for Tablet. “The Thirty Tyrants” argued that Americans at the top of the financial, entertainment, and political industries had sold their country out to communist China. Unsurprisingly, according to an outline Smith submitted to an editor at ASP in July of 2022, one of the book’s targets would be George Soros, who in the 2010s lauded China’s “doctrine of harmonious development,” hailed the Chinese...

Fortunately, the Constitution should still operate to prevent a leftist administration from handing to the UN American sovereignty and Americans’ rights. When five different people send you a link, you know that something very important has happened, even if the drive-by media aren’t trumpeting it on their outlets. In this case, it’s Robert Williams’ report at the Gatestone Institute that, in September, the Harris-Biden administration, without fanfare, adopted a UN pact that gives the UN and the World Economic Forum (“WEF”) control over American speech, foreign policy, and, possibly, internal sovereignty. Thankfully, while the administration can sign someone’s name on...

The number of China's billionaires has dropped by a third since 2021, according to an annual rich list, as difficulties for the country's economy and government crackdowns took their toll. Hurun, a private research group that has tracked Chinese billionaires since 1999, said the total peaked in 2021 with 1,185 billionaires, a figure which fell to 753, a decline of 432, or 36% of the total. It comes as some of China's superrich choose to lie low or leave the country, finding covert ways to take their money with them.... China's economy has been grappling with a prolonged housing crisis,...

As my boat cruises toward the private island city of Indian Creek Village — better known as the Billionaire Bunker — I'm hoping my trip doesn't end in an arrest. It's a hot morning on South Florida's Biscayne Bay, and I've convinced two local tour boat captains to pilot me around the perimeter of what is quite possibly the wealthiest and most heavily defended town in America. I'm not entirely clear on the rules about boating near the island, which lies just across the bay from Miami, and neither are my captains — they're both in their first weeks on...

If there’s one thing Democrats hate hate hate, it’s those evil, greedy billionaires ruining the country for everybody else! Just witness socialist screecher Bernie Sanders railing against them at the DNC, with a heavy-breathing speech about how we need an economy that works for everyone, something that Donald Trump — himself an evil billionaire — can’t deliver. Except that, right after Bernie, hard-left Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker came out to brag about how rich he was — flashing his inherited wealth (about $3.5 billion worth, specifically) with a claim he’s richer than Trump. Huh? And it’s not like billionaires were...

Locals had criticised the previous tax rules after rich expats buying property in Italy sent house prices spiking. Italy's government has approved an increase in the annual flat tax applied to income earned abroad by new fiscal residents in Italy. The annual fixed fee will jump to €200,000, from the current total of €100,000. Unpopular among locals, the tax arrangement is informally known as the "billionaires" tax or "the footballers scheme" - it is credited with attracting thousands of multi-millionaires to Italy. One high-profile individual who benefited from the system was Portuguese football player Cristiano Ronaldo, who moved to Turin...

... Harris is the “right person at the right time” and well-positioned to “push back” against Donald Trump, according to Reid Hoffman, the tech billionaire who co-founded LinkedIn. Alexander Soros, son of financier and philanthropist George Soros, described her as the “best and most qualified candidate we have”. Hoffman and Soros had been vocal in their support of Biden in recent weeks, even as calls grew from him to exit the race. But Reed Hastings, the Netflix co-founder and Democratic mega-donor, was among those who urged the president to stand down. On Sunday, he said only that party delegates “need...

A number of influential billionaires who previously publicly expressed their disdain for Donald Trump have now apparently changed their minds. Growing frustration over Joe Biden's economic and immigration policies, or indignation over his handling of the Israel-Gaza War, has lengthened the list of billionaires now signaling they support the former president.

Israeli-American casino billionaire Miriam Adelson is expected to announce a multi-million dollar boost to Trump's campaign this week. Politico reported that the contribution is expected to exceed the $90m donation to Preserve America by Mrs Adelson and her late husband, Sheldon in the 2020 election. In the hours following the verdict, a number of wealthy billionaires posted messages of support for Trump. Among them was Silicon Valley investor David Sacks, who posted on X that there "is now only one issue in this election: whether the American people will stand for the USA becoming a Banana Republic". On 6 June,...

Her late husband Sheldon Adelson didn’t cut checks in 2016 for Trump until September of that yearMiriam Adelson, the wife of the late billionaire Sheldon Adelson, has reportedly pledged to spend more than $100 million to support former President Donald Trump in the upcoming general election after staying neutral in the Republican presidential primaries this year. Adelson, an Israeli-born physician who specializes in substance abuse, is set to finance a rejuvenated pro-Trump super PAC, Preserve America, which was initially formed for Trump’s reelection bid in 2020, Politico reported Thursday. The Adelsons contributed $90 million to Trump in that election cycle....

There's some fascinating news about an alliance between billionaires Elon Musk and Nelson Peltz and former President Donald Trump. We reported on Musk's meeting with Trump in March. Now, there are more details about the meeting, which was reportedly at Peltz's mansion. The men also had their sons at the meeting: Barron, Diesel, and Musk's son X, who is a toddler. There were also allegedly other wealthy and powerful people at the meeting.

Billionaires are putting their influence and money behind Donald Trump, a wave of support that is helping the former President narrow his fundraising gap with President Joe Biden. The latest example came last week with the news that Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman, after years of keeping his distance from Trump, is now a supporter. A collection of familiar GOP names announced their support for Trump in recent months. They include figures like Robert Bigelow and Nelson Peltz. Both have donated to Republicans for years. Both distanced themselves from Trump after Jan. 6. Both are now back on board. Robert Bigelow,...