Donald Trump has never been much for gratitude or giving back. The notion that he owes anybody anything for his success is anathema to his winners-gonna-win Trumpiness.
This philosophy is, of course, the opposite of the myth and meaning of Thanksgiving, a holiday meant to acknowledge the generosity of the Indigenous people who helped keep the colonizers alive. (Maybe, in retrospect, they might think they made the wrong decision.) The holiday has evolved since then, to be mostly about overeating while trying not to let long-simmering family resentments erupt into a messy food fight, but under all of that there is a sense that we need to take a moment to acknowledge what we have, and be reminded to help others less fortunate than ourselves.
Trumpsgiving is not about that. The spirit of this season is always Trumpstaking. For himself, his family and the various oligarchs in his circle, alternately grateful for his patronage and fearful that he might turn on them. In just under a year since Mr. Trump returned to power, this has been the lesson again and again. We’re living in the age of what I call reverse philanthropy:instead of giving, you get (See: his free 747.) And in setting this example, Mr. Trump is making our country’s rich people worse, by emboldening them to embrace his transactional style of governing.
I was thinking about this when I was reading about how, after the death earlier this fall of Agnes Gund, the noted patrician philanthropist whom The Times once called “the last good rich person,” many arts organizations she once supported have become worried that a new generation of equally generous patrons has yet to step up. As Ms. Gund once put it, “it could be because I feel guilty about having so much more than most people. If I can have it, others should be able to enjoy it.” This is noblesse oblige. It’s a dying ethic.
Mr. Trump talks often about how philanthropic he is, but as reporting in The Washington Post and The Times has documented, it appears as if some of those contributions were exaggerated. Remember the Trump Foundation, which, The Times reported, he misused to the tune of $2 million to “promote his presidential bid and pay off business debts,” and even to purchase a portrait of himself?
Instead, he wants you to give to him — or else. This is reverse philanthropy: Instead of the richest helping the neediest, they pay tribute to the greediest. Remember the dozens of people and corporations who gave over a million dollars each to his inauguration? Mr. Trump then went to five crypto firms and eight tech companies, including some that helped fund the inauguration, for help building his ballroom. Which will itself be a place to gather fellow oligarchs and others who seek Mr. Trump’s favor. Think endless lavish fund-raising galas in honor of one recipient who will never truly be satisfied.
Mr. Trump also sets an extremely bad example when it comes to philanthropy more generally, at a time when it’s needed more than ever. The Institute of Museum and Library Services, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts are under siege, and one-third of American museums report that they have lost government grants or contracts during Mr. Trump’s second term. A recent analysis from SMU DataArts shows that in just one year, individual donations to arts institutions fell more than 30 percent. This could be for a number of reasons — uncertainty around tariffs and the economy’s future, as well as higher interest rates, could be affecting some people’s giving. But there’s also a sense that supporting the arts might be risky, aligning you with people whose values are not MAGA values. Between 2019 and 2024, corporate support for the arts declined by 58 percent, and foundation funding declined by 35 percent.
This selfishness can’t all be blamed on Mr. Trump. Sam Bankman-Fried was supposed to redefine philanthropy with effective altruism, but he used charity as a cover and is now sitting in jail for one of the biggest financial frauds in history. Over the last decade we’ve seen a decline even in the amount wealthy families are giving. Forty-five percent of affluent families’ primary reason for not giving was “to take care of family needs” in 2024; nine years earlier that number was only 27 percent, according to a biennial study by Bank of America and the Indiana University school of philanthropy.
But Mr. Trump sets the tone. His cabinet is very rich, and unlikely to be that concerned, or at least affected, by the true cost of Thanksgiving this year. Perhaps it fits with the broader picture: The rich are the richest they have ever been, and they seem mostly to be focused on … keeping their money.
Forbes rates how philanthropic billionaires are, and Elon Musk scored a 1 out of 5. In 2023, for the third consecutive year, the Musk Foundation gave away a smaller percentage of its assets than was required. Mr. Musk did, however, donate $288 million to Republican candidates and political organizations.
Philanthropy was always, on some level, a way for people with too much to feel better about that fact, or maybe about how they came to have all that loot in the first place. They need to be reminded of that. And of what they should be grateful for: this country, and its hardworking nonbillionaires trying to survive.
Maybe it’s time to bring the guilt — not the gilt — back.
Molly Jong-Fast is the host of the “Fast Politics” podcast and the author of “How to Lose Your Mother: A Daughter’s Memoir.”
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