Billionaire Democrats are letting Trump win —and insiders say it's 'disgusting'

Remember what Trump and Musk once said about voting and “computers”?

Some of the Democratic Party’s most knowledgeable insiders are living with a deep, unshakeable fear — not only of President Donald Trump, but of their own party’s leadership. Speaking to AlterNet on condition of anonymity, several Democratic operatives and party officials argued billionaire money is overriding the Democratic Party’s obligations to its own rank-and-file Democrats… and, by extension, to America as a whole.

In early November 2024 — shortly before then-former President Donald Trump squared off against then-Vice President Kamala Harris in that year’s presidential election — the richest man in the world appeared on former Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s broadcast. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who openly supported and helped fund Trump’s campaign, allowed his young son to tell Carlson that Americans will “never know” what actually happened on Election Day, laughing hysterically before his father ended that interview.

Many Democrats at the time became suspicious that this indicated Musk would use his vast control over American technology to somehow steal the election, a suspicion reinforced at a victory rally shortly before Trump’s 2025 inauguration. Trump, at that time the president-elect, praised his billionaire friend for having “journeyed to Pennsylvania where he spent like a month and a half campaigning for me in Pennsylvania, and he's a popular guy, and he was very effective. And he knows those computers better than anybody, all those computers, those vote counting computers.”

Trump added, “And we ended up winning Pennsylvania like, in a landslide, so it was pretty good, it was pretty good. So, thank you to Elon.”

Despite these two hints at something nefarious, overall Democrats have dismissed the idea that there could have been any election interference. Yet when speaking to AlterNet for this article, a Democratic Party insider argued that they always wondered whether there might have been something more there. The White House, on the other hand, did not directly respond to questions about whether the election tampering accusations were accurate, instead insulting AlterNet and reiterating Trump’s support for new laws regulating voting.

“AlterNet does nothing more than pump out glorified press releases for the Democrats that are chock full of left-wing conspiracy theories,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told AlterNet. “For the three people reading this, here’s the truth: President Trump is committed to ensuring that Americans have full confidence in the administration of elections. The President has urged Congress to pass the SAVE America Act and other legislative proposals that would establish a uniform standard of photo ID for voting, prohibit no-excuse mail-in voting, and end the practice of ballot harvesting.”

While the aforementioned insider was the only one to explicitly speculate that Trump and Musk stole the election, the DNC’s reticence to more aggressively challenge billionaires like Musk is seemingly symptomatic of a deeper problem. All of the sources who spoke to AlterNet agreed on two things: First, that billionaires are severely weakening the Democratic Party in its quest to defeat Trump and the Republican Party; and second, that they all wished to speak anonymously — and not even be directly quoted, lest details of what they say somehow reveal their identities.

As the conversations proceeded, this reporter could not shake the sense that these Democrats were nervous about career reprisals for making observations that a Democratic Party focused on self-improvement would welcome. Instead there appears to be a climate of fear in the party as inherited by Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chair Ken Martin of Minnesota, who was chosen as the new leader in February over Ben Wikler of Wisconsin and Martin O’Malley of Maryland.

To protect these sources, their observations below are paraphrased, the first time this reporter has made this decision in his 14-year-career, and a choice made because of the clear career jeopardy in which they were placing themselves. The DNC has not yet responded to AlterNet’s requests for comment from Martin or its spokespeople.

One source, a longtime member of the DNC Women’s Caucus, told AlterNet that they are convinced that Trump wants to get rid of mail-in voting because unlike electronic voting systems, mail-in voting is much more difficult to manipulate. Yet in addition to supporting mail-in voting, this source argued that Martin has a responsibility to engage in massive voter protection campaigns to counter potential theft in the future.

Instead, this source said, Martin prefers to pretend that the possible problem does not even exist. Even in light of internal pressures to transition from electronic to paper voting so that there can always be receipts of tabulations, Martin apparently has not moved at all. The party’s so-called “autopsy” last month acknowledged that "any assessment of the state of technology in the Democratic party would be incomplete without an acknowledgement that comprehensive data warehouses like Phoenix represent an irresistible target for hackers and other bad actors seeking to undermine the integrity of the modern political process."

The autopsy, which despite purporting to address the DNC’s mistakes went out of its way to add the caveat that "this document reflects the views of the author, not the DNC,” further argued that "the mere existence of the kind of data collected and analyzed by the party requires sophisticated protective efforts to rebuff the kinds of cyber attacks experienced by the party in 2015 and 2016, when various groups of Russian-sponsored computer hackers and intelligence agencies infiltrated the DNC computer network to aid in Donald Trump’s ascent to the presidency."

It concluded, however, that "because of a commitment to deploying robust and advanced protection tools to safeguard the data, the DNC and its vendors repelled over 6.1 billion malicious requests between October 31st and November 6th, more than double the volume seen during the entire months of September and October." Later it bragged that "overall, what 2024 showed us is that our tech infrastructure finally began to work as it was intended."

To be clear, the autopsy's cybersecurity concerns are about the party's own data infrastructure and not voting machines themselves, but the two vulnerabilities are not as separate as they might appear: it all speaks, broadly, to a party that treats the threat of third-party meddling as a problem they are on top of, rather than one where they might be behind the proverbial ball.

Is the DNC keeping up with Republicans in winning the game of politics?

The vendors who own electronic voting machines and other technology infrastructure, as well as the billionaires who could potentially tamper with them, seemingly remain secure in their positions. Nor is this the only way that Martin seemed to act in ways that are more favorable to America’s billionaire class than ordinary Americans. Speaking to AlterNet, a top Democrat with extensive experience working with the DNC argued that the Democratic Party has as an organization failed to move the needle when it comes to registering people to vote as Democrats. The DNC’s leaders have also, this source argued, failed to meet organizational goals including crafting a consistent theme for its party brand, raising adequate money and recruiting quality candidates up and down the ballot.

In addition to faulting the DNC’s leaders, this source also argued that the party’s elected leaders bear a great deal of blame as well, as they have seemed to make choices as much with billionaire interests in mind as those of ordinary people.

In the sole exception to the “paraphrase, do not quote” rule, this background source strongly criticized the billionaire influence over the Democratic Party today.

"Our so-called Democratic billionaires are out of control,” the top Democrat told AlterNet. “They are buying up candidates beholden to their special interests in Democratic primaries all across our country. It is legal after Citizens United, but it’s not democratic. It’s not good for the life of the Republic. And it’s disgusting.”

The source added, “If the voters were told, they’d be outraged. But no one is telling them — no one in the mainstream media and no one in our Party."

A Democratic operative with years of experience working in the party offered a specific example of how they observed this happening. Describing a key race in the 2026 midterm elections, this person observed an overwhelming amount of money from cryptocurrency billionaires, pointing to studies showing how the rising cryptocurrency industry has influenced politics to a degree not seen before with other major industries.

A nonpartisan consumer advocacy nonprofit, Public Citizen, released a report in 2024 detailing exactly how dramatically cryptocurrency has taken over American politics.

“Crypto corporations are by far the dominant corporate political spenders in 2024 as nearly half (48 percent) of all corporate money contributed during this year’s elections ($248 million so far) came from crypto backers,” Public Citizen wrote in its press release accompanying the report. “Direct corporate election spending at this scale is unprecedented. Crypto corporations’ total spending in the past three election cycles – $129 million – already amounts to 15 percent of all known corporate contributions since the Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling in Citizens United.”

The report added, “Since Citizens United, the crypto corporations are now second in total election-related spending, trailing only fossil fuel corporations, which have spent $176 million over the past 14 years, including $73 million from Koch Industries. The crypto sector’s Fairshake PAC and its affiliates have received nearly $114 million directly from corporate backers, far more than any other outside spender this cycle.”

It continued, “Fairshake’s corporate backing is unprecedented. Though unlimited corporate contributions have been enabled since 2010 by Citizens United, this newcomer is already second only to the super PAC dedicated to electing Republicans to the U.S. Senate in terms of corporate money received. That super PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund, has received nearly $119 million directly from corporations over the past 14 years, largely from fossil fuel corporations but including many other sectors, including crypto, tobacco, and for-profit prisons.”

Wherefore art thou, Obama?

Multiple sources identified the peak of the Democratic Party’s influence with ordinary voters as existing during President Barack Obama’s administration, who was able to inspire voter turnout and mobilize the party around consistent and popular messages like getting special interests out of government, ending the second Iraq war and passing meaningful health care reform. Even that acknowledgment, though, is qualified by the concern that Obama encouraged directing resources away from the DNC and toward his own nonprofit, Organizing for America. This may have further eroded the DNC’s ability to effectively organize and fund the official Democratic Party.

Each of these sources made it clear that they are not trying to hurt the Democratic Party or the Democratic National Committee. Quite the opposite, their goal is to splash cold water on their faces so they can wake up to potentially serious problems that are harming their party brand and could cost it in important elections. After all, as an expert at the good government nonprofit Common Cause recently told AlterNet, Trump is seemingly determined to rig the 2026 midterm elections.

“What they all add up to is a desire to avoid any accountability to the voters in the midterm elections — to ensure, to preordain the outcome of a midterm that he thinks is going to go badly for him,” Senior Policy Director for Voting and Fair Representation Dan Vicuña told AlterNet earlier this week. “We know, from the Big Lie of the 2020 election to spurring on a violent revolt to overthrow a free and fair election, that he has no respect for democratic norms, for the voice of the people. This is entirely about his own power and his own ego. He will even invest in protecting that ego and protecting his power at the expense of the needs of the public. People are suffering with high gas prices and affordability issues, and he does not care. All that matters is protecting his power, and he has no interest in whether he does that through democratic means.”

Vicuña concluded, “I think this all adds up to a desire to ensure that his party stays in power and his ability to do what he wants — to attack vulnerable communities — remains intact.”

This is another point on which the sources that spoke to AlterNet were united: Trump wants to steal future elections. Their argument, quite simply, seems to be that the Democrats cannot do so without first standing up to their own billionaire class.

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