Republican donor and billionaire Ken Griffin said that “it’s time to move on” from former President Donald Trump in comments published Sunday in Politico.
Griffin, the founder, and CEO of Citadel LLC, a Miami-based hedge fund, said that “for a litany of reasons, I think it’s time to move on to the next generation” and that Republican voters should not re-nominate Trump in 2024 for the presidency. He added that while “he did a lot of things really well,” he “missed the mark on some important areas” and was “pointlessly divisive” in comments to Politico.
Griffin, who has a net worth of $31.2 billion per Forbes, is a major supporter and donor to Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.
He has been the leading donor to his 2022 reelection campaign as governor, contributing $5 million.
Speaking about DeSantis, Griffin said that he has a “tremendous record” and that the country will be “well-served” by his leadership, per Politico.
“Would I support him? The bigger question is, is he going to run? That bridge has to be crossed,” he answered when asked about whether he’d back DeSantis.
Regardless of whether DeSantis runs, Griffin has said he would not support Trump’s candidacy in 2024 should he decide to run.
At a recent rally in Pennsylvania, Trump, 76, said that “Everybody, I promise you, in the very next — very, very, very short period of time, you’re going to be happy,” in relation to a potential presidential campaign. Trump is expected to announce that he is running for president on Nov. 14, nearly two years in advance of the election.
DeSantis, meanwhile, is currently running for reelection to a second and final term as governor against Democratic former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist.
DeSantis is widely expected to win the race and currently leads Crist by a margin of 11.5%, per RealClearPolitics, which is the largest polling lead of any battleground-state governor running for reelection in the United States.
During his reelection campaign, DeSantis raised nearly $200 million from donors across the country, an unprecedented sum for a reelection campaign. Per Politico, it is the most raised for any gubernatorial election in the history of the United States.
DeSantis will have over $90 million left after the 2024 race.
In one instance, reported by Politico, he received a $10 million check signed by Robert Bigelow, a Las Vegas real-estate tycoon, which was the single largest check donation in Florida’s political history.
Though Griffin didn’t back Trump during the 2016 election, he donated $100,000 to Trump’s Inauguration Committee in 2016. Griffin is the third-largest individual political donor in the country during this midterm election – behind George Soros (backing Democrats) and shipping tycoon Richard Uihlein (supporting Republicans) – and has given more than $100 million to GOP candidates across the country since April of 2021, per OpenSecrets.org, a campaign finance monitor.
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