516
Trump backer Timothy Mellon identified as donor of $130m for US troop pay during government shutdown
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2025
516 points (99.0% liked)
News
32939 readers
2829 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Anti-tax advocate gives government $130 million to not pay taxes.
These are the smartest people.
His family's net worth is estimated at $14B. It's a down-payment on a tax cut that will save him much more.
This'll make him billions. It was smart
He already has billions more than he could spend in a lifetime. It isn't smart it's deranged.
Yep. Billionaires only care about that number (their net worth) going up. It doesn't help them in any substantive way when the number goes up. But they don't have anything else to give their lives meaning. Just to have some number go up and to have their number be higher than other people's numbers.
If they didn't care about that number, and only cared about their selfish lifestyle, without comparing to others, for example, then with the value of money today, they'd probably stop bothering to hoard money long before they hit a billion dollars. It's a pathetic excuse for a life to keep accumulating like billionaires do. They don't care who they hurt as long as that fucking number gets bigger.
Billionaires care about that number because it equates to power and influence. This is a great example of that. The Trump Administration is effectively trying to bribe the military/ICE by keeping them paid during this shutdown while he waits for Democrats to cave when medical insurance premiums skyrocket and SNAP runs out and people start to starve. This leaves the population vulnerable for when Trump inevitably orders a purge of the American people.
The big question in the room is will the military and ICE be willing to take on the entire US population? I already know ICE is willing to shoot their own mothers in the face for a paycheck (or even for free cuz some of them be that sick), but the military has too many people who will simply break rank with Trump cuz they take their oath to the Constitution seriously.
It's sad that it comes down to the consciences of soldiers as to whether America gets to rebuild Democracy or not, but that's where we are.
Start making a list of Billionaires, MAGA asshats, and Right Wing Grifters though. Cuz the one thing I can tell you is that Americans are going to want a very different flavor of justice should we reinstitute Democratic Norms in this country, and we shouldn't forget who to eat first.
100$/ soldier isnt going to mean much its also a ONE TIME THING.
Look how excited everybody got over those fucking $600 "stimulus" checks. Not even one month's rent for anybody.
its a dick measuring contest amonst billionaires, either through donating to conservatives, or money laundeirng through charity like gates.
I wonder how much in total his taxes would contribute to the military if he just played by the rules and wasn't an evil twat. Like that's clearly well beyond what 99% of the US could ever earn in their life, let alone pay into taxes. Further more for every dollar you put into taxes, not all of it goes to the military. Forget still you can be sure this asshat has greased some palms of politicians throughout his life. Between the $130M and the ~~bribes~~ totes legal campaign donations, what would his effective tax rate have needed to be to get to that number?
"Smart."
More money than anyone could ever need in 500,000 lifetimes already, and this is the "smart" move?
How about just shut the fuck up and enjoy the life of a goddamn king
There are people who are quietly living a great life with wealth, I’ve met some of them. Money only amplifies who a person is, because it gives them a bigger platform to act.
You know that person who can never have enough, and has some big hole inside them they keep trying to fill from the outside? Give them a few billion and here you are.
You could have just named Bezos directly there...
Your upvote ratio on this comment is deeply concerning, and reinforces the point many others are making.
To an american, there's always an amount of money they will sell their morals and values out for. Most of these up votes are from americans, or westerners who have fallen for american propaganda.
To pretty much everyone else, they would have enough money already. Why waste time pursuing more money when it will literally change nothing in your life.
I think most people understand I'm not happy about it. I wish it weren't the case but it's true, it was smart for him. That's exactly what they always do.
Rich fucks will screw over the general populace to make an extra dollar.
Fucking over the general populace for money is not smart. I dont know how much more simple I can make it. People who think its smart to do that, whether they do it directly themselves or not, are part of the problem. Consider reprioritizing your values and what you consider to be a smart move.
I think you're misunderstanding their point here. They're using "smart" in the sense of "an efficient method to achieve a specified goal", where the goal in this case is "make more money", and the method is "by whatever means possible".
No matter how you twist it, what this person did is likely an efficient route for them to reach that goal. So in by the above metric, it is a "smart move".
Its like you both think if add enough caveats that its actually smart. What I'm saying is, is that the caveats are excuses that allow people to turn an obvious negative into a positive. Not everything can be a positive "if you just look at it the right way". Thats absurd, and shows that your morals change depending on the goal.
Doesn't most of this money go to the mercenaries? Oh I mean military *