On Tuesday night, as he watched the election results at Mar-a-Lago in Florida, Donald Trump was surrounded by his family, campaign staff and wealthy backers including Elon Musk. Among the crowd was Hary Tanoesoedibjo, an Indonesian billionaire who has long been a supporter of Trump’s and has partnered with him on several real estate projects in Indonesia.
Five minutes before midnight, as it became clear that Trump was close to victory, Tanoesoedibjo posted a video of Trump shaking hands with cheering supporters in Mar-a-Lago on X. The next day, after the election was called for Trump, some of America’s richest people posted on social media to congratulate him on his victory. But the election was also closely watched around the world, and since Wednesday more than a dozen billionaires in countries ranging from Argentina to the U.K. took to X to congratulate Trump or react to the election results.
Gautam Adani, the second-richest person in India with a $41 billion net worth, chimed in: “If there is one person on Earth who stands as the embodiment of unbreakable tenacity, unshakeable grit, relentless determination and the courage to stay true to his beliefs, it is Donald Trump,” he wrote, captioning the now famous photo of Trump raising his fist after an assassination attempt in July. Ryan Cohen, the Canadian billionaire and CEO of GameStop, was more succinct, posting: “God bless America!” after the election was called.
Others were less congratulatory. Richard Branson, the billionaire who founded the Virgin group of companies, wrote an eight-post-long thread analyzing the impact that Trump’s victory would have on the U.S. and the war in Ukraine. “It is plain to see that these past months have exposed deep divisions and rifts between Americans,” he wrote. Anand Mahindra of India’s Mahindra conglomerate posted the photo of Trump raising his fist side-by-side with one of a young girl looking up at Kamala Harris during a speech, captioning it: “It was a battle between these two images of identity. But America gains substantially from allowing both images to coexist in popular imagination…”
Some chose to amplify other posts rather than write their own messages. Argentine billionaire Marcos Galperin shared two posts by Elon Musk and Marc Andreessen celebrating Trump’s victory. British-Cypriot real estate billionaire John Christodoulou also retweeted a Musk post, while Shopify’s Canadian founder, Tobi Lutke, retweeted a joke by Ben Shapiro about liberal voters moving to Canada following the election results.
Trump isn’t the first billionaire to win office, and fellow billionaires-turned-politicians also weighed in on social media, including three who were in office during Trump’s first term. “An incredible comeback!” wrote Czech billionaire Andrej Babis, who has been nicknamed the “Czech Donald Trump.” Former billionaire Saad Hariri, who served as prime minister of Lebanon for six years between 2009 and 2020, congratulated Trump on a “well deserved victory.” Petro Poroshenko, a former billionaire and Ukraine’s president from 2014 to 2019, wrote a long post on X that ended with “Welcome back Donald!”
Here are some of the most recent posts from non-U.S. billionaires on their reactions to the election:
Uday Kotak (India, $13.3 billion)
Ryan Cohen (Canada, $4.4 billion)
Andrej Babiš (Czech Republic, $3.6 billion)
Richard Branson (United Kingdom, $2.6 billion)
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