Pratt, a regular visitor to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, has been a very vocal backer of the US president-elect. However, their relationship was strained last year after reports, including in this masthead, that claimed Trump had discussed sensitive national security matters with Pratt soon after the end of his first term as US president.

Trump, who denied the reports, subsequently labelled Pratt a “red haired weirdo from Australia” on his social media site Truth Social.

Pratt was one of a number of billionaires, including Robert W. Duggan of Summit Therapeutics and Thomas Dan Friedkin of the Friedkin Group, to help fortify the Trump campaign as US voters got ready for the polls.

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The biggest donor by far for the entire US election cycle was Tesla and SpaceX founder and X owner Elon Musk, who poured $US75 million into the pro-Trump super political action committee that he founded in the final weeks of the election campaign. He also provided an additional $US45 million to America PAC after Trump had already declared victory, the latest Federal Election Commission data released last week shows.

Musk, along with entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, has been tapped to lead an effort to cut government spending, known as the “Department of Government Efficiency”.

Several other donors who wrote big cheques in the campaign’s closing stretch have also picked up prominent positions in the new Trump administration, with their appointment subject to confirmation from the US Senate.

Cantor Fitzgerald’s Howard Lutnick, slated to be the next commerce secretary, gave almost $US5 million to super PACs backing Trump. Intercontinental Exchange founder Jeffrey Sprecher, whose wife Kelly Loeffler has been tapped to head the Small Business Administration, gave $US1 million. And Linda McMahon, chosen to lead the Education Department, also gave $US1 million, FEC filings disclosing donations from mid-October to election day show.

Trump’s picks for his cabinet – on track to be one of the wealthiest administrations in modern presidential history – demonstrate the role that campaign donations can play in accessing the president-elect’s political orbit. Trump, who rose to power in 2016 fuelled by grassroots contributors giving in small increments, relied on billionaires for his third White House bid, showing a shift in how Republican mega-donors have embraced the president-elect.

with Bloomberg