Donor Who Gave $130 Million to Pay Troops Is Reclusive Heir to Mellon Fortune

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: New York Times

Oct. 25, 2025


Timothy Mellon, a reclusive billionaire and a major financial backer of President Trump, is the anonymous private donor who gave $130 million to the U.S. government to help pay troops during the shutdown, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Trump announced the donation on Thursday night, but he declined to name the person who provided the funds, only calling him a “patriot” and a friend. But the two people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the donation was private, identified him as Mr. Mellon.

Shortly after departing Washington on Friday, Mr. Trump again declined to identify Mr. Mellon while talking to reporters aboard Air Force One. He only said the individual was “a great American citizen” and a “substantial man.”

“He doesn’t want publicity,” Mr. Trump said as he headed to Malaysia. “He prefer that his name not be mentioned which is pretty unusual in the world I come from, and in the world of politics, you want your name mentioned.” The White House declined to comment. Multiple attempts to reach Mr. Mellon and representatives for him were unsuccessful.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/25/us/politics/timothy-mellon-donation-troops.html

[orangecrush]

1. Right wing nutjob

In the second quarter of 2023, Mellon donated $5 million to American Values 2024, a super PAC affiliated with the presidential campaign of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.; that, together with a large donation from billionaire Gavin de Becker, accounted for 97% of donations the PAC received through the end of June 2023.[31] By March 2024, Mellon's donations to the PAC totaled $20 million,[32] and by July 2024 it had increased to $25 million.[17]

Between April 2023 and March 2024, Mellon donated $15 million to MAGA Inc. (Make America Great Again), a Trump-affiliated super PAC.[32] On May 31, 2024, the day after Trump was convicted of 34 felonies, Mellon gave MAGA Inc. $50 million, one of the largest disclosed donations ever.[33][34] By July 2024, Mellon had given $75 million toward supporting Trump's campaign,[17] and by October, the total amount donated to the PAC had reached $150 million.[35]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Mellon


I really didn't even have to bother to look it up...

[djacq]

2. If True, Timothy Mellon owns a piece of this administration.

Who donates $130 million and doesn't expect something in return?

[rzemanfl]

3. How can TSF be commander in chief of mercenaries?

There is nothing in the Constitution about this. His orders are meaningless at this point. That's my argument and I am sticking to it.

[slightlv]

15. I agree... and if they're paid for by rich billionaires instead of the people,

then they are nothing more than mercenaries. They are no longer the People's Army.

[Maine-i-ac]

4. Lovely. Our troops are beholden to a reclusive billionaire Trump puppet master.

Wait till they temporarily bail out Food Stamps the same way. "My billionaire friends are now providing the basic needs of an army and significant portions of the population"
That'll end well /s

[yankee87]

5. Failed nation

If this were any other country, we would classify it as a failed nation. Oligarchs paying the troops for their loyalty during the coup. What next, the Armed Forces at the beck and call for this donor?

[TheRickles]

7. Yes - if he donates other $100M specifically to invade Venezuela, would that actually happen?

Anything is possible these days, no matter how ridiculously unConstitutional it might be.

[PSPS]

6. Explicitly illegal, but that doesn't matter anymore.

[twodogsbarking]

8. The curtains have been pulled back.

“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.”
― Frank Zappa

[viva la]

9. There are more than a million service members--

Just on active duty.

This would pay for maybe a day, not a month.

Trump tells them, "I'll lower your taxes. Give me donations."

[angrychair]

10. How is this legal

Seriously, how is it legal for someone to donate money like that?
We didn't have a privately funded government for a very good reason.

[BumRushDaShow]

11. It's not

but as long as Chief Justice John Roberts is calling the shots, whatever 45 does "is legal" (until they get around to it).

[angrychair]

12. True story

No doubt about that

[Skittles]

13. try to imagine if it was Soros

what repuke reaction would be

[eppur_se_muova]

16. I'm hoping at some point, he decides to colaborate with eLoon ....

Musk-Mellon projects would a gift to cartoonists and comics around the world.

"Juicy scandal leaks from Musk-Melon ... "




(PS: Mellon is a sad fixture in Pittsburgh. One thing about their city that most Pittsburghers aren't proud of.)

[BumRushDaShow]

18. "Juicy scandal leaks from Musk-Melon ... "

DUzy!

The Mellons are part of the ORIGINAL "banksters" (who have been displaced by the tech bros and crypto bros nowadays).

We had a bunch of their bank branches here in Philly, and then suddenly, they decided to get out of "consumer banking" about 25 years ago, and all of those branches disappeared (I think Citizens Bank bought a bunch of them - they being the ones that the Phillies ballpark is named for).

[eppur_se_muova]

19. Used to walk past their original building in Homewood on a regular basis. Now they've merged with Bank of New York.

I actually hadn't heard about that until just now.

There's a few things in PGH named after the more generous members of the Mellon family. (Low bar)

[BumRushDaShow]

20. They were all over PA

They built a "Mellon Center" hi-rise in 1990 (about 6 years after the height limit was removed from the towers downtown to be able to go higher than Billy Penn's hat on the statue atop City Hall) and it was renamed to the BNY Mellon Center after the buyout -



Then they "downsized" and moved into the old Lit's building about a mile east (originally calling it the "Mellon Independence Center" and then changing it to the "Lit's Building" to honor the department store that the building housed years ago) -

[eppur_se_muova]

22. I think I bought a mattress at Lit's.

Couldn't have remembered the name to save my life, but I remember that big building. I had never seen a dept. store with more than two stories before.

[BumRushDaShow]

23. Lit Brothers department store

and a block west was "Strawbridge and Clothier" -



and near there across the street was "Gimbels" (torn down).



And the masterpiece 5 more blocks west was Wanamaker's (recently sold by Macy's with its organ) -



Used to "go downtown" to shop there before all the malls appeared in the 'burbs! They were all "open late on Wednesdays".

[eppur_se_muova]

24. Well, it probably wasn't Lit's after all -- I remember the inside more than the outside ...

but I do seem to recall that it was 5 stories or more, with the lowest floor being about double normal height, for a huge open space.

[BumRushDaShow]

25. All of them down there had the large open first ( "ground" ) floor

Lit's was the furthest down from City Hall/Broad St. and just a couple blocks from Independence Hall.

[2na fisherman]

17. Reclusive Billionaires

This is coded language for a shadow government. The smartest of these elites pay people to keep their names from the public. But meanwhile they control all those phony politicians who act out the thin charade of democracy while obeying their masters.

[LudwigPastorius]

21. This guy's a piece of work.

He has the balls to call Social Security and Medicare, that we actually work and earn money to fund, "slavery".

Meanwhile he lives off of inherited millions that his grandad gave him, and uses them to take a giant shit on America by helping Trump get elected.