Timothy Mellon and his first wife Susan Tracy Mellon attend a party in 1981—the year Guilford Transportation Industries was founded—to honor the National Gallery established by Mellon’s grandfather.
Guy DeLort/WWD/Penske Media/Getty Images
Mellon family heir and former railroad magnate Tim Mellon has now given at least $504 million to politics, a staggering sum for someone who insists he isn’t a billionaire. Most of it has gone to President Trump and right-leaning causes, mostly in the last five years. The anonymous $130 million gift to pay active-duty troops during the government shutdown—first reported by the New York Times as coming from Mellon based on conversations with two people who knew—means Mellon could be the first billionaire or near-billionaire who has donated more than half their wealth to politics.
“I’m not going to use his name unless he lets me do it,” Trump said in a press conference on Friday announcing the donation, where he called the donor a patriot and a friend. “He doesn’t really want the recognition, if you want to know the truth.”
Mellon has always given quietly and avoided flashy fundraising events. But over the last decade he has emerged as one of America’s biggest political donors, mostly to Trump and other right-leaning groups and causes. Even more remarkable: Mellon is dumping that much money into politics without the kind of fortune that allows other billionaires like Elon Musk to give away hundreds of millions with barely a dent in their fortunes.
For context: Musk, the world’s richest person, has given Trump some $290 million to date, just a few million more than Mellon’s $282 million (that’s just the sum Mellon gave to Trump’s presidential campaign). Together, the two ultra-wealthy men—one worth more than $500 billion, one worth a small fraction of that—helped Trump win a second term. To further put things in perspective, Musk’s massive donations to Trump amounted to less than 1% of his wealth at the time.
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No other billionaire gave more than $20 million or more than 1% of their wealth to Trump, Biden or Harris during the last presidential campaign. Even if political donations are Mellon’s version of philanthropy, only 11 members of the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans have given away more than 20% of their wealth. Only one, George Soros, has given away more than half. In dollar terms, there is at least one bigger political donor: Mike Bloomberg spent more than $1 billion in the 2020 presidential election, but in that case, it was in support of his own campaign. Besides, as a percentage of his net worth—$62 billion the day he dropped out of the election—it was small change compared to Mellon’s giving.
Mellon says he isn’t a billionaire, but Forbes estimates Mellon was worth around $1 billion before all his donations over the past year, based on his inheritance and proceeds from the sale of his railroad company. Depending on how much he really is worth, he’s given anywhere from 20% to more than 30% to Trump and some 50% of his fortune to political causes of some sort.
Fitting for someone who shies away from the spotlight and has called the press “the propaganda arm of the federal government and the bureaucracy,” Mellon didn’t respond to a request for comment for this story. But he insisted via email to Forbes last year that his fortune has always been smaller that some estimated. “Billionaire NOT!” he wrote. “Never have been, never will be.”
Aside from Mellon’s Trump-related donations, he has given around $160 million to federal political committees including the Senate Leadership Fund and the pro-RFK American Values 2024, plus another $60 million to state candidates and the border wall. Mellon’s big political spending these days is a far cry from his youth, when voted for Lyndon Johnson and donated to causes like economic development for southern Black people, a Gloria Steinem group fighting sexism and a Ralph Nader-backed organization working to increase civic engagement.
Mellon’s millions came not just from family money. His grandfather, banking titan Andrew Mellon, left a hefty sum to Timothy and two other grandchildren in the mid-1930s, according to David Cannadine’s book “Mellon.” The book value of that gift was $23 million back then, or roughly $500 million today, adjusted for inflation. With wise investing, it could have grown far larger. For example, if the money were plowed into holdings that returned 75% as much as the S&P 500, the $23 million would have turned into $3.6 billion by now—leaving $1.2 billion for each of the grown-up grandchildren, if divided evenly. But there’s also his railroad firm, a difficult business he ran for nearly half a century. In the early 1980s, Mellon spent an estimated $22 million of his own money buying up struggling railroads. After decades of ruthless leadership, Mellon sold them in 2022 for $600 million, collecting an estimated $345 million after tax. Still, even though the 83-year-old Mellon didn’t have children with his first wife, it’s hard to imagine someone spending that much without at least a billion in cash to spend.