- 5 months ago
The collective net worth of Trump’s Cabinet—made up of two Wall Street financiers, several former CEOs and TV hosts and just one career politician—is the highest ever, even before counting the president.
0:00 Introduction
0:16 What Industries Did These Members Work In?
1:22 How Much Is The Cabinet Worth?
4:11 The Billionaires And Millionaires In The Cabinet
9:34 Donald Trump's Net Worth
Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kylemullins/2025/08/13/inside-the-richest-presidential-cabinet-ever/
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0:00 Introduction
0:16 What Industries Did These Members Work In?
1:22 How Much Is The Cabinet Worth?
4:11 The Billionaires And Millionaires In The Cabinet
9:34 Donald Trump's Net Worth
Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kylemullins/2025/08/13/inside-the-richest-presidential-cabinet-ever/
Subscribe to FORBES: https://www.youtube.com/user/Forbes?sub_confirmation=1
Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:
https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript
Stay Connected
Forbes newsletters: https://newsletters.editorial.forbes.com
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Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes
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More From Forbes: http://forbes.com
Forbes covers the intersection of entrepreneurship, wealth, technology, business and lifestyle with a focus on people and success.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Hi, everybody. I'm Brittany Lewis, a breaking news reporter here at Forbes.
00:07Joining me now is my colleague, Forbes money and politics reporter Kyle Connmullins.
00:11Kyle, thanks so much for joining me.
00:14Always great to be here, Brittany. Thanks for having me.
00:17Of course, the money and politics team took the humongous undertaking of finding out the
00:22net worth of President Trump's cabinet. So I first want to step back here and look at the
00:27cabinet overall. What types of careers did these administration officials leave?
00:33What industries did they leave to serve this administration?
00:37You really run the gamut here. There's everyone from Wall Street folks like Scott
00:42Besant and Howard Lutnick. You've got Fox News personalities like Pete Hegseth and Sean Duffy.
00:48You've got sitting politicians like Marco Rubio, Doug Burgum, Kristi Noem. You got two sitting
00:52governors, Doug Burgum and Kristi Noem, who left their seats to join the administration. Marco
00:57Rubio, a senator from a relatively safe seat in Florida. Yeah. And then you've got lots of
01:02current and former business people. Look at Linda McMahon, former head of the WWE. Look at
01:08Lori Chavez de Riemer, the labor secretary, Chris Wright, the energy secretary. These folks are,
01:13like I said, current or former business people. It really runs the gamut of possible careers
01:19that are folks ending up in the cabinet. So business people, media personalities,
01:24I'm thinking dollar signs when I think of that. They're leaving big paychecks to come to this
01:30administration. So collectively, when you add it all together, how much is this cabinet worth?
01:36We estimate that the cabinet's net worth collectively, and I want to stress this is without
01:41Donald Trump, is $7.5 million. Now, most of that is two billionaires, Howard Lutnick and Linda McMahon.
01:48They're both worth about $3.3 billion each. But the rest of them aren't bringing exactly small
01:55amounts of money to the table either. And we don't estimate there is a single member of Trump's
01:58cabinet worth less than a million dollars. Wow. I mean, that is just an elite group to be in.
02:05I mean, they are making a lot of money. The poorest person this cabinet, Forbes, is estimating is still
02:10worth a million dollars. I mean, that's not bad. But how does this compare to President Trump's first
02:15term? Well, they are worth far more than Trump's first cabinet, first cabinet crew. We estimated
02:21in 2019, remember, Trump's cabinet changed a couple times. But his first term cabinet was worth about
02:27$3.2 billion in 2019. So that is, we're now looking at a number that's over double that.
02:34And I think it's also worth remembering, it's different in another way as well. In Trump's first
02:39term, he was still trying to sort of solidify control over the Republican Party. So you saw a lot
02:43of establishment Republicans in the administration, you saw a lot of generals. And he was adding those
02:48folks because he was trying to build credibility with the Republican Party as an institution.
02:53These days, I think it's safe to say Trump has total control over the party. And so his cabinet is,
02:58I think it's safe to say, much more loyal to him and to that ideological project that MAGA represents.
03:04So a great example in contrast there is for the defense secretary. You might remember Jim Mattis
03:09was his first nominee for defense secretary, a longtime, well-respected general.
03:15These days, you know, his nominee for defense secretary was Pete Hegseth,
03:20MAGA warrior who made his name on Fox News.
03:23And I know that the comparison is really even more staggering when you look at Biden's cabinet.
03:31How much was President Biden's cabinet worth compared to President Trump's second term?
03:34Yeah, compared to Donald Trump's second term, President Biden's cabinet net from a net worth
03:41perspective doesn't even come close. We estimated that President Biden's cabinet was worth about
03:45$110 million. Again, that's excluding the president, but he only would have added about 10 million bucks
03:50to that number. So I think that difference reflects there aren't a lot of highly successful
03:58business people and billionaires in Biden's cabinet. There were no billionaires, in fact,
04:01Biden's cabinet. He preferred to pick longtime government officials and experts to fill those
04:07roles instead of people from outside politics and outside government.
04:11So there are a few people serving in President Trump's cabinet this term that are worth more
04:17themselves than all of President Biden's cabinet combined. And I want to talk about that highest
04:23tier, if you will, the top echelon, the billionaires club. Who's in it?
04:28So you've got two people there, Howard Lutnick and Linda McMahon. Howard Lutnick, he took over and ran
04:35Cantor Fitzgerald. It's an investment firm on Wall Street. And it was most famous, unfortunately, for
04:41in 2001, losing over 600 employees in the 9-11 attacks on New York. Its offices were in the World Trade
04:48Center and were hit really badly, of course, by that attack. Howard Lutnick built that company back up
04:54from the ground up and made a massive fortune for himself while doing so. He's also very known,
05:01he's known on Wall Street as being very hard charging, very gruff, very, you know, tough to
05:04work with sometimes. And now he is Trump's chief trade negotiator. Second person is Linda McMahon.
05:10She's the former president and CEO of WWE, the worldwide wrestling entertainment franchise,
05:16this worldwide entertainment titan in the wrestling industry. She co-led that company with her
05:23husband for decades, starting in 1982. They made billions of dollars doing that. And then she
05:28later left the business in 2009. She wanted to focus more on politics. She served in some state
05:33level roles in Connecticut. And then she ran for Senate twice, didn't work out for her. She was a
05:38Republican running in deep blue Connecticut. But she also served in the first Trump administration as
05:43the head of the small business administration. She's also a major Republican donor. That is how she
05:49ended up in the second Trump cabinet. So now let's move on down. Let's look at that next here. Those
05:55people serving in President Trump's administration who are worth $100 million or more, but not quite
06:01billionaires. Who are they and what did they do? Yeah, all these folks are worth about a Biden cabinet
06:07or multiple Biden cabinets. You have Scott Besant worth an estimated $600 million. He made his fortune in
06:13hedge funds and specifically seems to have had the most success when he was managing billions and billions
06:18of dollars at George Soros's family office. He's also a big real estate investor and bought and sold
06:25lots and lots of property over the years. Second, you've got Doug Burgum, who we estimate, we actually
06:30have a looser estimate on him. It's just $100 million plus. It's a little tough to put a pin in
06:35his because we think that he's given a lot of his money to his children and trust that he doesn't have
06:41to report. But he's still worth over $100 million. Where did he make that money? He led Great Plains
06:48Software. That was a business software company and Microsoft bought it in 2001. That got Burgum over
06:52$100 million in stock right then and there. And then finally, we have Chris Wright. My colleague,
06:58Lily Ogburn, was the money and politics intern. She just finished up her time here at Forbes.
07:03She led the reporting on Chris Wright. She talked to him for that piece. There's a separate piece on the
07:08website. You got everyone should go read profiling Chris Wright in more detail. He made his fortune
07:12in oil and gas. And the biggest piece of that was Liberty Energy, a fracking firm that he started in
07:172011. And I actually spoke with then Governor Doug Burgum when he was running for president.
07:23And he told me that he is a self-made story. He's rags to riches. I'm curious, when you're looking at
07:29this administration, are these people, did they make their money through generational wealth? Or are they
07:34more like Doug Burgum, where they're rags to riches, they're self-made, and they made all their fortune
07:39that way? I think you could safely say that most folks in Trump's cabinet built their fortunes,
07:46or at least the majority of their fortunes themselves, either in business or politics.
07:50The best example, I would say, of generational wealth on the list is probably Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
07:55He was, of course, the son of Robert F. Kennedy, the former U.S. Attorney General and presidential
07:59candidate. And RFK Jr. is the heir to a small chunk of the Kennedy fortune. Compared to the
08:06rest of the list, though, he's kind of middle, bottom of the pack, lower middle of the pack at
08:10$15 million. And it should be noted, some of that $15 million is from his Hollywood wife,
08:16Cheryl Hines. So, you know, generation of wealth can get you somewhere, but believe me,
08:21it can only take you so far, as we can see with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
08:25And you noted at the top that the person who is worth the least on this list is still worth
08:32a million dollars. And there's only one career politician on this list, that's Secretary of
08:37State Marco Rubio. I'm curious, if you're a career politician, how are you making at least
08:42$1 million? First of all, how much is he worth? Second, how did he make that money?
08:47Marco Rubio is the second least wealthy person on the list there. He's worth about $1.5 million
08:53is what we're estimating. And the vast majority of that, he got lucky on a real estate gig.
09:00The Florida real estate market has been booming. They bought a house in 2021, and it's now worth
09:06over $2 million. He's got over a million dollars in home equity there in Miami. So that helps out
09:11a lot. But he is, like you said, a career politician. He ran for office pretty soon after graduating law
09:15school, worked his way up the Florida political establishment, eventually became the first Hispanic
09:18Speaker of the House of the State of Florida. And then he became a Florida senator. And now
09:23he's Secretary of State. So he has worked his way right up the political establishment, has been a
09:27politician, vast majority of his working life, and has made his money, like many Americans, in home
09:33equity. And despite there being a few billionaires on this list, despite there being multiple people
09:39worth more than $100 million, there is one person who has the top spot, and that is the president.
09:45How much is President Trump worth, according to Forbes?
09:49Our latest estimate for President Trump is that he's worth $5.5 billion.
09:55And so if you look at how Forbes has estimated the president's net worth since 2016, since he won his
10:02first term, President Trump has never been richer now than he was even when he won the presidency back
10:09then, almost a decade ago. So remind us how exactly he's profited from politics.
10:15Yeah, we think it's safe to say that Donald Trump is the first person to make over a billion dollars
10:20from politics alone. And, you know, when people talk about Donald Trump's wealth and how he may
10:26have made money off of politics, they focus on things like the DC hotel he owned during his first
10:31term when, you know, foreign diplomats would stay at the hotel, for example, or Mar-a-Lago and how they're
10:38able to charge much more for memberships now because the president lives there and is, you know,
10:43and that's a way of potentially getting his ear. Those things all matter, don't get me wrong.
10:50But if you want to talk about how President Trump has made money from politics, you're focused on
10:53two things. Number one, True Social, and number two, cryptocurrency. So True Social, that's his social
10:59media company. His 40% stake in it is worth, I think, $2 billion last time I looked. That's publicly traded
11:05his stock, so it moves around every day. And then the second thing is he has made just gobs of money
11:11from cryptocurrency. We are sort of taking a pretty conservative approach on this, but we still think
11:16he's made hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars from his crypto earnings. That's his meme coins,
11:22that's his other crypto ventures. He gets a little bit of a slice of every transaction that takes place
11:28with some of those coins and other digital assets. So between True Social and cryptocurrency,
11:36that is where he has really made his money in politics. Well, Kyle, I know just how big of an
11:41undertaking this is. So thank you so much for your reporting. Until next time.
11:46Thank you so much, Brittany. Thanks for having me.
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