The Ellisons Prosper by Aligning with Trump

Numerous rich people are getting richer thanks to their connections to Donald Trump, but perhaps no one has gained as much as Larry Ellison and his son David. They control what is becoming one of the largest media empires the country has ever seen—and one that could very well serve as a multi-platform MAGA megaphone.

What is often overlooked is that the rise of the Ellisons was also made possible by a family fortune built to a significant extent on federal government contracts and that many of those contracts had a performance record that was something less than spotless.

Until recently, Larry Ellison was known mainly as the co-founder of the software producer Oracle Corporation. He was chief executive of Oracle from 1977 to 2014, and at age 81 he retains the titles of chairman and chief technology officer.

As Oracle grew over that period, so did Ellison’s lavish compensation package. That pay plus his large stake in the company have made him one of the wealthiest people in the world. The latest Forbes 400 list ranked him second, with a net worth of $276 billion.

Oracle does not disclose exactly how much of its revenue comes from government contracts, but USASpending shows that it takes in over $1 billion a year just for its federal healthcare-related services, much of that coming from the Department of Veterans Affairs. Oracle is one of four companies that received a $9 billion multi-year contract from the Pentagon for the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability.

Oracle has gone on receiving contracts despite the fact that in 2011 it had to pay $199 million to settle Justice Department allegations that the company failed to meet its contractual obligations to provide the General Services Administration with current, accurate and complete information about its commercial sales practices, including discounts offered to other customers, and that Oracle knowingly made false statements to GSA about its sales practices and discounts.

Oracle’s record has also been tainted by foreign bribery allegations. In 2022 it paid $23 million to the Securities and Exchange Commission to resolve allegations that it violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act when subsidiaries in Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and India created and used slush funds to bribe foreign officials. A decade earlier, Oracle had paid $2 million to settle a similar case involving improper payments in India.

These cases apparently were not an issue earlier this year when the Federal Communications Commission approved the acquisition of Paramount Global (CBS, Paramount Pictures, etc.) by Skydance Media, owned by the Ellisons. What was decisive, instead, was Paramount’s decision to enter into an extravagant settlement to resolve a baseless lawsuit filed by Trump against 60 Minutes. Once the merger was completed, the influence of the Ellisons could be seen in the decision to name right-leaning Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief of CBS News.

Now the combined Skydance Paramount is reported to be part of an effort to take over Warner Bros. Discovery, owner of CNN, HBO, the Warner Bros. studio, and much more. At the same time, the Ellisons are involved in the deal Trump has been putting together to transfer ownership of TikTok’s U.S. operations to an American consortium.

It is difficult to imagine that the Ellisons would be enjoying all this good fortune if they had not aligned themselves closely with Trump over the past year. In Trump’s America, all the past sins of a corporation can be forgotten as long as tribute is paid to the occupant of the White House.

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