Bill Ackman: Billionaire investor backs Donald Trump after assassination attempt
Billionaire investor Bill Ackman has formally thrown his support behind Donald Trump following the assassination attempt on the ex-president last week.
The hedge fund manager endorsed Trump on X a few hours after the Republican party candidate was injured in a shooting during a rally, stating: “I assure you that I have made this decision carefully, rationally, and by relying on as much empirical data as possible.”
The chief executive and portfolio manager of Pershing Square Capital Management has shifted politically in recent years, calling for Trump to “resign and apologise to all Americans” after the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol in 2021.
Now, Ackman has become notorious on X, formally Twitter, for shifting hard to the right, even interacting with some on the far-right and re-posting right-wing content dozens of times a day.
Ackman took a more public role in politics last year after leading a campaign to oust Claudine Gay, Harvard’s first black president, due to a congressional hearing about pro-Palestinian protests on her campus.
The hedge fund manager splashed allegations of plagiarism by Gay across his timeline, then began a public spat with Business Insider after the publication found evidence that Ackman’s wife had plagiarised passages in her dissertation from Wikipedia.
Since then, despite backing rivals to Trump in the Republican primary, like Nikki Haley, and donating money to Democrats in the past, his X output has become noticeably more Trump friendly.
Ackman said at the weekend that he had recently spent a few hours with Trump, but did not provide a reason for his endorsement.
He said he would write another long-form post to explain his decision. “I just haven’t had the time nor felt the urgency to write the post as we are still a few months from the election,” he said.
“I came to this decision some time ago as many X followers have already understood from my supportive posts of Trump and my criticisms of Biden,” he added.
Ackman’s endorsement of Trump followed that of Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who backed Trump and said he had “hope for his rapid recovery” after the shooting.