'Eroded': MAGA-voting hedge fund tycoon says Trump damage will take a 'lifetime to repair'

One of Trump's wealthiest supporters has turned on him.

Ken Griffin, the founder and CEO of the Citadel hedge fund, told Gina Chon of Semafor at the D.C. World Economy Summit that Trump has made the country 20 percent poorer and "eroded" the brand of U.S. Treasury bonds, an asset that until now was unassailable.

“We put that brand at risk,” said Griffin. “It can be a lifetime to repair the damage that has been done.”

Trump's tariffs, enacted several weeks ago, impose 10 to 49 percent import duties on virtually the entire rest of the world, sending markets into a tailspin and bitterly dividing the GOP. Trump later announced a 90-day grace period in which every country except China will see their goods taxed at the minimum rate of 10 percent — still a sizable figure — and this week he began playing with the idea of giving China a reprieve as well.

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Griffin, a longtime billionaire megadonor to the Republican Party, was always at least publicly a reluctant Trump supporter. Before the 2024 election, he scorned Trump as a "three-time loser" and threw his support behind Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to get the nomination. After Trump secured the nomination, Griffin mostly went silent on the presidential race, but poured $100 million into various GOP causes. After the election, he said he voted for Trump and that under the incoming president's leadership, "America is open for business."

This comes as a number of other high-value benefactors to Trump and the GOP begin to rethink their decision.

One of the most notable cases is tech billionaire Elon Musk, who poured hundreds of millions into electing Trump and unofficially runs his Department of Government Efficiency task force to purge the civil service. Following a disastrous quarterly earnings report for his flagship company Tesla Motors, Musk has suggested politics has become too much of a drag on his life and work, and that he may soon leave the White House.