Many high-dollar donors at banks, hedge funds and other financial firms had turned their backs on Trump as he spun unfounded claims that the 2020 election had been stolen and savaged the judicial system with attacks. Today, they’re setting aside those concerns, looking past qualms about his personality and willingness to bulldoze institutional norms and focusing instead on issues closer to the heart: how he might ease regulations, cut their taxes or flex U.S. power on the global stage. ...

The new embrace of Trump threatens to further blunt the fundraising edge that President Joe Biden maintained through the opening innings of the 2024 campaign. But beyond that, it suggests that a key Biden argument — that Trump’s actions since his 2020 defeat have made him unfit to lead the country again — is falling flat with a pivotal constituency that has an especially large stake in the rule of law.

The former president "is a much better choice than what we have now. Just check out the four years that Trump was in office versus the three years that President Biden was in office,” said John Catsimatidis, the billionaire New York radio station owner and real estate investor.