Gary Cohn, the former president of Goldman Sachs who served in former President Donald Trump’s White House, may be hosting a fundraiser for Trump rival Nikki Haley later this month — but he’s not turning against his old boss.
Sources familiar with the matter told Breitbart News that Cohn is telling friends if Trump wins the GOP nomination, as the polls indicate he will and most expect him to, that Cohn would back Trump for president. He also is telling people that he is still supportive of Trump.
“Gary Cohn continues to be supportive of President Trump and will absolutely be backing him once he’s the nominee for President,” a source close to Cohn told Breitbart News.
Cohn, who is now the vice chairman of IBM and still holds significant sway on Wall Street among GOP donors, is holding the fundraiser for Haley — who he served with during the Trump administration when she was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations — on November 14 in New York City.
“Former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. President Gary Cohn is a co-host of a Nov. 14 fundraiser for ex-United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley in New York, according to an invitation obtained by Bloomberg News,” Bloomberg’s Stephanie Lai and Amanda Gordon reported Tuesday, and continued:
The event — hosted by rival Donald Trump’s former top economic adviser — is a win for Haley, who has been ascendant in recent polls and is now among the leading challengers to the former president for the Republican nomination. Cohn is a vice chairman at International Business Machines Corp. Audrey Gruss and Martin Gruss, formerly of Gruss Capital Management; Ronnie Heyman, president of the Museum of Modern Art; Simone Levinson, who served on multiple commissions under former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo; and Michael Santini, a former chair of global banking at UBS, will co-host the event on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
But just because Cohn is doing an event with Haley does not mean he has turned against Trump, multiple sources say. Cohn has also hosted fundraisers for another 2024 GOP presidential candidate, Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), and for potential No Labels presidential candidate and current Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) this year as well. In other words, Cohn is leaning into his reputation as the gateway to Wall Street donors and trying to make what he views as reasonable political candidates come to him to foster a discussion on economic policy as the process for the selection of presidential candidates from major parties develops.
Cohn’s spokesperson did not dispute the idea that he would still back Trump in the general election should Trump win the nomination next year. Instead, his spokesperson noted that he has hosted many such events like the forthcoming Haley one this year and intends to continue to monitor the primaries as they play out.
“Gary is a leading economic voice in the country, and he is interested in giving candidates a chance to have their policy platforms heard and to have a discussion on smart economic policies,” Cohn’s spokesperson told Breitbart News. “He has hosted several such events and will continue to watch the democratic process unfold.”
There are several reasons why these revelations and developments in this story may be important. First and foremost, Haley is absolutely rising in the GOP primary to the point where she is emerging perhaps as the leading GOP challenger to Trump less than 80 days before the Iowa caucuses. Polling averages in New Hampshire and South Carolina show Haley firmly ahead of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in second place behind Trump — albeit a far and away distant second place — and polling this week in Iowa from the Des Moines Register shows Haley has surged into a tie with DeSantis for second place there. Again the race is hot for second place, but Trump is way out in front of both of them. DeSantis’s team rushed in response to release an internal poll that, even though it shows him trailing Trump significantly, shows Haley trailing DeSantis in Iowa.
But perhaps more interestingly here is what this would all mean for Trump should he lock down the nomination as expected next year. Trump may not need big donors like Cohn and his friends now, in a GOP primary where voters are energized to back the former president against his various intra-party rivals, but come general election time Trump is going to need all the help he can get. Trump would be facing off, most likely barring some major change in the trajectory of things as of yet unforeseen, against incumbent Democrat President Joe Biden in November 2024. It would be the rematch of the century — and Trump would need to find a way to beat the guy who beat him in 2020 and flip the script back the other way. While the final outcome was extremely close across many battleground states — approximately 100,000 votes in four or five states was possibly the difference between Biden and Trump being president right now — given the left’s propensity for Trump hatred, Trump is going to need as many allies as he can get. Having a guy like Cohn on board for the general could bring a lot of these big donors around later when it matters.
The Haley campaign and the Trump campaign did not return requests for comment for this story.
