Former President Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign is getting a financial boost from a group of billionaires as he looks to close the fundraising gap with Democrat rival President Biden.

Billionaire Stephen Schwarzman, the CEO and co-founder of Blackstone, announced on Friday that he will back the former president in the 2024 race after he previously called for the Republican Party to turn to a “new generation of leaders.”

Schwarzman, who is worth an estimated $39 billion, said he shares many Americans’ concerns “that our economic, immigration and foreign policies are taking the country in the wrong direction” and added that the “dramatic rise of antisemitism has led me to focus on the consequences of upcoming elections with greater urgency.”

His announcement comes as other billionaires have rallied to support the Trump campaign as it closes in on the Biden campaign, which had been outpacing Trump in monthly fundraising until April, when the former president’s campaign led for the first time this cycle. Mounting legal bills have also strained the Trump campaign’s finances.

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As of April, Biden’s campaign had about $84.5 million in net cash while Trump’s had $48 million, according to a report by the New York Times. 

That figure for the Biden campaign was relatively flat from the prior month, while the Trump campaign’s coffers grew by about $3 million from March.

The support from Schwarzman and other billionaire benefactors could help the Trump campaign further narrow that gap. Billionaire hedge fund founder John Paulson hosted a fundraiser for Trump’s campaign at his Palm Beach, Florida, home in early April. Guests were asked to contribute $814,600 per person to serve as a “chairman” contributor who could sit at Trump’s table, or $250,000 to be a “host committee” contributor.

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Billionaire Robert Mercer and his daughter, Rebekah Mercer, were listed as co-chairs of the Paulson fundraiser. The two were major Trump boosters in 2016 but had mostly sat out his 2020 re-election campaign.

Oil magnate Harold Hamm, the founder and chair of Continental Resources who helped pioneer fracking techniques in extracting shale oil, was also listed as a chair of the event.

Casino mogul Steve Wynn was another billionaire listed as a co-chair of the event, as was Todd Ricketts, Chicago Cubs co-owner and a member of the TD Ameritrade board of directors who previously served as the RNC’s finance chair.

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The Paulson fundraiser in early April netted the Trump campaign over $50 million, the campaign indicated.

In a campaign swing through Texas last week, Trump attended a fundraiser in Houston hosted by Hamm and other billionaires, including Jeff Hildebrand, founder of Hilcorp Energy, which is the largest closely held oil firm in the U.S.; George Bishop, founder of GeoSouthern Energy; and Kelcy Warren, head of pipeline firm Energy Transfer Partners.

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The Houston luncheon fundraiser was followed by a roundtable with a group of about 45 executives. A second fundraiser was held in Dallas on Wednesday evening.

FOX News’ Andrew Mark Miller, Paul Steinhauser, Bradford Betz and Reuters contributed to this report.

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Bond investors are on edge about federal budget deficits that are expected to persist into the foreseeable future regardless of the outcome of this year’s presidential election.

Although President Joe Biden and his main challenger, former President Donald Trump, have each touted deficit reduction efforts in their respective administrations, budget forecasts from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) project the deficit rising from about $1.6 trillion in 2024 to $2.6 trillion a decade from now.

With analysts and investors expecting deficits to remain at historically elevated levels and likely to grow in the years ahead, some have moved to protect their portfolios from a surge in bond yields, while others have raised concerns about the amount of future debt issuance needed to finance deficit spending without destabilizing the $27 trillion Treasury market. Despite those concerns, a debt crisis isn’t imminent.

“The most predictable crisis in history… is for the moment more a silent crisis,” JPMorgan analysts said in a recent note. It added that the U.S. national debt is, “A problem ‘for tomorrow’ but not right now.”

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A sudden drop in demand for U.S. government bonds is unlikely to transpire due to the dollar’s status as the world’s leading reserve currency and the size and depth of the market for Treasuries.

However, there have been shifts in demand for U.S. bonds with foreign ownership not keeping pace with the growth of the market and the Federal Reserve reducing the size of its bond holdings. 

With lingering uncertainty about the number and depth of the Fed’s interest rate cuts – which have been put on hold due to stubbornly high inflation – investors are reassessing the government bond market.

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“One of the things we’ve been talking a lot about internally is not just the supply but the demand,” David Rogal, managing director and a member of the multi-sector team in BlackRock’s global fixed income group, told Reuters.

“An environment where you have a reduced buyer base and more supply definitely makes me think that over time you will see more term premium,” he said in reference to a measure of extra compensation investors demand for lending to the government through longer-term bond purchases.

Craig Ellinger, head of Americas fixed income at UBS Asset Management, said that short-term debt “seems like the safer place to be in case deficits do get out of control.”

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“If we take a step back away from the Fed and away from the next six months where we could still get substantial rate cuts, supply numbers are not healthy,” Ella Hoxha, head of fixed income at Newton Investment Management, said in a Reuters report. Hoxha currently favors short-term maturities in the market for Treasuries.

Yields for the benchmark 10-year Treasury bond are currently around 4.4%, which she said could rise to 8% or 10% over the next several years because, over the longer term, the lower rates are “not sustainable” given U.S. debt levels. 

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The federal government’s gross national debt is currently above $34.5 trillion while the debt held by the public, a metric preferred by economists analyzing the national debt, is $21 trillion – though it’s projected to rise to $48 trillion by 2034 per the CBO. 

The high interest rate environment has exacerbated the deficit, with federal spending on interest payments on the debt surpassing spending on the military and Medicare this year.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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