Unmasking Russia! The Billionaires Behind the Throne And the danger of a billionaire’s $130 million donation to pay U.S. troops Olga Lautman Oct 25 President Donald Trump said during a White House event Thursday, Oct. 23, 2025, that a friend had offered a $130 million gift to the Pentagon to defray any shortfalls in service members’ checks. (Evan Vucci/AP) So this week, we crossed another dangerous line as the United States slipped further into a system where power is concentrated in wealth and loyalty networks, information is controlled from the top, and the boundary between private patronage and public governance continues to dissolve. Trump’s government shutdown, now entering its fourth week, has frozen pay for hundreds of thousands of federal employees and forced many—among them active-duty service members—to wait in food lines for hours as the government remains paralyzed. Into that vacuum, Washington Post reported that the Pentagon quietly accepted a $130 million donation to cover troop salaries during the shutdown—a payment that Trump publicly celebrated and claimed came from a “patriot and friend.” That “friend,” it has since been revealed, is Timothy Mellon, a reclusive billionaire and one of Trump’s largest political backers, who funneled the money to the U.S. government to keep one day of the military payroll afloat during Trump’s shutdown—an extraordinary act that blurs the line between private influence and public authority and signals just how easily personal wealth can now step in to perform the functions of the state. What Trump hailed as generosity is, in reality, a profound rupture in the constitutional order, and a moment when the funding of America’s armed forces no longer flows from the consent of the people but from the private wealth of a political ally. Congress’s authority over America’s purse strings, a cornerstone of democratic oversight, has been effectively usurped by the favor of a private benefactor. When the armed forces begin to depend on the wealth of individuals rather than the will of the people, the balance of power shifts irreversibly. The military ceases to serve the nation as a whole and starts to serve the man who commands both its loyalty and its funding. And there is no coincidence that Trump has prioritized paying the military and ICE, his personal enforcement arm, the core of the domestic force he is building to quash dissent and ensure obedience. At the same time, Pete Hegseth has moved to further seal the Pentagon off from independent scrutiny. A new directive now requires senior defense officials, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff, service secretaries, and combatant commanders, to obtain clearance from the central legislative affairs office before speaking with Congress. Even routine exchanges must now be preapproved by political appointees loyal to the regime, ending the candid, case-by-case communication that once formed the backbone of civilian oversight. The Pentagon insists the change is meant to improve “accuracy and transparency,” but in practice, it has turned the Department of Defense into a controlled communication pipeline. The armed forces, once accountable to the public through their elected representatives, are now subordinate to a chain of command defined by political loyalty, and not the law. Simultaneously, Hegseth has dismantled the Pentagon press corps and rebuilt it in his image. Under new rules, legacy outlets—including The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Associated Press, and even Fox News—were expelled from the building after refusing to sign restrictive media agreements requiring prior approval of all information for release. In their place came a roster of far-right extremist outlets and propagandists: Turning Point USA, RedState, Human Events, Lindell TV, The Gateway Pundit, and The National Pulse, to name a few. Reporters who refused to comply turned in their badges and left the building on October 15. Those who remained did so by agreeing to the new conditions of control, trading independence for access. The Pentagon now operates in a media environment where only preapproved voices tell the public what it is allowed to know, and the most powerful military in the world speaks through the filter of its most partisan defenders. The transformation is strikingly familiar: in Russia, the Kremlin followed the same pattern over two decades ago, driving out independent journalists, replacing them with loyal propagandists, and using the press as an extension of the state. There, the line between reporting and obedience disappeared entirely, resulting in censorship, and the construction of an alternate reality in which the regime’s propaganda is what people hear. All of this is unfolding against the backdrop of Trump and Hegseth’s escalating military campaign in the Caribbean. U.S. forces have launched air and sea strikes on what they claim are “narco-terrorist” vessels, offering no evidence to substantiate the attacks, while preparing for potential land operations and regime change in Venezuela. The strikes, already responsible for more than forty deaths, have been conducted without congressional authorization or a formal declaration of war—yet another deliberate bypassing of constitutional oversight. Members of Congress from both parties have requested briefings and documentation from the Pentagon, only to be met with silence, as the regime treats questions of war as a matter of executive privilege. Trump insists the goal is to disrupt drug trafficking, yet the chosen targets and the scale of the military buildup tell a different story. Pete Hegseth has ordered the deployment of the aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford, along with its accompanying warships and attack planes, to waters off Latin America, marking the largest U.S. naval presence in the region in decades. The regime’s rhetoric, cloaked in the language of narcotics enforcement, reveals a far broader ambition—one aimed at projecting American power, reshaping regional influence, and potentially laying the groundwork to seize control of Venezuela’s vital oil assets under the familiar banner of counterterrorism. Trump is taking America down a path toward war with Venezuela, yet the American people have not been briefed on what the objective is, how long the operations will last, what the cost will be, or what risks this escalation poses to U.S. forces. Meanwhile, back in Washington, Trump has turned the seat of American democracy into a personal monument. Billionaires within his inner circle are allegedly financing, to the tune of $300 million, the construction of a new ballroom while demolition crews tear down the East Wing of the White House, a century-old space now reduced to rubble to make room for his vanity project. The act is steeped in symbolism, a literal dismantling of a historic wing of government to build a monument to personal power, as Trump does the same to America’s reputation, stability, global standing, and the economy. At the same time, he has demanded that the Justice Department pay him $230 million in damages for what he claims were unlawful investigations into his past crimes. The decision, if approved, would come from senior officials he personally appointed, lawyers whose loyalty is tied to him rather than to the Constitution. Together, these actions reflect a governing philosophy that treats the state as a private enterprise where justice, architecture, and national defense all serve one purpose—the consolidation of his own power. This convergence of private financing, censorship, and unchecked militarism is very familiar and mirrors the path Russia followed after Vladimir Putin came to power. In the early 2000s, the Kremlin drew on its leading oligarchs—including Roman Abramovich, Gennady Timchenko, and Oleg Deripaska—to finance projects that advanced state interests, from rebuilding Russia’s military and state institutions to funding pro-government media and strategic industries. These arrangements were presented as patriotic partnerships designed to restore order and efficiency after the chaos of the 1990s, but in practice they fused private wealth with state power until no clear line remained between business and government. Independent media outlets were absorbed or shuttered, parliament was reduced to a rubber stamp, and the armed forces became a central instrument of regime preservation rather than public defense. Each measure was justified as administrative reform or modernization, yet together they erased the institutional checks that once, briefly, separated the state from the Kremlin. That is the direction America is now moving, one decision after another, each signed decree layered upon the next, each crisis Trump carefully manufactures to justify his expansion of power. A private donor now pays the soldiers, a political gatekeeper decides what the military can tell Congress, a reengineered press corps repeats only what it is permitted to know, and a war begins without public debate or authorization. Each act, taken in isolation, can perhaps be defended as pragmatic or necessary, yet together they reveal a pattern that is impossible to ignore, the rapid transformation of America’s once-democratic system into a state held together not by law or consent but by loyalty, fear, and control. Russia followed this same path over two decades ago, and its history stands as a warning to those who still believe institutions can save themselves. Once power detaches from accountability, it does not return on its own, and once money replaces the law and propaganda replaces truth, the state no longer belongs to its citizens. Thanks for reading Unmasking Russia! This post is public so feel free to share it.