At the Republican National Convention, numerous speakers have been trotted out as so-called “everyday Americans.” Tonight, the list of “everyday Americans” will include Diane Hendricks, a woman who has topped Forbes’ Richest Self-Made Women list for seven years in a row and has a net worth of $20 billion.
Hendricks has donated millions to support Donald Trump’s political rise and played a key role in his shocking 2016 victory in Wisconsin — before scoring a massive tax deduction as a result of Trump’s 2017 tax law. She’s scheduled to speak at the convention Thursday before Donald Trump formally accepts the Republican nomination for president.
The Wisconsin businesswoman, who made her billions after co-founding a roofing company with her late husband, doesn’t exactly fit the mold of an average American.
The 77-year-old worked as a Playboy Bunny to pay off her debts as a teen. Now, she boasts a reported net worth of $20.9 billion. She owns a multi-story 9,500-square-foot home that is a testament to her Republican fervor, filled with statues of Ronald Reagan, photos of her and Donald Trump together, and a numbered print showing 10 Republicans drinking together, identical to the one Trump hung in the White House. Outside, three Budweiser Clydesdales roam the luscious greens, Forbes reported. The horses are valued at $15,000 apiece.
The billionaire’s patriotism doesn’t stop there. Her company, ABC Supply, has brandished the slogan “Delivering on the American Dream Since 1982” since inception, and calls “American Pride” one of seven core values. Fellow RNC entertainer Lee Greenwood regularly sings “God Bless the USA” at the company’s events. The song is also regularly featured in a video shown to all company managers.
Hendricks, the 93rd-richest person in the world, has used her fortune to influence elections, and much of it has come to the benefit of Trump. “Everyone knows I am a conservative,” she told Forbes in 2022.
During the 2016 election cycle, Hendricks donated $8 million to the Reform America Fund, which spent $3.5 million attacking Trump’s Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. The spending was focused in Wisconsin, where Clinton narrowly lost by 0.8 percent in a major upset that helped swing the election to Trump.
During the 2016 and 2020 election cycles, Hendricks donated $1.4 million to the Trump Victory committee. In 2020, she donated $4 million to America First Action, the primary pro-Trump Super PAC that cycle. Hendricks has has donated $5 million to Trump’s chief Super PAC this election cycle, Make America Great Again Inc.
Her past support for Trump paid off big time. According to reporting by ProPublica, Hendricks saved tens of millions as a result of a provision in the 2017 Trump tax law designed to benefit owners of large real estate holdings through LLCs.
In the first year of the pass-through provision, Hendricks received a $97 million deduction on her $502 million in income, saving her around $36 million in taxes, according to ProPublica. The outlet reported that the tax cuts may have benefited Hendricks and the Uihlein family, Republican megadonors who own the cardboard box giant Uline, more than anyone else in the country.
Hendricks isn’t the only billionaire scheduled to speak at the RNC on Thursday. Trump megadonor Linda McMahon, who ran the Small Business Administration under Trump, is speaking after Hendricks.
McMahon has donated millions to pro-Trump Super PACs, and currently chairs the board of the America First Policy Institute, a pro-Trump think tank.
President Donald Trump discussing Venezuela at a press conference at Mar-a-Lago.
Why Venezuela Could Be a Turning Point in Gen Z’s Support for Trump
When Donald Trump called himself “the peace president” during his 2024 campaign, it was not just a slogan that my fellow Gen Z men and I took seriously, but also a promise we took personally. For a generation raised in the shadow of endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it felt reassuring. It told us there was a new Republican Party that had learned from its failures and wouldn’t ask our generation to fight another war for regime change. That belief stood strong until the U.S. overthrew Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Growing up in the long wake of the wars in Iraq in Afghanistan shaped how my generation learned to see Republicans. For us, “traditional” Republican foreign policy became synonymous with unnecessary conflicts that caused young people to bear the consequences. We heard how Iraq was sold to the public as a necessary war to destroy weapons of mass destruction, only to become a long conflict that defined the early adulthood of many millennials. Many of us grew up watching older siblings come home from deployments changed, and hearing teachers and coaches talk about friends who never fully came back. By the time we were old enough to pay attention, distrust of Bush-era Republicans wasn’t ideological, it was inherited from what we had heard.
As the 2024 election was rolling around, that dynamic had flipped. After watching wars in Ukraine and Gaza dominate headlines while Joe Biden was president, the Democrats were now the warmongers. My friends constantly told me how a vote for Kamala Harris was a vote to go to war. On the other hand, Donald Trump and the Republicans were the ones my friends thought could keep us safe. “I’m not voting for Trump because I love him,” one friend told me. “I’m voting for him because he cares about us and I don’t want to go fight in a stupid war.” For many of my friends, much of their vote came down to one question: Who was less likely to send us to fight? The answer to them was pretty clear.
Fast forward to now, and Venezuela has begun to complicate that belief. Even without talk of a draft or a formal declaration of war, the renewed focus on U.S. involvement and troops on the ground has brought back the same language of escalation my generation was taught to distrust. Young men online have been voicing the same worries, concerned that the ousting of Maduro mirrors the early stages of wars they were raised to fear. When I asked a friend what he thought about Venezuela, he shared that same sentiment. “This is how all these wars always start,” he told me. “They might try to make it sound like it’s not actually a war, but people our age always end up being the ones that pay the price for it.” For young men who supported Trump because they believed he represented a break from interventionist politics, Venezuela blurs the line between the “new” Republican Party they thought they were backing and the old one they were raised to reject.
For many young men, Venezuela has become a major part of a broader shift of how they view Trump. A recent poll from Speaking with American Men (SAM) found that Trump’s approval rating has fallen 10 percent among young men, with only 27 percent agreeing with the statement that Trump is “delivering for you”.
Gen Z men’s support of Trump was never about ideology or party loyalty, it was about the idea that he had their back and would fight for them. But that’s no longer the case. Recently, Trump proposed adding $500 billion to the military budget. Ideas like that will only hurt the president with young men. My friends don’t want more military spending that could get us entangled in foreign wars; they want a president who keeps them home and fights for their economic and social needs. As Trump pushes for a bigger military and more intervention abroad, the promise that once made him feel like a protector of young men now feels out of reach.
For my generation, Venezuela isn’t just another foreign policy dispute, it’s a conflict many young men worry they could be the ones sent to fight. Gen Z men didn’t support Trump because he was a Republican, but because they believed he was different from the old Republicans. He would be a president who would have their back, fight for their interests and keep them from fighting unnecessary wars. Now, that promise feels fragile, and the fear of being the ones asked to face the consequences has returned. For a generation raised on the effects of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the idea of another war isn’t abstract, it’s personal.