Atlanta – In a twist that underscores the fluid alliances of American politics, Bernie Marcus, the billionaire co-founder of Home Depot who once voiced reservations about Donald Trump’s presidential bid, has emerged as one of the former president’s staunchest economic cheerleaders. Marcus, who passed away on November 4, 2024, at age 95, repeatedly credited Trump with “saving” the U.S. economy through pro-business policies, even as his early hesitations faded into fervent endorsement.
Marcus’s journey began with ambivalence. In 2016, as Trump clinched the GOP nomination, the retail titan—whose warehouse empire revolutionized home improvement—publicly backed other Republicans, wary of Trump’s bombast and inexperience. “He’s not my first choice,” Marcus confided in interviews, fretting over trade wars that could hammer importers like his Atlanta-based behemoth. Yet, by June of that year, pragmatism prevailed: Marcus donated $7 million to Trump’s campaign, becoming a top financier. “America needs a fixer,” he later wrote in a 2023 op-ed, slamming Biden’s “administrative state” for stifling entrepreneurs like himself, who built Home Depot from scratch in 1978 after a corporate ouster.
Trump’s first term sealed the conversion. Marcus lauded the 2017 tax cuts as a “roaring” boon for small businesses, crediting them with wage hikes and job booms that echoed his own bootstraps tale. During the COVID-19 crisis, he hailed the Paycheck Protection Program—saving 50 million jobs—as “one of the most successful relief efforts in history,” per a 2020 Fox News piece. Even in 2023, amid indictments, Marcus doubled down, pledging support for Trump’s 2024 run and blasting inflation under Democrats as a betrayal of free enterprise. “Trump’s the best to restore prosperity,” he insisted, eyeing deregulation to unleash the next “Home Depots.”
Critics, however, see irony in the praise. Marcus’s empire thrived under Obama-era stability, and his $25 million in GOP donations drew boycotts from progressives decrying his anti-union stance. As Trump’s second inauguration looms, Marcus’s posthumous legacy—bolstered by tributes from Trump himself, who called him an “extraordinary man”—highlights a billionaire’s pivot: From reluctant donor to economic savior’s apostle. In an era of polarized fortunes, one retail pioneer’s gratitude reminds us: Even tycoons evolve, but the bottom line endures.
