All about Ronald Lauder, the billionaire received by Giorgia Meloni
President of the World Jewish Congress, very close to Reagan, Netanyahu, Trump, philanthropist and art collector, as well as heir to the cosmetics empire of the same name. Who is Ronald Lauder and how much is his fortune?
Son of the famous American entrepreneur, Estée Lauder, and of Joseph Lauder, who in 1946 built an empire in the cosmetics and perfumes sector, Ronald Lauder, together with his brother Leonard, are the only heirs of this fortune.
But Lauder is also the head of the World Jewish Congress and one of several billionaires who turned his back on Donald Trump in the 2024 US presidential race and instead looks to the rising star of the Republicans, Ron DeSantis .
And, given his knowledge in the world of US conservatives, he could be very useful to the Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, who met him just yesterday .
Thank you @GiorgiaMeloni for your strong commitment to the fight against antisemitism and ensuring the safety of Jews throughout Italy. pic.twitter.com/TpAqXVfieQ
— Ronald S. Lauder (@lauder_ronald) November 23, 2022
WHO IS RONALD LAUDER
Born in 1944 in New York into a Jewish family, Ronald Lauder after attending the Bronx High School of Science , graduated in International Business at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and then continued his studies at the Sorbonne in Paris.
CAREER AND THE REPUBLICAN ENVIRONMENT
As an article in the New York Times recalls, before being called in 1985 by the President of the United States Ronald Reagan to fill the position of ambassador to Austria (1986-1987), Lauder was a manager of the family company and an important fundraiser for Republicans in New York.
From 1983 to 1896, he also held the position of US Deputy Secretary of Defense for European and NATO policy. Previously, adds the NYT quoting the words of Lauder's mother – "a good friend of Nancy Reagan" – Ronald had turned down the offer to become ambassador to Jamaica.
In 1989 he challenged Rudy Giuliani in the race for mayor of New York, for which he spent 14 million dollars , but failed in the enterprise.
FROM CONFIDENT TO PAIR OF NETANYAHU
Lauder, a staunch supporter of the Israeli conservative Likud party and a longtime friend of Bibi, was commissioned by Benjamin Netanyahu in 1998 to broker a peace pact between Israel and Syria which, however, despite some progress, did not lead to a resolution.
The billionaire was also an intermediary between Netanyahu and Arthur Finkelstein – one of the most influential advisers to Reagan and Richard Nixon, as well as the mastermind of the George Soros conspiracy theories , together with another adviser, George Birnbaum.
However, in 2017, Al Monitor wrote that Lauder and Netanyahu had not been in contact since 2011, after the broadcast of the report "Bibi Tours", broadcast by a channel in which Lauder was the largest shareholder at the time, because serious allegations related to the Netanyahu family's businesses, including Bibi's ties to various billionaires and the way his international travels were financed. Lauder, the article reads, "went from being a favorite confidant to a pariah."
FRIENDSHIP WITH TRUMP AND SUPPORT FOR REPUBLICANS
Returning to the US Republicans, Lauder – who was also one of Trump's main supporters, as well as his college mate – according to the non-partisan observatory OpenSecrets contributed almost $ 100,000 to the Republican National Committee in 2019 to get him re-elected in the 2020 election.
And in November 2017, he also donated $2,700 directly to Trump, the maximum federal law allowed at the time.
In the last midterm elections, he invested at least 11 million dollars in support of the candidacy of Republican Lee Zeldin for governor of New York, making him according to the NYT "the most prolific state political donor in memory this fall".
EYES ON DESANTIS
On this same political occasion, however, he also turned his back on Trump, to whom he had advised not to run again and not to expose himself "because it would have been a disaster" – as he confided yesterday to Prime Minister Meloni.
All this suggests that now the next darling in view of the 2024 presidential elections could be DeSantis, the new promise of the conservatives. In fact, although his spokesperson didn't name names, according to CNBC , Florida financial records show Lauder donated $10,000 last year to a political action committee backing the Florida governor's reelection campaign and, according to OpenSecrets, the billionaire had already funded his candidacy for governor in 2018 with $ 200,000.
THE LAUDER HERITAGE
Today Lauder, with assets of $4.5 billion, is considered one of the richest men in the world.
President of the World Jewish Congress and Clinique Laboratories, member of the board of directors of Estée Lauder, philanthropist and art collector, according to Forbes he has amassed about 4,000 works of art worth at least $1 billion, in addition to also owning a remarkable collection of medieval armor and weapons dating back to the 3rd century BC
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/tutto-su-ronald-lauder-il-miliardario-ricevuto-da-giorgia-meloni/ on Thu, 24 Nov 2022 11:38:28 +0000.