Trump dismissed top Jewish donor Miriam Adelson as ‘so boring,’ new book claims
Michael Wolff’s ‘All or Nothing’ also claims that Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump refused to defend Trump against accusations of antisemitism
Donald Trump embraces mega donor Miriam Adelson on Sept. 19, 2024. Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images
By Jacob Kornbluh February 23, 2025
President Donald Trump grew frustrated with Miriam Adelson, the widow of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and one of his largest donors, dismissing her as “boring” during the 2024 campaign, journalist Michael Wolff claims in a new tell-all book. The Israeli-born physician has been widely credited in Israeli media as the force behind Trump’s commitment to securing the release of Israeli hostages from Gaza.
In All or Nothing, set for release on Tuesday, Wolff describes Miriam Adelson’s interactions with Trump as “unrelievedly dull” and filled with “a free airing of her opinions, mostly generalities of no point or end,” according to exclusive excerpts obtained by the Forward.
Miriam Adelson, whose net worth Bloomberg News estimates at $37.8 billion, remained Trump’s largest Jewish donor – and the third largest donor to Trump’s 2024 campaign after Tesla CEO Elon Musk and businessman Timothy Mellon. She contributed $106 million in support of Trump through her independent super PAC, Preserve America, and courted donors to donate directly to Trump’s campaign. The Adelsons contributed $90 million to Trump in 2020.
The book claims that Trump was even more agitated by Sheldon Adelson’s “irascibility and complaints.” He was the most generous single donor for Trump in 2016 — spending $20 million. But he didn’t cut checks until September of that year, and leveraged his support to demand that Trump relocate the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. He died in 2021.
Although Miriam Adelson was more pleasant than her husband was, Wolff writes, “she was “tighter” and “more suspicious of Trump.” In 2021, she said it was time to move beyond the divisions that Trump stoked. During the 2024 campaign, she initially refused to take sides in the presidential primary, though she was courted by Trump and his chief rivals, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.
What Trump said about Miriam Adelson behind the scenes
Wolff claims that following two private dinners with her, including one at Mar-a-Lago, Trump remarked she was “so boring.”
“She just goes on and on,” Trump reportedly told his campaign aides. “I can’t do another. She isn’t going to give us anything.’”
In May, after Trump’s conviction in New York for falsifying business records, Adelson committed more than $100 million to Trump’s campaign.
By the time of the Republican National Convention in July, Wolff wrote, Trump “endured” a one-hour meeting with Adelson to “reel in the one hundred million she had promised and the one hundred million more she was dangling.” Wolff described Trump as allowing her to talk at length while he listened in silence.
But tensions resurfaced after the convention when Trump was shown an article revealing that Adelson had hired several figures with anti-Trump reputations to help run her pro-Trump PAC.
Adding to Trump’s frustration was Ike Perlmutter, a close friend and Jewish donor who ran his own pro-Trump super PAC. Perlmutter warned that Adelson was unreliable and had withheld financial support. In a fit of anger, Trump dictated a text message for an aide to send to Adelson. “Your late husband would never have done this to me,” the message read. “You’re my enemy if you’re hiring Never-Trumpers to work for you.”
A Trump spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about the Adelson excerpt. Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, said in a statement to the Daily Beast that Wolff “routinely fabricates stories originating from his sick and warped imagination, only possible because he has a severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his peanut-sized brain.” Wolff faced accusations of factual inaccuracies in a previous book about Trump.
Trump appeared with Adelson several times in the final months of the campaign. She introduced Trump at Jewish events. Trump praised Adelson as a “great lady” and close friend, and noted that she had served as a “calming influence” on her late husband. In January, Adelson was on the VIP stage during the inauguration at the U.S. Capitol and hosted an inaugural ball alongside Mark Zuckerberg.
The book also claims that Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, and his wife, Ivanka Trump, refused to sign a statement defending Trump against accusations of antisemitism. “We’re not going to go and put our names on something and get in the middle of things,” Kushner reportedly said when the couple was asked by the 2024 campaign to put their name to an endorsement of Trump, according to excerpts reviewed by The Guardian. “That’s just not what we’re going to do this time.”
A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism so that we can be prepared for whatever news 2025 brings.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
