> many are willing to see him trample

there is little surprising about it

Trump is pushing in the direction of an Oligarchie, billionaires would be the future oligarchs.

So even iff a billionaire is no-okay with this development, if they stick out they

- will lose their status/money iff Trump wins long term

- will make enemies with many other billionaires, but a core trend of billionaires is taking advantage of connections to other powerful people

- will be the prime target to make and example of

So there is a high risk for sticking out. At the same time "mostly passively tagging along" will at worst make them oligarchs. At the same time they are used to crossing ethical boundaries to maximize profits. *This is just another form of that.*

In general its pretty much non-viable to go from sub/barely millionaire to billionaire by keeping to law, moral and ethics.

And it's not a secret either that any extreme concentrations of power or money are fundamental thread of _any_ democratic state of law, the US is no exception. The US has been warned that their system is very prone to populist take over and their checks and balances are quite brittle since _decades_. (At least since end of WW2 when people when people analyzed how Hitler took over post-WW1 Germany and wondered if the US could suffer a similar fate. And instead of improving the robustness, the general response was "nonsense, this is the US". Then after 9/11 thinks got worse, warnings that this can lead to a disaster where also many, but actions where none. And then in recent decades the US pushed in favor of monopolies instead of a (actual, practical) free market(1) to project more power internationally, and things got even worse.

(1): Monopolies and a (actual, practical) free Market are fundamentally incompatible. It also is kinda obvious why once you put away decades of deregulation propaganda.