Jonathan O’Connell, Sarah Blaskey, and Aaron Schaffer, writing for The Washington Post (gift link but email-gated; Apple News+):
A list obtained by The Washington Post reveals all the major donors to President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom project, including previously undisclosed contributors who have benefited from regulatory decisions, government contracts and, in one case, a pardon for a family member.
Tech giants Nvidia and Apple each committed $25 million, the top contribution amount, the list shows. The Adelson family, one of the GOP’s largest donor dynasties, committed that sum as well, as did billionaire Charles Ergen, co-founder and chairman of telecommunications company Dish Network.
Absent from the list is Trump himself, who has said that he is helping to pay for the project. “It’s being paid for a hundred percent by me and some friends of mine,” he said last year, days after demolition began on the old East Wing.
The White House publicly identified 37 people, companies and foundations as donors last October, without revealing the amount of their individual gifts.
The list obtained by The Post, an internal spreadsheet used to track contributions for the fundraising effort, contains the source, date and amount of all 67 donations above $10,000 recorded as of late last month. It shows a total of $333 million from private donors, aligning with the administration’s public statements. Additional records, also internal to the fundraising effort, provide more detail about the donations and indicate that at least $77 million came from donors who requested anonymity.
We’ve known since last October that Apple, Amazon, Google, et al. donated to Trump’s ballroom. What’s new is the additional 30 or so previously unknown donors and the scale of those donations.
I can’t fathom the reasoning behind such largess from Apple, Nvidia, Google ($22 million via its previous settlement with Trump), and the rest. Is there a single, legitimate reason for these companies to donate anything to Trump’s ballroom, let alone such vast sums? Are they that patriotic? Are they somehow exuberant about a grotesque, oversized monstrosity going up in their name? The whole mess screams of corruption, one giant quid pro quo.
Every presidential candidate must commit to tearing down Trump’s physical legacy and relegating him to a forgotten footnote in history.