The donors behind President Trump’s $330 million White House Ballroom project have finally been revealed. Trump isn’t one of them, even though he pledged to cover a portion of the cost himself.
The Washington Post has reported that 57 companies donated $100,000 or more to the vanity project. Some of those companies are headed by individuals who have already donated to Trump in other ways—and have been rewarded for it in return, in the form of business contracts and dropped investigations.
NVIDIA Apple, the Adelson Foundation, and Dish Network co-founder Charlie Ergen each tied the largest ballroom donation: $25 million.
Google gave $22 million for the ballroom as part of a settlement in Trump’s January 6–related lawsuit against YouTube.
Other notable contributors include:
At least $77 million for the ballroom was sent by anonymous donors.
Again, this isn’t the extent of these corporations’ ties to Trump, as many have donated in other ways, as well. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, for example, pledged $1 billion to Trump’s Genesis Mission AI project earlier this month and attended a $1 million-per-plate dinner at Mar-a-Lago. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella contributed $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund. Google, too, gave $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund, and CEO Sergey Brin himself donated half a million dollars to the Republican National Committee last year. And this is just what we know about.
This is all extremely shady. These hugely influential business leaders donated to Trump’s ballroom to curry political favor and were initially able to move in secret, sending the funds to a White House account controlled by the most corrupt president of the modern era.