Top CEOs and their firms are pledging to donate hundreds of thousands of dollars to President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration committee to side with him and make progress before he takes office.
Some of the planned donations allegedly include $1 million each from Jeff Bezos' AmazonOpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Facebook parent company Metaled by Mark Zuckerberg. Others include $2 million from Robinhood Markets and $1 million each from each Above and its CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi.
ford Is allegedly Pair your personal $1 million donation with a fleet of vehicles.
Hedge fund manager Ken Griffin also said he plans to donate $1 million to the tax-exempt inaugural committee. Bloomberg reported. There are reportedly other donations from financial leaders in progress.
Bolstered by a decisive election victory, Trump has vowed to reshape U.S. economic policy in ways that would have delivered outsized advantages to some favored industries, similar to fossil fuels.
At the identical time, he has made clear the non-public and political value he places on face-to-face meetings and public praise from CEOs of the world's largest firms.
“EVERYONE WANTS TO BE MY FRIEND!!!” Trump wrote in a post on Thursday truth socialthe social media app he runs Technology company.
Many of those CEOs have already made or are planning to make trips to Mar-a-Lago, Trump's resort in Palm Beach, Florida, and the de facto interim headquarters to realize influence and access to the brand new administration.
To that end, Trump's inauguration committee represents a “unique opportunity,” Brendan Glavin, research director at the cash in politics nonprofit OpenSecrets, said in an interview.
Inaugural committees, appointed by elected presidents, plan and finance many of the pomp and circumstance that traditionally accompany the transition of power from one administration to the following.
Although the cash ultimately goes to a current political candidate, it doesn’t have the identical connotation as a donation to, for instance, an excellent PAC, which may fund partisan political activities that would stoke controversy.
And unlike contributing on to a candidate's campaign, there are not any limits on how much a person—or an organization, or a task force—can provide to an inaugural committee.
Additionally, since Trump has already won the election, an inaugural contribution for a high-ranking executive poses no risk of supporting a losing candidate.
“It's really a great opportunity for them to curry favor with the new administration,” Glavin said.
While it's nothing recent for firms and power brokers to pour big money into charter committees, experts told CNBC that the Trump factor is changing the equation.
“It’s even worse now,” Glavin said. “None of these people don’t want to be Trump’s punching bag for four years.”
Trump's inauguration committee and his transition team didn’t reply to requests for comment.
Record transports
Trump's 2017 inauguration committee raised about $107 million, by far probably the most in U.S. history. The previous record was set in 2009 at the primary inauguration of Barack Obama, his committee Raised $53 million.
Trump's second inauguration is on course to interrupt that record, with pledges already exceeding the $150 million fundraising goal. ABC News reported.
By comparison, President Joe Biden's inauguration committee got here near achieving a result 62 million dollars.
“One of the oldest sayings in Washington is: If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu, and the price of admission for a seat at the table keeps going up,” said Michael Beckel, research director at Issue One, a policy reform advocacy group.
The increased funding for Trump's second inaugural committee is available in part from tech giants, lots of which have largely stayed away from supporting his first inauguration.
Aside from GoDaddy.com founder Robert Parsons, who donated $1 million, few other Big Tech executives donated Trump's 2017 committee.
Trump once openly clashed with a few of them, including Zuckerberg and Bezoswhich also owns the Washington Post, a frequent goal of the president-elect's ire.
This time that will not be the case. As Trump guarantees to eliminate many federal regulations but continues to accuse Big Tech of stifling competition, industry leaders' relationship with the White House may depend more on their relationship than ever before.
“I’m actually very optimistic,” Bezos said a few second Trump presidency in an interview on the New York Times’ DealBook conference on Dec. 4. “I am very confident. He seems to be putting a lot of energy into reducing regulation. And in my opinion, if I can help him with that, I will help him. Because we have too much regulation here.” Country.”
The comments followed a scandal at The Washington Post in October, when the newspaper reported that Bezos had decided not to publish his editorial team's endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris over Trump. Bezos defended the newspaper's decision to stop supporting presidential candidates in an editorial, but the reversal triggered an exodus of subscribers and led many employees to resign in protest.
Nowhere is Trump's newfound friendliness toward the tech world more pronounced than in his blossoming relationship with Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who spent more than $250 million to help Trump get elected.
Musk, the world's richest person, appeared frequently at Trump's side before and after his election victory and was reportedly involved in all aspects of Trump's transition planning. He and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy have been appointed to lead an advisory group tasked with reducing government costs.
This could put OpenAI's Altman, who is currently embroiled in a breach of contract lawsuit from Musk, in a difficult position.
In addition to his $1 million inaugural donation, Altman also effusively praised Trump earlier this month. “President Trump will lead our country into the age of AI, and I am committed to supporting his efforts to ensure America remains at the forefront,” he said.
Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist for the progressive nonprofit Public Citizen, told CNBC that these figures are “very afraid that Donald Trump will retaliate against them.”
“So they throw money at him to ingratiate themselves,” Holman said.
'cesspool'
Four days after the presidential election, Trump announced the formation of the Trump Vance Inaugural Committee, Inc., a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization. It will probably be co-chaired by real estate investor Steve Witkoff and former Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler of Georgia, who can also be Trump's pick to steer the Small Business Administration.
Reince Priebus, who was one in all Trump's White House chiefs of staff during his first term, said in a X contribution that he was chosen because the finance chairman of the committee.
Priebus also shared a screenshot of an invite listing the names of other finance chairs. That includes Miriam Adelson, the GOP megadonor who spent money $100 million this 12 months on a pro-Trump super PAC and a billionaire Trump donor Diane Hendricks.
Charter committees are required to publicly disclose the names of donors who give $200 or more. However, these documents must not be submitted until 90 days after the opening ceremony.
If the committee has a surplus in spite of everything the celebrations, it could be a challenge to work out how much is left.
Trump's inauguration in 2017 was a smaller affair than Obama's in 2009, regardless that Trump had raised greater than twice as much money for his inauguration as Obama. As a result, it was widely expected that Trump's committee would have tens of hundreds of thousands of dollars left after paying for balls and hotels.
But years later it happened unclear what happened an excessive amount of of this money.
Federal records show that a few quarter of all funds raised, $26 million, were paid to a newly founded company That was led by an adviser to First Lady Melania Trump.
“We look at the history of inauguration funding and find that it comes from very large donors, wealthy special interests and corporations, almost all of which have business before the federal government,” said Public Citizen’s Holman.
He added: “This is a real dead end of buying advantages.”
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