💸 Meta, Microsoft, Palantir: Trump’s White House ballroom is being paid for by some of America’s biggest villains
Vowing to built the new $250-350M expansion without using taxpayer money, the Trump administration has instead tapped ex-campaign finance director Meredith O’Rourke to raise the cash.
Donors include familiar faces from the tech, military and media industrial complex, including:
🔴 Amazon
🔴 Apple
🔴 Booz Allen Hamilton
🔴 Comcast
🔴 Google
🔴 HP
🔴 Lockheed Martin
🔴 Meta
🔴 Microsoft
🔴 Micron
🔴 T-Mobile
🔴 Palantir
Plus other Trump-aligned businesses and billionaires:
🔴 Altria (Marlboro parent)
🔴 NextEra Energy
🔴 Miriam Adelson
🔴 Pepe and Emilia Fanjul (sugar empire owners)
🔴 Harold Hamm (oil baron)
🔴 Johnson & Johnson heiress Betty Wold
🔴 Isaac Perlmutter Foundation (Israeli-American financier)
🔴 Steve Schwarzman (Blackstone CEO)
🔴 Jeff Sprecher and Kelly Loeffler (owner of the NYSE and his Trump Small Business Administration wife)
🔴 Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (Bitcoin billionaires)
A $350M quid-pro-quo?
💬 “This is the pay-to-play room,” ex-George W. Bush-era White House ethics lawyer Richard Painter (of all people) has pointed out. “These companies want government contracts and regulatory concessions.”
As if that’s not bad enough, other observers have calculated that because donations will likely be tax deductible, that means the project will still effectively cost taxpayers about $110M.
