Top CEOs and their companies are pledging to donate millions of dollars to President-elect\u00a0Donald Trump\u2019s inaugural committee, as they seek to get on his good side and make inroads before he takes office.<\/p>\n
Some of the\u00a0planned donations\u00a0reportedly\u00a0include $1 million each from\u00a0Jeff Bezos\u2019\u00a0Amazon, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Facebook parent company\u00a0Meta, led by\u00a0Mark Zuckerberg. Others include $2 million from\u00a0Robinhood Markets\u00a0and $1 million each from both\u00a0Uber\u00a0and its CEO,\u00a0Dara Khosrowshahi.<\/p>\n
Ford\u00a0is\u00a0reportedly\u00a0coupling its own $1 million donation with a fleet of vehicles.<\/p>\n
Hedge fund manager\u00a0Ken Griffin\u00a0also said he plans to give $1 million to the tax-exempt inaugural committee,\u00a0Bloomberg reported. Other donations from finance leaders are reportedly\u00a0in the works.<\/p>\n
Empowered by a decisive electoral victory, Trump has vowed to revamp U.S. economic policy in a way that could have outsized benefits for a few favored industries, like fossil fuels.<\/p>\n
At the same time, he has telegraphed the value, both personal and political, that he places on face-to-face meetings and public praise from chief executives of the world\u2019s largest companies.<\/p>\n
\u201cEVERYBODY WANTS TO BE MY FRIEND!!!\u201d Trump wrote Thursday in a post on\u00a0Truth Social, the social media app run by his own\u00a0tech company.<\/p>\n
Many of those CEOs have already made, or are planning to make, trips to Mar-a-Lago, Trump\u2019s Palm Beach, Florida, resort and de facto transition headquarters, as they seek to gain influence with and access to the incoming administration.<\/p>\n
To that end, Trump\u2019s inaugural committee presents a \u201cunique opportunity,\u201d said Brendan Glavin, director of research for the money-in-politics nonprofit OpenSecrets, in an interview.<\/p>\n
Inaugural committees, which are appointed by presidents-elect, plan and fund most of the pomp and circumstance that traditionally surrounds the transition of power from one administration to the next.<\/p>\n
While the money is ultimately benefiting a recent political candidate, it doesn\u2019t carry the same connotation as a donation to, say, a super PAC, which can fund partisan political activities that risk stoking controversy.<\/p>\n
And unlike a direct contribution to a candidate\u2019s campaign, there are no limits on how much an individual \u2014 or a corporation or labor group \u2014 can give to an inaugural committee.<\/p>\n
Moreover, since Trump already won the election, an inaugural contribution carries no risk for a high-profile executive of backing a losing candidate.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt really is a great opportunity for them to curry favor with the incoming administration,\u201d Glavin said.<\/p>\n
While it\u2019s nothing new for corporations and power brokers to shower big money on inaugural committees, experts told CNBC the Trump factor changes the calculus.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s all heightened now,\u201d Glavin said. \u201cNone of these people, they don\u2019t want to be Trump\u2019s punching bag for four years.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s inaugural committee and his transition team did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s 2017 inaugural committee raked in about $107 million, by far the most of any in U.S. history. The previous record had been set in 2009 during the first inauguration of\u00a0Barack Obama, whose committee\u00a0raised $53 million.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s second inauguration is on pace to shatter that record, with pledged contributions already surpassing a $150 million fundraising goal,\u00a0ABC News reported.<\/p>\n
President\u00a0Joe Biden\u2019s inaugural committee, by comparison, raised nearly\u00a0$62 million.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the oldest adages in Washington is that if you\u2019re not at the table, you\u2019re on the menu, and the price of admission to have a seat at the table keeps going up,\u201d said Michael Beckel, research director of Issue One, a political reform advocacy group.<\/p>\n
The boost in funding for Trump\u2019s second inaugural committee comes in part from tech giants, many of whom largely steered clear of supporting his first inauguration.<\/p>\n
Other than GoDaddy.com founder Robert Parsons, who gave $1 million, few other leaders in Big Tech donated to\u00a0Trump\u2019s 2017 committee.<\/p>\n
Trump once openly clashed with some of them, including Zuckerberg and\u00a0Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post, a frequent target of the president-elect\u2019s ire.<\/p>\n
Not so this time around. As Trump vows to tear up reams of federal regulations, but also continues to accuse Big Tech of stifling competition, industry leaders could have more riding on their relationship with the White House than ever before.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m actually very optimistic,\u201d\u00a0Bezos said\u00a0of a second Trump presidency in a Dec. 4 interview at The New York Times\u2019 DealBook conference. \u201cI\u2019m very hopeful. He seems to have a lot of energy around reducing regulation. And my point of view, if I can help him do that, I\u2019m going to help him. Because we do have too much regulation in this country.\u201d<\/p>\n
The comments came in the wake of a scandal at The Washington Post in October, when the paper reported that\u00a0Bezos decided\u00a0not to publish its editorial board\u2019s endorsement of Vice President\u00a0Kamala Harris\u00a0over Trump. Bezos in an\u00a0op-ed\u00a0defended the paper\u2019s decision to no longer endorse presidential candidates, but the reversal spurred an exodus of subscribers and prompted numerous staffers to resign in protest.<\/p>\n
Nowhere is Trump\u2019s newfound friendliness with the tech world more pronounced than in his blossoming relationship with Tesla and SpaceX CEO\u00a0Elon Musk, who spent more than $250 million helping elect Trump.<\/p>\n
Musk, the world\u2019s richest person, has frequently appeared by Trump\u2019s side before and after his election victory, and has reportedly been involved in all aspects of Trump\u2019s transition planning. He and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy have been tapped to lead an advisory group tasked with cutting government costs.<\/p>\n
This could put OpenAI\u2019s Altman, who is currently\u00a0embroiled\u00a0in a\u00a0breach-of-contract lawsuit\u00a0brought by Musk, in an awkward position.<\/p>\n
Along with his million-dollar inaugural donation, Altman heaped praise on Trump earlier this month. \u201cPresident Trump will lead our country into the age of AI, and I am eager to support his efforts to ensure America stays ahead,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist for the progressive nonprofit Public Citizen, told CNBC that these figures \u201cvery much fear that Donald Trump may take retribution against them.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo they\u2019re throwing money\u201d at his feet \u201cin order to curry favor,\u201d Holman said.\u2019<\/p>\n
Four days after the presidential election, Trump announced the formation of the \u201cTrump Vance Inaugural Committee, Inc.,\u201d a 501(c)(4) nonprofit. It is co-chaired by real estate investor Steve Witkoff and former Republican Sen.\u00a0Kelly Loeffler\u00a0of Georgia, who is also Trump\u2019s pick to lead the Small Business Administration.<\/p>\n
Reince Priebus, who was one of Trump\u2019s White House chiefs of staff during his first term, said in an\u00a0X post\u00a0that he has been tapped to serve as the\u00a0committee\u2019s finance chair.<\/p>\n
Priebus also shared a screenshot of an invitation that listed the names of other finance chairs. They include Miriam Adelson, the GOP megadonor who spent\u00a0$100 million this year\u00a0on a pro-Trump super PAC, and billionaire Trump donor\u00a0Diane Hendricks.<\/p>\n
Inaugural committees are required to publicly disclose the names of donors who give $200 or more, but those filings aren\u2019t due until 90 days after the inaugural ceremony.<\/p>\n
If the committee has a surplus after all the festivities, finding out just how much is left can be a challenge.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s 2017 inauguration was a smaller affair than Obama\u2019s in 2009, although Trump raised more than twice as much money for his as Obama had. As a result, Trump\u2019s committee was widely expected to have tens of millions of dollars left over after it paid for balls and hotels.<\/p>\n
But years after the fact, it was\u00a0unclear what happened\u00a0to much of that money.<\/p>\n
Federal filings show that roughly a quarter of all the funds raised, $26 million, were paid to a\u00a0newly created firm\u00a0that was run by an advisor to first lady Melania Trump.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe take a look through the history of the financing of inaugurations, and clearly it comes from very large donors, wealthy special interests and corporations, almost all of whom have business pending before the federal government,\u201d said Holman, of Public Citizen.<\/p>\n
He added, \u201cThis is a real cesspool of buying favors.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Top CEOs and their companies are pledging to donate millions of dollars to President-elect\u00a0Donald Trump\u2019s inaugural committee, as they seek to get on his good side and make inroads before he takes office. Some of the\u00a0planned donations\u00a0reportedly\u00a0include $1 million each from\u00a0Jeff Bezos\u2019\u00a0Amazon, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Facebook parent company\u00a0Meta, led by\u00a0Mark Zuckerberg. Others include […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":13487,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13486\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}