President-elect Donald Trump’s second inauguration has raised over $150 million so far, plus another $50 million in post-election PAC cash, soaring far beyond the previous record high of $107 million in funds set by his first inauguration in 2017.
Sources told the New York Times that the president-elect’s fundraising has already surged past his 2017 inauguration sum with weeks to go, promising an opulent ceremony atop the steps his supporters stormed four years earlier.
Per the Times, Trump has bragged to those around him about having raised more than $200 million for the coronation ceremony as the uber-wealthy line up to buy access to Trump.
Corporate donors like Amazon, Ford, Intuit, Meta and Toyota have chipped in $1 million each, while tech CEOs OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Apple’s Tim Cook have pulled from their own checkbooks to ingratiate themselves with the president-elect.
Cook “believes the inauguration is a great American tradition, and is donating to the inauguration in the spirit of unity,” those close to the CEO told Axios. An archived list of all big-money donors to President Joe Biden’s inauguration shows no donation from Apple or Cook.
But pro-Trump lobbyists insist that big business donations are more than a scheme to buy Trump’s goodwill.
“It is a time-honored D.C. tradition that corporations are enthusiastically embracing this cycle in all manners, largely because they were on the sidelines during previous Trump cycles,” lobbyist and former Trump fundraiser David Tamasi told the Times. “They no longer have to hedge their political bets.”
Trump has long been driven by the optics of a large and extravagant inauguration, starting his first term in a snit with the press over his inauguration crowd, which he falsely deemed the largest in U.S. history.
Earlier this week, Trump lamented the commemoration of late President Jimmy Carter and fumed over the fact that flags on federal buildings will be at half-mast during his inauguration.
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