So, let’s say you are the CEO of a giant company or perhaps just a free-floating billionaire type, and you really, really want something from President Donald Trump. Regrettably, he hasn’t sued you (yet!), so you can’t pay him the customary eight-figure bribe as a “settlement” in one of his meritless lawsuits. And what if you missed out on the opportunity to attend one of his grifty crypto dinners and bribe him by buying his stupid meme coin?
Have you considered giving Trump money for his catastrophically ugly ballroom, the cost of which seems to jump $50 million every few days? It’s a quick and easy way to suck up to the worst president in history, but then there’s that whole thing where maybe you don’t want to be openly associated with the worst president in history.
No worries. The president has your back.
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If you’d like to give Trump millions but not suffer any fallout or negative publicity for doing so, he has helpfully offered to keep your name secret—all you have to do is ask.
In fact, you don’t even have to ask. The pledge form that Trump’s fundraisers have been circulating proactively offers the opportunity to keep your name secret.
You can likely thank Meredith O’Rourke, one of Trump’s top fundraisers, for this. O’Rourke is endlessly inventive about how to squeeze money out of people eager to get their business in front of the president.
The secrecy option might not be so attractive, though, if it’s as easy to figure out who you are as it was to find out who Trump omitted from his official donor list. How? The New York Times simply matched the donors who attended Trump’s dinner rewarding attendees for giving him at least $2.5 million for the ballroom.
So, which companies wanted to keep things hush-hush while doing their bribing?
We’ve got two stupidly named health care companies, Vantive and Extremity Care, who were going the old, stale route of lobbying the White House. But why lobby when you can just write a big ballroom check instead? That’s a far more efficient way to get Trump to agree to expand Medicare reimbursements to cover, well, whatever it is that these companies do.
Oh hello, Blackrock. Didn’t see you there. Your contribution of $2.5 million or more will go a long way toward making Trump less angry about your past support of environmental, social, and governance causes.
How about some folks who are major shareholders in ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company? Gotta get your bribe in soon before Trump gives TikTok away to his billionaire buddy, Larry Ellison.
How could all this secret money be sloshing around when White House Secretary Karoline Leavitt promised that Trump has been “incredibly transparent” about his ballroom project?
This is all so deeply, unbelievably criminal, and makes Trump’s first-term flirtations with ignoring the Emoluments Clause look positively tame by comparison.
Back then, you could curry favor just by staying at his terrible Washington, D.C. hotel, which probably would not have run you seven or eight figures. But Trump has bigger needs now and he’s determined to stamp his gross authoritarian chic style all over Washington, a city that hates him.
Related | Meet the grifty fundraiser behind Trump’s gaudy ballroom
So, he’ll build a monstrosity and make everyone else pay, showering cash on him in the hopes of receiving special treatment from the most bribeable president ever, just as the founders intended.
Lisa Needham November 03, 2025 at 10:30PM From Daily Kos
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