WASHINGTON ― The White Home on Thursday launched a listing of all of the personal donors who’ve agreed to pay for the development of President Donald Trump’s 90,000-square-foot, $300 million ballroom ― and all the demolition of the East Wing, which is now full.
Donors on the checklist embody CEOs, actual property moguls, a number of companies, and in any other case simply actually wealthy individuals. Protection contractors like Lockheed Martin and Booz Allen Hamilton are kicking in cash for the president’s challenge, as are telecommunications firms like Comcast, and tobacco business firms like Reynolds American. Tech firms like Amazon and Apple are within the combine, together with crypto firms.
Right here’s the complete checklist, offered by a White Home official:
- Altria Group, Inc.
- Amazon
- Apple
- Booz Allen Hamilton
- Caterpillar, Inc.
- Coinbase
- Comcast Company
- Pepe and Emilia Fanjul
- Laborious Rock Worldwide
- HP Inc.
- Lockheed Martin
- Meta Platforms
- Micron Know-how
- Microsoft
- NextEra Vitality, Inc.
- Palantir Applied sciences Inc.
- Ripple
- Reynolds American
- T-Cellular
- Tether America
- Union Pacific Railroad
- Adelson Household Basis
- Stefan E. Brodie
- Betty Wold Johnson Basis
- Charles and Marissa Cascarilla
- Edward and Shari Glazer
- Harold Hamm
- Benjamin Leon Jr.
- The Lutnick Household
- The Laura & Isaac Perlmutter Basis
- Stephen A. Schwarzman
- Konstantin Sokolov
- Kelly Loeffler and Jeff Sprecher
- Paolo Tiramani
- Cameron Winklevoss
- Tyler Winklevoss
A HuffPost reader flagged one other firm that ought to have been included on this checklist: Service World Corp., a producer of heating, air flow and air-conditioning techniques. It has publicly confirmed it’s donating an air-conditioning system for Trump’s ballroom.
Trump has boasted about his ballroom being funded solely by personal donors and his personal cash, not public {dollars}. However the White Home hasn’t shared how a lot cash every of those firms and folks have pledged to offer him – or what they anticipate in return.
Some donors had been reportedly given the choice of getting their names completely etched within the White Home ballroom’s brick or stone.
The one particular person donation that’s been made public is tied to Google’s father or mother firm, Alphabet, which is contributing $22 million to Trump’s ballroom. That cash is coming from a latest authorized settlement the corporate reached with Trump after he was banned from YouTube, owned by Alphabet, after he incited the Jan. 6, 2021, riot.
Bloomberg by way of Getty Photos
HuffPost reached out to all the firms on the checklist, and as lots of the people as we had been capable of monitor down, with the identical two questions: How a lot are they donating to Trump’s ballroom, and if they’ve any remark about Trump destroying the East Wing ― and a few American historical past within the course of ― to make method for his challenge.
Most didn’t reply instantly to requests for remark, however a number of did.
“I can confirm that Microsoft contributed to the ballroom, as has been publicly reported,” firm spokesperson Kaitlin Haskins stated in an e-mail. “That’s all I have at the moment, but if anything changes, I will circle back.”
T-Cellular confirmed it gave cash to the Belief for the Nationwide Mall, the nonprofit overseeing the donations to fund Trump’s ballroom. However past that, a spokesperson stated the corporate didn’t have any say on how these {dollars} had been spent.
“Ahead of America’s 250th Anniversary, T-Mobile donated to the Trust for the National Mall, which partners with the National Park Service to restore and enrich the historic landmarks that define our nation’s capital, such as the White House ballroom,” the T-Cellular spokesperson stated in an emailed assertion.
“T-Mobile has no role in the use of those funds or decisions related to the construction of the ballroom,” they stated. They didn’t share how a lot cash T-Cellular donated.
A Betty Wold Johnson Basis worker who returned a telephone name to HuffPost stated she was “not authorized to discuss the donation.”
The lady, whose title we didn’t catch, appeared like she wished perhaps she hadn’t known as us again.
“I have a lot of activity happening today and a lot of phone calls to return,” she stated. “I wasn’t really aware of the nature of this call.”
Requested if the muse’s president, former U.S. Ambassador Woody Johnson, was conscious that the East Wing of the White Home had been fully demolished Thursday to make method for Trump’s ballroom, the girl stated he doesn’t “generally discuss his philanthropy.”
Johnson, whom Trump tapped to be his ambassador to the UK in his first time period, can also be the proprietor of the New York Jets.
“I don’t know how familiar he is with the nature of the details of the construction,” she stated earlier than we hung up.
White Home press secretary Karoline Leavitt stated Thursday that Trump is dedicated to being clear about donations to his ballroom. She courted new donors, too.
“Perhaps there will be more people who want to generously contribute to this project,” Leavitt stated in her day by day press briefing.
Outdoors the constructing, a single protester was loudly chanting about Trump breaking legal guidelines by razing a part of the White Home.
“This demolition is illegal,” shouted Suzanne Jordan, a Virginia resident holding a cardboard signal that learn, GENEVA. “This demolition is a federal crime.”
She informed HuffPost she was a pupil at George Washington College on Sept. 11 and needed to evacuate the varsity when the Pentagon was hit by a aircraft. The photographs of a part of the Pentagon being in rubble after the assault, with rescue staff spraying hoses on the wreckage, stayed along with her, she stated, and now she’s seeing comparable photos with Trump’s destruction of the White Home.
“The look, feel, of the hose on a pile, I feel that as well. Like, triggering in the most extreme,” stated Jordan. “I was thinking of the New Testament today. Like Jesus has said, ‘Forgive them, Father, they know not what they do.’”
