The majority of the corporations known to have donated to the fund for Trump’s new ballroom are represented by three lobbying firms, according to a new report from government accountability watchdog Public Citizen.
Lobbyists from those three firms — Miller Strategies, Ballard Partners and Michael Best Strategies — mingled last month with the president and executives from America’s top technology and cryptocurrency companies over tomato salad and Beef Wellington.
The event took place in the White House East Room, a space that will one day adjoin the new $300 million White House ballroom, and was arranged to recognize donors who privately funded construction that’s now under way. Guests included representatives from more than two dozen nationally recognized firms, like tobacco giant Altria, Comcast, Microsoft and T-Mobile.
I mentioned this elsewhere, but even if we just remodel it later (for all it’s gaudy “splendor”), the taxpayers are going to wind up paying for this boondongle twice. The fact that it’s clearly a money-laundering-grift scheme is just salt in the wound at this point.
Un-doing all of this is the right thing to do, but it’ll be seen as divisive and will ultimately cost more, making it politically problematic for anyone in office that cares about all that. You’d need another authoritarian to pull this off, and I’m not sure we want that.
We’ll be lucky if we only have to pay twice for all these asshole’s Fuck Ups
The people need to seize and liquidate the entire Trump family’s assets to pay for it.
Trump was worth like $6.3 billion last summer, now he’s worth less than $1b. Just something fun to think about. Hard to make and lose that much imaginary money but he did it.
Make the lobbyists and billionaires that donated the first time around fix it. If they don’t pay up, we can eat them.
Don’t care. Gone.