Why business leaders spend so much money

Top CEOs and their companies have pledged millions of dollars to President-elect Donald Trump’s inaugural committee, hoping to curry favor with the president and make inroads before he takes office.

Planned donations reportedly include $1 million each from Jeff Bezos. AmazonOpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Facebook’s parent company metaled by Mark Zuckerberg. Others include $2 million from. robinhood market $1 million each from both Uber and its CEO Dara Khosrowshahi.

ford It is reportedly combining its own $1 million donation with a fleet of vehicles.

Hedge fund manager Ken Griffin also plans to donate $1 million to the founding committee, which is tax-free, Bloomberg reported. Other donations from financial leaders are also reportedly in the works.

Buoyed by his decisive election victory, Trump has vowed to overhaul U.S. economic policy in ways that could greatly benefit some favored industries, such as fossil fuels.

At the same time, he telegraphs that both personally and politically, he values ​​in-person meetings and public praise from the chief executives of the world’s largest companies.

“Everyone wants to be my friend!!!” Trump wrote Thursday in a post on his social media app, Truth Social. high tech companies.

Many of these CEOs have already visited or will visit Mar-a-Lago, President Trump’s Palm Beach resort and de facto transition headquarters, seeking influence and access to the incoming White House. It is planned.

To that end, President Trump’s inaugural committee presents a “unique opportunity,” Brendan Glavine, research director at OpenSecret, a political finance nonprofit, said in an interview.

The inaugural committee, appointed by the president-elect, traditionally plans and funds much of the pomp and circumstance surrounding the transition of power from one administration to the next.

Although this money ultimately benefits recent political candidates, it does not have the same implications as, for example, contributions to super PACs, which can fund partisan political activities that risk creating controversy. Not yet.

Additionally, unlike direct contributions to a candidate’s campaign, there are no limits on the amount that individuals, businesses or labor organizations can donate to the founding committee.

Moreover, since Mr. Trump has already won the election, there is no risk for big-name executives to support a defeated candidate, and there is no risk to his inaugural contributions.

“This is a great opportunity for them to curry favor with the incoming administration,” Glavine said.

While it’s not new for corporations and power brokers to dump huge sums of money into inaugural committees, experts told CNBC that the Trump factor changes the calculus.

“Everything is heightened right now,” Glavine said. “None of these people want to be Trump’s punching bag for four years.”

President Trump’s inaugural committee and transition team did not respond to requests for comment.

President Trump’s 2017 inaugural committee raised about $107 million, the largest amount in U.S. history. The previous record was set at President Barack Obama’s first inauguration in 2009, when the committee raised $53 million.

Trump’s second inauguration is on track to break that record, with pledged donations already exceeding the fundraising goal of $150 million, ABC News reported.

By comparison, President Joe Biden’s inaugural committee raised nearly $62 million.

“One of the oldest adages in Washington is that if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu, and the price of admission to get a seat at the table keeps going up,” said the institute’s director of research. Michael Becker said. Issue One, political reform advocacy group.

Some of the increased funding for President Trump’s second inaugural committee comes from big tech companies, many of which have largely eschewed support for Trump’s first.

With the exception of GoDaddy.com founder Robert Parsons, who donated $1 million, few Big Tech leaders donated to President Trump’s committee in 2017.

Mr. Trump has previously clashed publicly with some figures, including Mr. Zuckerberg and Mr. Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post, a frequent target of the president-elect’s ire.

Not this time. Industry leaders can leverage their relationships with the White House more than ever as President Trump vows to eliminate a series of federal regulations while continuing to accuse Big Tech companies of stifling competition. There is a possibility.

“I’m actually very optimistic” about Trump becoming president for a second time, Bezos said in a Dec. 4 interview at the New York Times’ Deal Book conference. “I’m very hopeful. He seems to have quite a bit of energy in reducing regulations. And in my opinion, if I can help him, I’m going to help him.” Because we have too much regulation in this area.” “

The comments came in the wake of a scandal at the Washington Post in October, when the paper said Bezos had decided not to publicize the editorial board’s endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris over President Trump. Reported. In an op-ed, Mr. Bezos defended the paper’s decision to no longer endorse presidential candidates, but the reversal of the decision spurred a loss of subscribers and led to many staffers resigning in protest.

Nowhere is Trump’s newfound friendship with the tech industry more evident than in his developing relationship with Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who spent more than $250 million to elect him. There is nothing.

Musk, the world’s richest man, frequently appears at Trump’s side before and after his election victory and is reportedly involved in every aspect of Trump’s transition planning. He and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy have been selected to lead an advisory group tasked with reducing government costs.

This could put OpenAI’s Altman, currently embroiled in a breach of contract lawsuit brought by Musk, in an awkward position.

In addition to OpenAI’s $1 million founding donation, Altman praised Trump earlier this month. “President Trump will lead our country into the AI ​​era, and I am eager to support his efforts to ensure America stays ahead.”

Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist at the progressive nonprofit Public Citizen, told CNBC that these numbers “make Donald Trump very fearful of retaliation.”

“So they’re throwing money at his feet ‘to get favor,'” Holman said.

Four days after the presidential election, President Trump announced the formation of a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization, the Trump Vance Inaugural Committee, Inc. It will be co-chaired by real estate investor Steve Witkoff and former Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler of Georgia, whom President Trump nominated to head the Small Business Administration.

Reince Priebus, who was one of the president’s chief of staff during Trump’s first term, said he was selected to serve as the committee’s finance chairman at the X Post.

Priebus also shared a screenshot of the invitation listing the names of the other finance chairs. They include Republican megadonor Miriam Adelson, who spent $100 million this year on a pro-Trump super PAC, and billionaire Trump donor Diane Hendricks.

The founding committee is required to publish the names of donors who have donated $200 or more, but has until 90 days after the inauguration.

If your committee has a surplus after all the festivities, it can be difficult to figure out how much is left.

Trump’s 2017 inauguration was smaller than Obama’s 2009 inauguration, but Trump raised more than twice as much money as Obama. As a result, the Trump committee was widely expected to be left with tens of millions of dollars after paying for the ball and hotel.

However, several years after the fact, it was unclear what happened to most of the money.

Federal filings show that about a quarter of the money raised, or $26 million, went to a newly formed company run by an adviser to first lady Melania Trump.

“If you look at the history of inauguration funding, it’s clear that it comes from big donors, wealthy special interests, and corporations, almost all of whom have given the federal government money,” said Public Citizen’s Holman. “We have some pending business,” he said.

He added: “This is a real cesspool of hoarding.”