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Monday, Dec. 16, 2024

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Why billionaires lining up to donate money to Trump's inauguration is even grosser than it looks

Zeeshan Aleem

Tech tycoons are lining up to donate big sums of cash to President-elect Donald Trump's inaugural fund ahead of his next stint in the White House. Jeff Bezos' Amazon has pitched in a million bucks. Mark Zuckerberg's Meta has tossed in another million. And OpenAI CEO Sam Altman scrounged up a million of his own.

It is both an unsightly and unsurprising spectacle. Top-dollar corporate donations to an incoming administration's inaugural fund — which has no legal contribution limit — are routine, a kind of open-air display of patronage and influence-peddling.

Big business often plays both sides when it comes to politics, donating in roughly equal measure to both Democrats and Republicans, and inaugural donations are no exception. After banning corporate donations in 2008, Barack Obama accepted them for his 2012 inaugural fund. President Joe Biden also allowed corporations to donate to his inaugural fund in 2020 (Amazon contributed to his fund, although with a significantly smaller $276,000 donation). Biden did, however, prohibit foreign agents and the fossil fuel industry from contributing.

But with Trump, the donations hit different.

This is a preview of Zeeshan Aleem's latest article. Read the full column here.

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