Full list of donors who are funding Donald Trump’s $300,000,000 White House ‘renovations’
Topics: Donald Trump, Politics, US News, World News, Money
Madison Burgess
Featured Image Credit: The Washington Post/Getty Images
Topics: Donald Trump, Politics, US News, World News, Money
The White House has revealed the full list of donors who are personally forking out for Donald Trump's $300,000,000 ballroom.
For those not in the loop, the whole ordeal has been making headlines this week after the US president, 79, said that he would be demolishing the entire East Wing to make way for the project.
He first unveiled his plans for the 90,000-square-foot addition in July, describing it as ‘much-needed’ and ‘exquisite’ which has the capacity to seat 650 people.
However, he also suggested that it ‘wouldn't interfere with the current building’, but this week (23 October) made a dramatic U-turn and admitted that instead, the whole East Wing is being torn down.
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Explaining his reasoning, he told reporters: "We determined that, after really a tremendous amount of study with some of the best architects in the world, we determined that really knocking it down, trying to use a little section - you know, the East Wing, was not much."
The president added: "Rather than allowing that to hurt a very expensive, beautiful building. In order to do it properly, we had to take down the existing structure."
When Trump first announced the ballroom idea, he also confirmed that he would be reaching into his own pocket to pay for it, as well as a list of mystery donors.
However, he recently revealed that it would actually cost $300 million, a staggering $100 million more than originally forecast.
The official White House website states that ‘President Trump and other patriot donors have generously committed to donating the funds necessary to build it’.
However, this list of names has not been revealed until now.
It includes a slew of different huge companies, such as Amazon, Google and Meta, as well as several billionaire investors.
Richard Painter, a former chief ethics lawyer in the Bush White House between 2005 and 2007, told the BBC that he sees the ballroom as an ‘ethics nightmare’.
He said: "It's using access to the White House to raise money. I don't like it. These corporations all want something from the government."
Some of the donors on the list also attended a dinner at the White House last week on 15 October, including Microsoft, Coinbase, Palantir, Lockheed Martin, Amazon and Google.
"We have a lot of legends in the room tonight, and that’s why we’re here to celebrate you because you’ve given tremendous amounts of money to see a ballroom built for the first time at the White House," Trump told his dinner attendees.
Here is the full list, which has been shared by a White House official: