By Michael Scherer & Ashley Parker
Tuesday, November 18, 2025
On the morning after he won a second term as president,
Donald Trump placed an unexpected call to his top fundraiser, Meredith
O’Rourke. The night before, he’d told a ballroom of supporters in West Palm
Beach, Florida, that he had held his last political rally—“Can you believe
it?”—and was ready to focus on governing. But his message to O’Rourke after the
break of dawn was different. “I want you to keep going,” he told her.
Within weeks, that message had gone out to his Republican
donors, as well as to Fortune 500 companies and billionaire investors who
typically avoided electoral politics. Their first opportunity was his second
inauguration committee, which would eventually raise $241 million, about $90
million more than organizers needed to fund the events—and nearly four times as
much as Joe Biden had raised for his own inauguration, in 2021. But that was
just the beginning.
Trump wanted money for the sorts of political operations
that many politicians support—the Republican National Committee, his own
political action committee, a new dark-money nonprofit group, a super PAC run
by longtime advisers. But he was also requesting money for technically
apolitical nonprofit causes that offered corporations and wealthy individuals a
chance to make tax-deductible contributions, including a dramatic White House
renovation, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (now
under his control), his presidential library, and a celebratory Army parade
on his birthday. By August, Trump estimated
that he had collected at least $1.5 billion since the election, more than all
the money raised to support his 2024 campaign over two years, including
funds raised by supportive independent super PACs. The tally is now approaching
$2 billion, two people familiar with the effort—who, like others, were not
authorized to speak publicly—told us.
Trump has kept careful track of the money coming in,
regularly calling O’Rourke late at night for updates. He monitors who is
giving, who is not, and the role of lobbyists who bundle donations, those
familiar with his efforts told us. At times, the actual donation amount is less
important to the president than the percentage of the donor’s overall assets.
He thanks the most generous benefactors at swanky events at the White House and
his clubs.
Much of the money has come from people or entities that
have business before the government. Defense contractors, cryptocurrency
investors, and technology companies have put in tens of millions of dollars as
he has deregulated the industry or dropped enforcement proceedings. A select
group of companies and executives—Amazon, Lockheed Martin, Coinbase, Palantir
CEO Alex Karp—are top donors to multiple Trump projects.
Nothing on this scale was ever attempted by a sitting
president prior to Trump. Other recent administrations have faced their own
scandals over fundraising efforts. But Trump’s approach—in the extent of the
donations he’s soliciting, the secrecy with which some are handled, and the
frankness of the exchange of dollars for presidential favor—puts even the most
ambitious prior efforts to shame. And he’s just getting started. “He hasn’t
stopped,” a third person told us, “and I don’t anticipate that we will stop.”
***
Trump’s relentless fundraising has alarmed ethics
watchdogs who have worked for years to reduce the role of large donations in
buying access or protection from government regulation.
“While it is not unusual for lame duck presidents to
fundraise for their Libraries, what we are seeing from President Trump in his
first year of office is shockingly unprecedented,” Trevor Potter, a former
Republican chair of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) who now runs the
Campaign Legal Center, told us in a statement. “The president’s seemingly
insatiable drive for money from corporations and billionaires seeking
government favors (or merely hoping to procure protection from Trump attacks on
their business interests) sends a clear signal to everyday Americans that their
needs come far behind those of the ultrawealthy who are buying access and
favor.”
Trump advisers maintain that the only reason people are
giving is that they support the president’s agenda. The White House
spokesperson Davis Ingle described Trump as “the most dominant figure in
American politics from fundraising to the campaign trail,” and said that donors
were willing to give because of the “historic progress” of his administration.
Others familiar with the efforts say that more
transactional motivations are at play. Media and technology companies that
Trump has sued have collectively made $85 million in payments to some of his
pet projects in order to settle the lawsuits. These include donations made by Meta
(sued for deplatforming Trump after January 6) and Paramount (the parent
company of CBS News, which Trump sued) to the Trump library, and a donation
from Alphabet
(the parent company of YouTube, which deactivated Trump’s account after January
6) for the ballroom. The donations came at a time when those companies were
also seeking regulatory favor from his government. In Paramount’s case, the
incoming chair
of the Federal Communications Commission said that Trump’s unsettled
complaint could complicate its planned merger with another company, pressuring
Paramount to pay up despite significant doubts over the case’s merits. Some
companies and executives also fear unfavorable government action if they don’t
give.
“There are people being asked to do
10-to-25-million-dollar checks for the ballroom, for the inauguration, for the
presidential library,” another person familiar with the requests told us. “That
spigot is never going to close, ever. This is just the cost of doing business.
They will write a multimillion-dollar check to avoid the $2 billion lawsuit.
It’s a business decision.”
Only parts of Trump’s $2 billion haul have been publicly
disclosed, often in media reports or in comments by the president. Under public
pressure, the White House released
a list of three dozen major donors to the new ballroom, which Trump expects
to cost $300 million. (The president said late last month that “more
than $350 million” had been raised.) Trump’s team disclosed the $241
million in inauguration fundraising to the FEC, as required by law. Trump’s
team raised
about $33 million for an Army parade in Washington, D.C., and other
celebrations, The Atlantic previously reported. The Kennedy Center
raised $58 million last month, according to its
president, Richard Grenell, after a separate Trump fundraiser for the
center in June requested
checks of $100,000 to $2 million.
***
Little is known about how much fundraisers have collected
for the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library Foundation, which Trump’s son Eric
and Trump’s son-in-law Michael Boulos established
in May. Efforts by Miami Dade College to give land to the foundation for a
future library site in downtown Miami have
been blocked by Florida courts. The foundation has yet to report any
revenue, though ABC News announced that it would pay a $15 million settlement
to the future library to resolve a lawsuit by Trump against the anchor George
Stephanopoulos for his false claim that Trump had been found “liable for rape,”
when the jury verdict was for sexual abuse. (A New York judge said
that the jury’s findings against Trump described rape “as the term commonly
is used and understood in contexts outside of the New York Penal Law.”)
Trump is also continuing to run a presidential-scale
political-money operation alongside the fundraising efforts by House and Senate
leaders for the 2026 midterm elections. From the end of November 2024 to June
30, 2025, his team brought in $229 million to MAGA Inc., a super PAC run by
aides that is not directly controlled by Trump. During the same period, he
raised an additional $63 million through Trump National Committee JFC, a
small-dollar joint fundraising operation with the Republican National Committee,
according to FEC records. Both groups will report their fundraising for the
second half of the year at the end of January.
His team has also collected funds for a dark-money group,
Securing American Greatness. The organization will not disclose its fundraising
in 2025 until it releases its tax forms next year, and it has no legal
obligation to reveal individual donors. One technology company, Qualcomm, disclosed
to its shareholders a donation of $1 million to Securing American Greatness
along with a gift of $1 million to the inaugural committee, suggesting the
possibility that other corporations are also pairing their public donations
with secret ones. Since early May, Securing American Greatness has spent nearly
$18.5 million on advertising, according to independent tracking of ad spending
that a political operative shared with us. The ads, which included a major
spring campaign in support of Trump’s budget bill, have targeted congressional
districts that are expected to be competitive in 2026, and the group also spent
money to get out the vote before the off-year elections in Virginia this month
that Democrats
dominated.
Trump and his aides cast donations to his political
groups or priorities as acts of patriotism, often celebrating donors at lavish
dinners. About 125 donors to the ballroom project gathered with the president
in the White House’s East Room on October 15. As they sat around candlelit
tables decorated with white roses, Trump debuted a model for a memorial arch,
inspired by the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, that he has discussed building near
Arlington National Cemetery—which could soon present another opportunity to
donate.
“We have a lot of legends in the room tonight, and that’s
why we’re here, to celebrate you,” Trump told the crowd. “So many friends in
the audience, and I just want to thank you all. You’re very special people. You
love the country, you love the White House, and what you’ve done is very
important.”
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