{"id":456,"date":"2025-03-04T23:53:02","date_gmt":"2025-03-04T23:53:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/?p=456"},"modified":"2025-03-04T23:53:02","modified_gmt":"2025-03-04T23:53:02","slug":"people-paying-5-million-to-dine-with-the-president-at-mar-a-lago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/people-paying-5-million-to-dine-with-the-president-at-mar-a-lago\/","title":{"rendered":"PEOPLE PAYING $5 MILLION TO DINE WITH THE PRESIDENT AT MAR-A-LAGO"},"content":{"rendered":"
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People Are Paying Millions to Dine With Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n
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Business leaders are paying as much as $5 million to meet one-on-one with the president at his Florida compound, sources tell, while others are paying $1 million apiece to dine with him in a group setting.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Photograph: Win McNamee\/Getty Images<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<\/div>\n
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Guests are paying millions of dollars to dine and meet with President Donald Trump<\/a> at special events held at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.<\/div>\n
Business leaders can secure a one-on-one meeting with the president at Mar-a-Lago for $5 million, according to sources with direct knowledge of the meetings. At a so-called candlelight dinner held as recently as this past Saturday, prospective Mar-a-Lago guests were asked to spend $1 million to reserve a seat.<\/div>\n
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\u201cYou are invited to a candlelight dinner featuring special guest President Donald J. Trump,\u201d the invitation reads, under a \u201cMAGA INC.\u201d header. MAGA Inc., or Make America Great Again Inc., is a super PAC that supported Trump\u2019s 2024 presidential campaign. \u201cAdditional details provided upon RSVP. RSVPs will be accommodated on a first come, first serve basis. Space is very limited. $1,000,000 per person.\u201d<\/div>\n
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Invitees were asked to RSVP to Meredith O\u2019Rourke, who served as national finance director and senior adviser at Donald J. Trump for President 2024, a campaign committee, and who is the owner of The O\u2019Rourke Group, which O\u2019Rourke describes on her LinkedIn page as a \u201cRepublican political fundraiser.\u201d Invitees were also directed to email Abby Mathis, the finance coordinator at MAGA Inc. Mathis was previously a staff assistant for Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama\u2014a former Auburn University football coach\u2014and also served as an intern at the White House office of the staff secretary, according to LegiStorm, a research organization that posts information on politicians and their staffers.<\/div>\n
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O\u2019Rourke and Mathis did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did the White House.The invitation specifically states that \u201cDonald J. Trump is appearing at this event only as a featured speaker, and is not asking for funds or donations.\u201d The event occurred at 7 pm on March 1 and was listed on the president\u2019s official schedule<\/a> as the \u201cMAGA INC. Candlelight Finance Dinner.\u201d This is the only event by that name on Trump\u2019s official schedule since he took office.<\/div>\n
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Michael Solakiewicz, a pro-Trump digital creator, posted photographs of the event on Instagram. WIRED has also viewed photographs and videos of Elon Musk<\/a> with his son X at Mar-a-Lago the following day during a charity event<\/a> hosted by a group called Wine Women & Shoes that also featured Trump.<\/div>\n
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\u201cIt\u2019s everyone else who missed the boat,\u201d a Trumpworld source with knowledge of the meetings says, referring to latecomers to the Trump agenda. The source pointed specifically to the tech sector, where executives have scrambled to show fealty to the new administration.<\/div>\n
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While X owner Elon Musk notably spent at least $260 million<\/a> to elect Trump, other tech companies<\/a> and executives<\/a> collectively donated millions to Trump\u2019s inauguration fund: Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Amazon executive chairman Jeff Bezos, Meta, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Uber, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, Apple CEO Tim Cook, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman all donated $1 million each.<\/div>\n
The $5 million one-on-one meetings have become a \u201chot ticket\u201d in the business community, says a source familiar with them.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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So-called candlelight dinners offering access to the president are known to have been held prior to Trump\u2019s inauguration, but have not previously been reported to have occurred while he is in office. (Trump did, however, appear at a number<\/a> of other fundraising<\/a> events during his first term.) Most recently, The Washington Post<\/a> reported that such candlelight dinners were held on December 19 and January 19\u2014the night before Trump\u2019s presidential inauguration\u2014for the cost of $1 million per attendee. Ivanka Trump<\/a> and Jared Kushner attended the January 19 event. In the lead-up to Trump\u2019s 2016 inauguration, donors who spent seven figures could secure eight tickets to a candlelight dinner, according to a Washington Post report<\/a> at the time.<\/div>\n
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While previous second-term presidents have held fundraisers for their parties, the nature, timing, location, and price tag of Trump\u2019s dinner all raise flags for experts.<\/div>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t recall a sitting president in the first weeks of his administration asking for millions of dollars in fundraising,\u201d says Don Moynihan, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan. \u201cThe concern is less about fundraising and more about access and influence \u2026 People hoping to get favorable treatment view it in their interest to donate money to Trump.\u201d<\/div>\n
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\u201cPart of what is worrying,\u201d Moynihan adds, \u201cis the lack of ethical guardrails in the current Trump administration, where there doesn\u2019t seem to be a clear line between Trump\u2019s businesses and the presidency.\u201d<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

People Are Paying Millions to Dine With Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago Business leaders are paying as much as $5 million to meet one-on-one with the president at his Florida compound, sources tell, while others are paying $1 million apiece to dine with him in a group setting. Photograph: Win McNamee\/Getty Images Guests are paying millions […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=456"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":457,"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456\/revisions\/457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}