How much is a president worth? Apparently, for Trump, it’s $350 million dollars.
Public Citizen has released a new report detailing what we know—and don’t— about the corporate donors funding President Trump’s approximately $350 million ballroom project. Rob Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, joins Jen to break down the donor identities that have been released, uncovered, and potentially linked to foreign entities.
Weissman notes that allowing donor anonymity can compromise American trust, tax dollars, and even national security. Weissman and Jen also discuss the influence of cryptocurrency—a major financial component of this project—and the numerous criminal cases against crypto companies that were dropped by Trump.
Robert Weissman is co-president of Public Citizen and a staunch public interest advocate and activist, as well as an expert on corporate and government accountability.
The transcript has been edited slightly for formatting.
Jen Rubin
Hi, this is Jen Rubin, Editor-in-Chief of the Contreran. We’re delighted to have back with us the co-president of Public Citizen, Rob Weisman. Rob, good to see you!
Robert Weissman
It’s good to be with you, Jen.
Jen Rubin
You are out with a new report, that I must say is eye-raising. It concerns the companies that are donating to the 330, 30, I’m not sure how much, we’re up to a million dollar ballroom. What are these companies? Who are these companies?
Robert Weissman
Well, we know the names of about two dozen companies, which includes most of the big tech companies, Apple, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, a couple tobacco companies, which is super interesting, Altria, Reynolds American. A couple crypto companies, because of course they gotta be in on this. And some others from across the spectrum, including notably Lockheed Martin, which is by far the biggest government contractor.
Jen Rubin
Now, the administration itself released 1 of these names. They… you found another 3. Why weren’t those on the original list? Do we know?
Robert Weissman
We don’t really know. To be clear, CBS found the names, we just added them to the list. What we do know is that the administration has offered donors the choice to be named or anonymous.
to this ballroom debacle. We don’t know how many are choosing the anonymity route. We also don’t know how much each of these companies or individuals is given.
Jen Rubin
Wait a sec, so there are companies out there that could be given tens of millions of dollars to Donald Trump’s pet project, and we don’t know who they are?
Robert Weissman
Correct. There could also be a foreign government giving money to this pet project, and we wouldn’t know about it. They’re making the donation… they’re making the donations to a non-profit that supports work in the National Park Service, and that’s sort of the funnel for this money to pay for the ballroom construction. Those donors, as donors to a non-profit, have the right to…Remain confidential, and some of them have been doing that, we know, we just don’t know how many.
Jen Rubin
They could be individuals who got pardons. They could be individuals who have past records. We know nothing about these people, correct?
Robert Weissman
That’s correct.
Jen Rubin
Tell us about some of the conflicts that the companies that are on this list have. Do they have business in front of the government? Are they at odds with the government? Tell us about those.
Robert Weissman
Yeah, well, we tried to look at a bunch of different areas of interest for these companies. So, the first thing we did is look at government procurement. So Most large companies, sell to the federal government. We found that these companies collectively sold more… have more than $10 billion in contracts for the federal government. Over the last years. A lot of large companies are facing enforcement actions. We have a tracker of every large company that’s been facing an enforcement action. Antitrust, environmental case, whatever. We found that a majority of these companies either have enforcement actions that are open, or had enforcement actions that were open, but have already been closed by the Trump administration, which is something they’re doing rapidly. We looked at their political campaign spending. They’d spent, over the last years, collectively, $1. billion on lobbying and political contributions. And then we looked at their lobby disclosure forms and their disclosure forms to investors, just listed everything that they say they’re interested in. So, every single one of these companies, not surprisingly, lists being interested in the policy issue of taxation. But they’re also interested in things like consumer privacy protections, or tariff policy, or things that are obscure and very particular to them, like the regulations around deep-sea cables, or telephone poles, in the case of T-Mobile. So, it’s really almost anything you can think about. These companies collectively are interested in it, and obviously they think making this contribution to Trump’s pet project is going to help get them better results as the government deals with the many things that impact their business.
Jen Rubin
just seems odd. The White House is public property, and usually, if there’s going to be a change, a renovation to public property, Congress appropriates money, there’s debate on it, we find out who it is, and it is fairly transparent. Have we ever had the White House paid for by private people whose identities we don’t know?
Robert Weissman
I think not the physical White House. I think many of us have said over the years that the White House is, in fact, paid for by private.
Jen Rubin
Yes.
Robert Weissman
But this is 100% very different, and I think it’s…You know, I think it’s caught the attention of the American people for two reasons. One, it’s very specific and graphic, and visual to see the East Wing just come down. So, you know, you and we have been talking about all the corruption of this administration. Sometimes, even though it’s super important, it may feel esoteric, or the channels may be a little bit unclear. But the wrecking ball was taken to the East White House, and that’s very clear. I think people can… can resonate with that in its… in its specificity. And, as you’re alluding to, like, the total surprise and arbitrariness of this. It’s not how things happen. The National Mall, including the White House, is National Historic Treasures. They’re managed through process, and things don’t just suddenly happened, but now they did. And also, they’re paid for, not always, but generally with public money, because we understand this is a public purpose, and you want the taxpayers to make the decision, through their elected representatives, about how the money is going to be managed and what’s going to be done. You don’t want an individual, the president, being able to solicit money from his friends and people who want to curry favor with him to do whatever he wants to do. And you don’t want them paying in order to get favor from the government, rather than paying their taxes, which is what they ought to be doing.
Jen Rubin
There’s nothing, if we think this is correct, to stop Trump from tearing down the whole thing and putting up a big tower that says Trump on it. Theoretically, if he’s gonna go for the East Wing, why not do the whole thing, right?
Robert Weissman
it may well have occurred to him. You know, probably doesn’t want to leave the premises, maybe with, like. Do months in Mar-a-Lago or something? Yeah.
Jen Rubin
And that’s not to speak of, of course, turning this into Mar-a-Lago by, among other things, paving over, the Rose Garden. Now, Republicans make all kinds of bizarre arguments. Well Michelle Obama put in a garden, and Barack Obama put in a basketball court. These are not those things, are they? Presumably…
Robert Weissman
Just reported internal to the White House. I think to many of us, they look preposterous, with the gold plating everywhere. But it’s… it may be gauche, but it’s kind of the normal thing that presidents do, the remodeling of the White House. Tearing down the White House and constructing a whole new building is not normal, and Trump himself says it’s not normal, he’s bragging about it as this, you know, once-in-history change that he’s imposing on the White House infrastructure.
Jen Rubin
You mentioned crypto companies. We know Trump has gotten very, very rich from crypto companies. Do these have any direct relationship to Trump or his family that we know about?
Robert Weissman
it’s a small universe. Well, there’s… they have direct interest. They were being criminally prosecuted by the Securities Exchange Commission, many of these crypto companies, under the Biden administration for not following the securities law, or face… or facing large civil fines. And Trump has come in, and with his administration. basically dropped all of those cases, and then just earlier, like, last week, pardoned one of the largest crypto, executive in the world, from a… from criminal, Conviction… prior criminal plea. So, Trump’s doing this across the board, and then all these companies, of which there aren’t that many leading companies, are integrated now, connected one way or another with these bizarre new crypto operations that his sons are involved in, that he has a stake in. He just told the Washington Post, I don’t really know about this crypto stuff. My sons are in it. Okay. Family business. he’s probably made billions of dollars. It’s very hard to get a window into what’s actually happened dollar-wise, but he’s probably made billions of dollars since being elected president from these crypto ventures. there’s a 0% chance that these ventures would have any value at all if he weren’t the President of the United States. So he’s completely cashing in, and that’s the synergy of this whole thing. They’re helping him, he’s helping them. Consumers along the way are going to be massively screwed when this crypto bubble pops. But for right now, he’s getting rich, and they’re getting happy.
Jen Rubin
for sake of argument, a new Congress gets elected, with a different party in charge. Could they put an end to this? Could they pass a law that says, you know, we’re not going to tear down the building, or we’re not going to allow companies that donate to part of the White House to do business with the government. Are there things that a responsible Congress could be doing?
Robert Weissman
For sure, and those are good examples. You know, the first thing that would happen if we had a functioning Congress, even a functioning Congress under Republican control. would be to have multiple hearings to understand what’s going on. Like, what was the process to decide to do this? How did they skirt the standard rules about changing national historic buildings. What is the National Historic Trust that’s funneling all this money? Who are the donors? What are they… were they promised anything in return? Was anything suggested? Are there foreign governments involved? Which there easily could be I think… In prior days. whether it had been a Democrat who did this. with a Democratic Party controlling Congress, we would have seen hearings, and even a Republican president prior to the Republican Congress, I think this is so outlandish, we would have expected hearings. But now, with a Republican Congress that is totally bowing down to Trump. They’re just letting it go. I mean, I’m sure that, privately, everybody’s rolling their eyes, but that’s how it goes today in Washington, D.C.
Jen Rubin
We have a lot of private eye-rolling and a lot of public bootlicking, so those two things, I don’t want to say, go hand in hand.
Robert Weissman
your next book.
Jen Rubin
Yeah, there you go. Last question. A lot of people assume this is a done deal. Last time I looked, construction kind of takes a long time. If anyone’s redone a bathroom lately, they know, and this is a much bigger project. Is it conceivable that this thing could be stopped, or the next president could say, this is a monstrosity, I’m tearing it down, and all those companies paid a lot of money for nothing?
Robert Weissman
Well, 100%. You know, one thing that we’re hearing is that the companies are going to be recognized, like, with plaques on the building? So, if that’s true, it’s like, that’s normal fare, you know, in museums. If that’s true, the first thing they might do is either graffiti those blacks, or take them down.
Jen Rubin
Right.
Robert Weissman
But yeah, they could… they could take the building down, they could completely repurpose the building, they could adjust it into something else, they could turn it into office space, Conceivably, they could tear it down and go back to the way things were, although that would you know, that might feel a little wasteful, it might actually be. We’ll have to see what happens, as this thing is being constructed. And as you say Shouldn’t take for granted that construction’s gonna go as fast as projected. But… With a president who’s committed to jamming it through and, maybe skirting any of the normal Slowdown points in construction. I wouldn’t counter that.
Jen Rubin
Got it. Well, it is… like everything in this administration, there’s a first for everything, and it is interesting how something this specific In the grand scheme of things, maybe not something
as significant as the rule of law, deporting people to a foreign prison, and the like, but nevertheless, it has captured people’s attention and gotten them very upset, which is a good thing. What else is Public Citizen going to be doing? Are you going to keep up with this? Are you asking for more information from these companies? What are you going to be doing as time goes on?
Robert Weissman
Yeah, I think we’ve got a variety of things we’re planning to do, and I just wanted to follow up on what you just said. So, I think we have to keep two things in mind. On the one hand, yes, it is not at the same level of importance as, you know, assassinations off the coast of Venezuela and marching us to war in a legal, unconstitutional, and dangerous war, or the ICE raids. On the other hand, it’s more than just an aesthetic choice, because of what’s… of the nature of the… which would be its own thing. But because of the nature of this corporate funding. You know, the line from Carolyn Levitt, the White House spokesperson, is, we should be grateful that these companies are privately funding this and saving taxpayers’ money. And that’s just a laughable assertion, not just because it’s wrong, but because the reason the companies are doing the fundings they expect a return on investment. You know, we don’t really know how much they’re contributing, except collectively, so far, $30 billion. I’m sorry, $30 million, I think it’s fair to say they expect a 1,001 return on investment. So, that’s at the expense of us. So, it’s a… it’s a deep corruption with…probably very large-scale impacts for all kinds of policy decisions and some really crucial enforcement actions, some major antitrust cases, for example. We should expect we’ll… take a different course than they would in the absence of these payments. So a lot is at stake, and so, yes, therefore, we do intend to keep pushing on it. We’re calling on all these companies to withdraw their donations, and we’re looking at trying to hone in on one or two of them to really campaign around and see. I think there’s a lot of appetite Among the public to look at who are the corporations or large institutions that are allying themselves with Trump, especially when they know it’s wrong, and how can we hold them accountable? And this is a case where all these companies know exactly what they’re doing. Some of them probably think it’s fine. Some of them, in their heart of hearts, their CEOs, know it’s wrong. And maybe we can shame them a little bit, but also pressure them more, and at least Maybe make them change the decision, or at least make them feel sorry that they made it in the first place.
Jen Rubin
Let’s hope so. Thank you for a fascinating report. We will link it to this program. You can also, folks, go on the Public Citizen website, and get a copy of it there, plus all kinds of information about Corruption, investigations, lawsuits, and the rest. Rob, thank you for everything that Public Citizen is doing, and thanks for joining us.
Robert Weissman
Great to be with you, talk to you again soon.
