President-elect Donald Trump may break the record set at Inauguration Day in 2017, when he first walked through the White House entrance. At the time, his inaugural committee managed to raise as much as $107 million for the organization of the event.
This year, for the Jan. 20 ceremony which will kick off his second term, it would appear that funding for the Republican leader has already reached $150 million. This has been made possible by the fact that some of the most prominent U.S. business leaders have definitely taken Inauguration Day 2025 seriously.
The donations, which are not restricted by campaign finance laws, come as industries and business leaders try to curry favor with the incoming administration after Trump’s decisive victory at the polls. Suffice it to say that giants such as Meta, OpenAi and Amazon, led by Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman and Jeff Bezos respectively, have donated $1 million each to the committee working on the ceremony.
The same amount that, according to rumors in recent days, will be paid by hedge fund manager Ken Griffin, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahe, and U.S. automakers General Motors and Ford, which will also provide the president-elect’s staff with a fleet of their vehicles. Many senior executives from the country’s industries and the world of finance, moreover, have already traveled to Mar-a-Lago, home of Trump’s transition team, in an attempt to get the “blessing” of the incoming administration, which threatens to shake up international trade rules.
The MAGA leader himself, moreover, wrote on his Truth profile, “Everybody wants to be my friend!” No White House tenant had ever managed to reach Trump’s haul this year, as Obama’s staff raised $53 million in 2009 and $42 million in 2013, while Biden touched $63 million in 2021.
On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal identified 11 companies that support Trump’s second inauguration, despite having pledged to suspend or reconsider donations to political committees after the Jan. 6, 2021 uprising on Capitol Hill. Among them, in addition to some previously mentioned, are Intuit, Toyota, and Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. The Journal also reported that the companies in question were advised by political strategists to clean up their websites and corporate policies of pro-Democratic Party messages.
Finally, the WSJ revealed that those who donate $1 million to $2 million, at the Jan. 20 ceremony, will receive six tickets to a series of pre-inauguration events, including a “candlelight” dinner attended by Donald and Melania Trump.
