So, let’s say you’re the CEO of an enormous firm or maybe only a free-floating billionaire kind, and you actually, really need one thing from President Donald Trump. Regrettably, he hasn’t sued you (but!), so you may’t pay him the customary eight-figure bribe as a “settlement” in one among his meritless lawsuits. And what should you missed out on the chance to attend one among his grifty crypto dinners and bribe him by shopping for his silly meme coin?
Have you ever thought-about giving Trump cash for his catastrophically ugly ballroom, the price of which appears to leap $50 million each few days? It’s a fast and straightforward approach to suck as much as the worst president in historical past, however then there’s that complete factor the place possibly you don’t wish to be brazenly related to the worst president in historical past.
No worries. The president has your again.
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For those who’d like to present Trump thousands and thousands however not endure any fallout or damaging publicity for doing so, he has helpfully provided to maintain your identify secret—all you need to do is ask.
The truth is, you don’t even should ask. The pledge kind that Trump’s fundraisers have been circulating proactively provides the chance to maintain your identify secret.
You possibly can doubtless thank Meredith O’Rourke, one among Trump’s high fundraisers, for this. O’Rourke is endlessly creative about how one can squeeze cash out of individuals desperate to get their enterprise in entrance of the president.
The secrecy possibility won’t be so enticing, although, if it’s as simple to determine who you’re because it was to search out out who Trump omitted from his official donor listing. How? The New York Occasions merely matched the donors who attended Trump’s dinner rewarding attendees for giving him a minimum of $2.5 million for the ballroom.
So, which corporations needed to maintain issues hush-hush whereas doing their bribing?
We’ve acquired two stupidly named well being care corporations, Vantive and Extremity Care, who have been going the outdated, stale route of lobbying the White Home. However why foyer when you may simply write a giant ballroom test as a substitute? That’s a much more environment friendly approach to get Trump to conform to broaden Medicare reimbursements to cowl, properly, no matter it’s that these corporations do.
Oh hiya, Blackrock. Didn’t see you there. Your contribution of $2.5 million or extra will go a good distance towards making Trump much less indignant about your previous assist of environmental, social, and governance causes.
How about some people who’re main shareholders in ByteDance, TikTok’s dad or mum firm? Gotta get your bribe in quickly earlier than Trump offers TikTok away to his billionaire buddy, Larry Ellison.
How may all this secret cash be sloshing round when White Home Secretary Karoline Leavitt promised that Trump has been “incredibly transparent” about his ballroom venture?
That is all so deeply, unbelievably legal, and makes Trump’s first-term flirtations with ignoring the Emoluments Clause look positively tame by comparability.
Again then, you could possibly curry favor simply by staying at his horrible Washington, D.C. lodge, which in all probability wouldn’t have run you seven or eight figures. However Trump has greater wants now and he’s decided to stamp his gross authoritarian stylish model throughout Washington, a metropolis that hates him.
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So, he’ll construct a monstrosity and make everybody else pay, showering money on him within the hopes of receiving particular remedy from essentially the most bribeable president ever, simply because the founders meant.
