Trump hosts main tech firms and enterprise titans as he raises cash for White Home ballroom

President Trump hosted dozens of enterprise titans on Wednesday as he seeks to lift lots of of thousands and thousands of {dollars} so as to add a ballroom to the White Home.

The visitor record for the East Room dinner included representatives from nearly two dozen companies, together with tech companies like Amazon, Apple, Meta, Google, Microsoft and Palantir, tobacco firms Altria and Reynolds American and telecom giants T-Cellular and Comcast, in accordance with a listing offered to CBS Information by the White Home. 

Different notable visitors included oil magnate Harold Hamm, sugar industrialist Pepe Fanjul and Tampa Bay Buccaneers homeowners Edward and Shari Glazer.

The cryptocurrency trade — which the Trump administration has sought nearer ties to — was well-represented on the occasion, together with Coinbase, Ripple, Tether and the Winklevoss twins, who based the Gemini cryptocurrency change.

It is not clear what number of of Wednesday’s roughly 128 attendees have already opened their wallets for the $200 million ballroom mission, however Mr. Trump thanked the individuals within the room for giving “super quantities of cash.” He stated the price has been “absolutely taken care of.”

“So lots of you’ve gotten been actually, actually beneficiant,” he stated. “A few you might be sitting right here, saying, ‘Sir, would $25 million be acceptable?’ I stated, ‘I am going to take it.'”

The Trump administration introduced plans so as to add a 90,000-square-foot ballroom to the East Wing over the summer time, with building breaking floor final month. The administration has known as it a long-overdue growth that can permit the White Home to extra simply host main capabilities like state dinners. The president stated Wednesday the ballroom could have area for as much as 999 visitors and bulletproof glass home windows on all sides.

The White Home says the mission might be financed completely by personal donors, moderately than taxpayers, setting off a fundraising push, CBS Information reported final month. A number of firms had pledged $5 million or extra, together with Google — which agreed to donate $22 million final month in an effort to settle a lawsuit from Mr. Trump over his suspension from YouTube after Jan. 6, 2021 — Booz Allen Hamilton, Lockheed Martin, Palantir and NextEra Power. The White Home is working with the nonprofit Belief for the Nationwide Mall to lift cash.

Donors are eligible for some type of “recognition,” presumably within the type of having their names etched in brick or stone, sources informed CBS Information final month.

The fundraising marketing campaign has drawn some criticism.

“Do they suppose we’re dumb sufficient to imagine they’re giving their cash away free of charge?” requested Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts in an X put up Wednesday.

The ballroom is a part of a litany of renovation tasks pursued by Mr. Trump since returning to the White Home earlier this yr. He put in huge new flagpoles on the grounds, turned the Rose Backyard right into a patio, redecorated the Oval Workplace with gold-colored furnishings and put in a “Presidential Stroll of Fame” with photographs of his predecessors — besides former President Joe Biden, who’s represented by a picture of an autopen.

And in current days, he has teased constructing a triumphal arch in Virginia, throughout the Potomac River from the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Mr. Trump confirmed a mannequin of the arch to Wednesday’s dinner visitors and displayed it throughout an Oval Workplace occasion earlier within the day. Requested by CBS Information senior White Home correspondent Ed O’Keefe who the arch is for, the president responded: “Me.”

“Going to be lovely,” he stated.