The Wall Street Journal released a bombshell article on Tuesday revealing that Donald Trump made about $500 million, raising funds from wealthy executives who were lobbying to win his support. The executives hailed from the insurance, technology, healthcare, and pharmaceutical industries and are said to have paid him large sums of money to have sitdowns with him.
All this is said to have begun after Donald Trump’s election when he started receiving a wave of congratulatory calls from billionaires and corporate executives. Soon after, Trump told his fundraisers that he felt like it was “a good time to raise money.” And while his fundraisers told him that donors might need a break after what was called the most expensive election in history, Trump ignored their suggestion, ordering them to start raising money again.
Commenting on the swarm of executives who went to meet Donald Trump, Kathyrn Wylde, leader of the Partnership for New York City said, “Everybody who is anybody went down (to meet Trump). It was a proactive effort to not be a target.”
View this post on Instagram
According to the Journal, Donald Trump is said to have had over 50 meetings at Mar-a-Lago. He is said to have been in a very jovial mood during these dinners, “sometimes serving chopped steak, showing off his iPad playlist and listening to executives looking to bend his ear and complain about others.”
He is also said to have called Mar-a-Lago “the hottest club in the world.” The money raised was supposedly kept aside as “a rainy-day fund” and was “split among Trump’s inaugural committee and various other accounts, including a large political action committee”
These conversations or rather the funding is said to have influenced Donald Trump so much so that he has voiced out the concerns aired there in public. His scathing remarks during a live stream at the World Economic Forum are said to have come after this.
View this post on Instagram
Excerpts from the stream read, “I hope you start opening your bank to conservatives because many conservatives complain that the banks are not allowing them to do business within the bank, and that included a place called Bank of America. And I don’t know if the regulators mandated that because of Biden or what, but you and Jamie and everybody, I hope you’re going to open your banks to conservatives because what you’re doing is wrong.”
Trump continued, “Come make your product in America, and we will give you among the lowest taxes as any nation on earth. But if you don’t make your product in America, which is your prerogative, then very simply, you will have to pay a tariff — differing amounts — but a tariff, which will direct hundreds of billions of dollars and even trillions of dollars into our treasury to strengthen our economy and pay down debt under the Trump administration.”
