Who’s Paying for Trump’s Ridiculous White House Ballroom?

President Donald Trump is currently demolishing the East Wing of the White House in one of the more shocking acts of his second term. Trump plans to build an enormous $250 million ballroom in its place, a structure that will dwarf the existing White House. But who’s paying for it? As it turns out, a bunch of private companies and individuals. And, presumably, they’ll now expect to get a lot more access to Trump.

Trump hasn’t bothered to ask Congress or anyone else about destroying the public building. And the White House hasn’t released a list of the companies that are contributing to this assault on American democracy. But Trump has hosted at least two dinners that seemed to be fundraising events for the ballroom. And reports have trickled out about which companies are complicit.

Trump invited tech executives to dinner at the White House in early September, and CBS News reports that the president’s meeting was “interpreted” by at least one company as an appeal for donations. That kind of language suggests that Trump is again utilizing the mob-boss style of language that he’s become known for. Trump can’t explicitly say, “give me money or I’m going to make life hard for your company.” But he’s suggested exactly that several times since taking office in January.

Trump had another dinner at the White House just last week, and it featured some of the biggest names in tech and crypto, including Apple, Google, Meta, and Microsoft, as well as Coinbase, Tether, and Ripple. Defense contractors like Palantir and Lockheed Martin were also represented, along with tobacco companies Altria and Reynolds American.

“So many of you have been really, really generous,” Trump said at the dinner on Oct. 15. “I mean, a couple of you, I was sitting here and saying, ‘Sir, would $25 million be appropriate?’ They said, ‘I’ll take it.’”

The part of all this that seems most shrouded in secrecy is the exact amount of money each company is handing over. CBS News first broke the story last month that companies were lining up to pay for Trump’s ballroom, and the news organization included a few known figures. Lockheed Martin has pledged at least $10 million, according to CBS, while many other companies have pledged at least $5 million. But it remains to be seen whether there will be any transparency from official sources.

The companies that have contributed or are expected to contribute, according to the Wall Street Journal:

• Altria Group
• Amazon
• Apple
• Booz Allen Hamilton
• Caterpillar
• Coinbase
• Comcast
• Google
• HP
• Hard Rock International
• Lockheed Martin
• Meta
• Micron
• Microsoft
• NextEra Energy
• Palantir
• R.J. Reynolds
• T-Mobile
• Tether
• Union Pacific Railroad

Individuals and foundations that are expected to contribute, according to the Journal:

• Adelson Family Foundation (gambling billionaire Miriam Adelson’s nonprofit)
• Betty Wold Johnson Foundation
• Stefan E. Brodie (former owner of chemical company Purolite)
• Charles and Marissa Cascarilla (founder of financial tech firm Paxos)
• Jose Pepe and Emilia Fanjul (billionaire sugar and real estate business)
• Edward and Shari Glazer (billionaire owners of sports teams)
• Harold Hamm (billionaire oil and gas executive)
• The Laura & Isaac Perlmutter Foundation (foundation of the former head of Marvel Entertainment)
• Benjamin Leon, Jr. (nominee to be Trump’s ambassador to Spain)
• Kelly Loeffler (former Republican senator) and Jeff Sprecher (billionaire chairman of the New York Stock Exchange)
• The Lutnick Family (Howard Lutnick is the Secretary of Commerce)
• Stephen Schwarzman (Blackstone CEO)
• Konstantin Sokolov (private equity investor)
• Paolo Tiramani  (founder of modular homes company BOXABL)
• Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (crypto founders of Gemini)

There are some financial figures we know more specifically because they were part of settlements from Trump’s nuisance lawsuits. YouTube is paying $22 million for the ballroom, routed through a nonprofit organization called Trust for the National Mall, after it agreed to settle a lawsuit over the platform banning Trump following his attempted coup on Jan. 6, 2021. Trump has funneled other settlements, like a recent one with Meta, to a private foundation that’s ostensibly for building Trump’s presidential library.

The new White House ballroom will have about 90,000 square feet of space, according to the Trump regime, and there are reports that it will have capacity for anywhere from 650-999 people. The main building of the White House, if you exclude the East and West Wings, is just 55,000 square feet.

The American Institute of Architects urged for there to be a review of the project back in August, something that was completely ignored. Trump had previously insisted that he wouldn’t touch the existing White House, an assertion that we learned this week was a blatant lie.

“It won’t interfere with the current building. It won’t be. It’ll be near it but not touching it, and pays total respect to the existing building, which I’m the biggest fan of,” Trump said in July. “It’s my favorite. It’s my favorite place. I love it.”

The Treasury Department reportedly sent out an email to workers on Monday telling them not to share photos of the demolition. The Treasury building is right next to the White House, providing a front row seat to the destruction. And seeing it from that perspective is pretty shocking.

Yes, Trump’s destruction is disturbing because he’s destroying a public building with important history. But perhaps the most alarming thing about it all is how it symbolizes Trump’s lack of guardrails. If you had told someone a year ago, shortly before the presidential election in November 2024, that Trump would literally tear down the East Wing of the White House, they probably would’ve called you hysterical. And there aren’t many things that better symbolize America’s descent into fascism than the president just destroying the White House.

It seems clear now that nobody is going to step in and stop Trump if he wants to do something horrific. We’re seeing that in his murder of at least 34 people in boats around South America (he hit another one recently, according to a report Wednesday from CBS), and we’re seeing that in his deployment of secret police to U.S. cities. Courts may temporarily stand in his way, but Trump usually seems to get what he wants in the end.

And all of that is made worse because America’s largest companies are handing him millions of dollars to do it. Obviously, the laws and norms that Trump breaks on a daily basis have more or less become background noise to the national media. But it’s terrifying to think of what comes next. Nothing good, we know that much.