President Trump hosted dozens of business titans on Wednesday as he seeks to raise hundreds of millions of dollars to add a ballroom to the White House.
The guest list for the East Room dinner included representatives from almost two dozen corporations, including tech firms like Amazon, Apple, Meta, Google, Microsoft and Palantir, tobacco companies Altria and Reynolds American and telecom giants T-Mobile and Comcast, according to a list provided to CBS News by the White House.
Other notable guests included oil magnate Harold Hamm, sugar industrialist Pepe Fanjul and Tampa Bay Buccaneers owners Edward and Shari Glazer.
The cryptocurrency industry — which the Trump administration has sought closer ties to — was well-represented at the event, including Coinbase, Ripple, Tether and the Winklevoss twins, who founded the Gemini cryptocurrency exchange.
It’s not clear how many of Wednesday’s roughly 128 attendees have already opened their wallets for the $200 million ballroom project, but Mr. Trump thanked the people in the room for giving “tremendous amounts of money.” He said the cost has been “fully taken care of.”
“So many of you have been really, really generous,” he said. “A couple of you are sitting here, saying, ‘Sir, would $25 million be appropriate?’ I said, ‘I’ll take it.'”
The Trump administration announced plans to add a 90,000-square-foot ballroom to the East Wing over the summer, with construction breaking ground last month. The administration has called it a long-overdue expansion that will allow the White House to more easily host major functions like state dinners. The president said Wednesday the ballroom will have space for up to 999 guests and bulletproof glass windows on all sides.
The White House says the project will be financed entirely by private donors, rather than taxpayers, setting off a fundraising push, CBS News reported last month. Several companies had pledged $5 million or more, including Google — which agreed to donate $22 million last month in order to settle a lawsuit from Mr. Trump over his suspension from YouTube after Jan. 6, 2021 — Booz Allen Hamilton, Lockheed Martin, Palantir and NextEra Energy. The White House is working with the nonprofit Trust for the National Mall to raise money.
Donors are eligible for some form of “recognition,” possibly in the form of having their names etched in brick or stone, sources told CBS News last month.
The fundraising campaign has drawn some criticism.
“Do they think we’re dumb enough to believe they’re giving their money away for free?” asked Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts in an X post Wednesday.
The ballroom is part of a litany of renovation projects pursued by Mr. Trump since returning to the White House earlier this year. He installed massive new flagpoles on the grounds, turned the Rose Garden into a patio, redecorated the Oval Office with gold-colored furnishings and installed a “Presidential Walk of Fame” with photos of his predecessors — except former President Joe Biden, who is represented by an image of an autopen.
And in recent days, he has teased building a triumphal arch in Virginia, across the Potomac River from the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.
Mr. Trump showed a model of the arch to Wednesday’s dinner guests and displayed it during an Oval Office event earlier in the day. Asked by CBS News senior White House correspondent Ed O’Keefe who the arch is for, the president responded: “Me.”
“Going to be beautiful,” he said.
