Here are just some of the 24 corporations that have already “donated” money for the gaudy ballroom Donald Trump is erecting where the East Wing of the White House stood for 123 years until he had it demolished last month:

Altria (a.k.a. Philip Morris)
Amazon
Apple
Booz Allen Hamilton
Comcast
Google
Lockheed Martin
Meta (a.k.a. Facebook)
Microsoft
Palantir Technologies

Beyond the 24 known Autocrat Cafeteria sponsors, there may well be others whose monetary surrender to Trump has not yet been disclosed or uncovered.

And while the companies and the administration are keeping the amounts of the funding secret, one thing we do know is that this ballroom bonanza amounts to an egregious conflict of interest for each and every one of these companies.

As a new Public Citizen report reveals:

• Many of these companies have massive contracts with the federal government — a truly staggering $279 billion (with a ‘b’) combined just since 2021, in fact.

• Many of these companies either are or were (until the regime dropped their cases) facing federal enforcement actions for violating various regulations, including numerous antitrust and labor rights violations.

• Collectively, these companies spent $960 million on lobbying and political contributions during just the most recent election cycle alone.

• These companies have a stunningly wide array of interests before the federal government — from taxation to trade policy, battlefield domain awareness to telephone poles, consumer privacy to product liability rules, appropriations to cybersecurity, and much more.

On top of that, these companies are engaged in an utterly embarrassing spectacle of prostrating themselves before a wannabe dictator.

As one of us (Robert) told the national media on Monday:

“These giant corporations aren’t funding the Trump ballroom debacle out of a sense of civic pride. They have massive interests before the federal government and they undoubtedly hope to curry favor with, and receive favorable treatment from, the Trump administration. Millions to fund Trump’s architectural whims are nothing compared to the billions at stake in procurement, regulatory, and enforcement decisions.”

Join Public Citizen in a message to the corporations that are funding Trump’s ballroom:

Authoritarians always demand tribute payments from those they have subjugated. By funding Donald Trump’s gilded ballroom, you have debased yourselves and played into Trump’s dictatorial ambitions. You should be embarrassed. And you should take back whatever you have “donated” to this dining hall debacle.

Click to add your name now.

Thanks for taking action.

For progress,

- Robert Weissman & Lisa Gilbert, Co-Presidents of Public Citizen
 
 
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