252

US business leaders are spending big on Donald Trump’s second inaugural fund, which is predicted to exceed even the record-setting $107m raised in 2017.

The donations, which are not restricted by campaign finance laws, come as industries and business leaders seek to curry favor with the incoming administration after the president-elect decisively won a second, non-consecutive term in November.

Some of the planned donations reportedly include $1m each from Jeff Bezos’s Amazon, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Facebook parent company Meta, led by Mark Zuckerberg.

Hedge-fund manager Ken Griffin has said he plans to donate $1m, Bloomberg reported; Uber and its CEO Dara Khosrowshahi are reported to be chipping in $1m each; and Toyota, Ford and General Motors are each peeling off $1m. Ford is also reportedly coupling its donation with a fleet of vehicles.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 0 points 1 day ago

They donate to every inauguration. Apparently that's traditional. Expecting billionaires to show spine here is to expect them to go against their financial interests. They wouldn't be billionaires of they were willing to do that.

[-] Snapz@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago

Yes. But your statement seeks to normalize trump as any other president. He is not.

The point isn't that they've given before, it's that they are giving to him, now, with all of his clearly stated intent to harm people and American democracy.

Meta is least surprising, they hired one of the actual authors of Project 2025 and he still works there today AFAIK.

[-] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 2 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

I think it's useful for people to consider that he's not that out of the ordinary. Instead he's just blatantly transparent, whereas others have been more covert. E.g. Reagan did receive a handbook from the Heritage Foundation. He implemented 60% of it within a year. That's the same Heritage Foundation that produced Project 2025. I think understanding that could help people look for solutions that stop perpetuating the ordinary that's gotten us to where we are today. And yes, of course there are differences between any two candidates or presidents, some significant in the way they affect the majority. Placed on a timeline however, they seem more like slight changes on the trend line towards a strong oligarchy.

[-] DrunkEngineer@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

Indeed, here are some of the donors for the Obama inauguration: https://www.opensecrets.org/obama/inaug.php

this post was submitted on 25 Dec 2024
252 points (98.1% liked)

News

23655 readers
3365 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS