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A new Federal Election Commission (FEC) filing shows that nearly 140 donors gave at least $1 million each to President Trump's inauguration fund for his second term in office.
Yahoo Finance Washington Correspondent Ben Werschkul joins Market Domination Overtime to break down the details of US President Trump's record-breaking inauguration fundraising, with Amazon (AMZN), Meta Platforms (META), and other Big Tech companies among the donors.
To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Market Domination Overtime here.
President Trump's fundraising during his second inauguration setting a record with a more complete accounting of the donations. Yahoo Finance's Ben Werschkul joins us now with the details. Hi, Ben.
Hey, Julie. Yes, so Trump raised $239 million as part of his return to office. This is the fundraising apparatus specifically around his actual inaugurations. It's separate from the campaign. And this was primarily driven by donors giving checks of a million dollars. We knew a lot of these. A lot of people publicly announced, a lot of companies publicly announced, but there was 140 donors in total that gave a million dollars or more. All told, this sort of shatters all previous records. The previous record for inauguration was $107 million, which Trump raised eight years ago for his first inauguration. This more than doubles that and surpasses the last three inaugurations, even if you put them together. Um, overall we saw about 650 donors here that really reflect the breadth, a kind of snapshot in time of Trump's business world support from his office. People on the list included from Sam Altman to Chevron, from Blackstone to BlackRock, from JP Morgan to crypto firms. The biggest giver interestingly was a poultry company called Pilgrims Pride Corporation, which gave $5 million, but it went all the way up and down. Um, and this filing also comes as business world support for Trump is being tempered a bit by the tariffs that you guys were talking about previously. You know, this is two names on the list that are interesting to me were Walmart and Target. Those are on the list of big givers. Those two companies are at the White House today to make a plea for Trump on tariffs.
Did any, I'm just curious, Ben, did any on the donor list, did they then join the administration?
For sure, there was quite a few. This list was individuals and companies, and on the individuals, there's a lot of Trump appointees on there. Scott Bessent gave $250,000. Cantor Fitzgerald, which was run by Howard Lutnick at the time, gave a little over $1 million at the time. And then the top three donors are all Trump appointees. They gave over $2 million each and they're things like the ambassador to the UK, the NASA administrator, things like that. So a lot of, which happens in previous, but it's on a whole new scale here for certain.
Ambassador to the UK. That sounds nice.
Sure, bad gig.
Thank you, Ben.
Thank you, appreciate it.
