It's Inauguration Day! Welcome To The Grifters Ball
Legalized bribery is still bribery — and there is no other way to describe the celebration that marks the second presidential inauguration of Donald Trump.
With the menacing manner of a mob boss, Trump has extorted million-dollar contributions from dozens of corporations that fear federal retribution against their shareholders or management (as in the case of Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg, who coughed up his million after Trump literally threatened him with "life in prison" not so long ago).
No doubt many of the corporate and billionaire donors are keen to prove their loyalty to a new administration that promises to uphold their interests. They know better than to worry about Republican proclamations that their party now represents "working class" Americans. Nobody who has glanced at Project 2025 or read Elon Musk's posts could harbor any such illusions — and surely the inaugural donors from outfits such as General Motors, the pharmaceutical lobby, Pratt Industries, Uber, Amazon and Microsoft do not.Many of the corporations currently greasing Trump withheld donations from his 2016 festivities, apparently repelled by the racism, misogyny and propensity for violence he had flaunted during the campaign. Some combination of fear and greed has overcome any such scruples this year.
Ralph Nader's Public Citizen, a nonprofit that monitors corporate influence, is tracking the payments of tribute, and even its jaded staffers are shocked by the Trump inaugural's brazen style. Said Craig Holman, a government ethics expert at the Nader group: "The record-breaking cesspool of special interest financing for the Trump-Vance Inaugural Committee raises serious concerns about the ability of corporations and wealthy special interests to purchase influence over public policy or lucrative government contracts." Remember last spring when Trump told oil executives that they could have whatever they want, so long as they raised a billion dollars? He just appointed one of them, a fracking magnate and climate denier named Chris Wright, to take over the Department of Energy.
Estimates of the amount that the presidential inauguration committee will collect from both eager and reluctant donors range up to $200 million, a record sum that has prompted boasting from Trump and his minions. Impressive as it is, the inaugural hoard only represents a down payment on what portends to be four years of unprecedented and gluttonous corruption.
If you wonder why Trump needs $200 million for this little event, so does everyone who ever ran a prior inauguration. Due to frigid weather in Washington, the 47th president will take the oath of office indoors at a ceremony paid for by the taxpayers. Then the Trump-Vance committee will host only three inaugural balls — a tiny schedule compared with the number of balls held by his predecessors — plus a few events at his Trump National Golf Club, miles from the capital.
In other words, they're spending almost none of that big haul.
Yet while the actual expense of parties and fireworks will be nominal, the opportunities for grift are vast. As in so many instances during Trump's first presidency, those golf club events are siphoning big money from the inaugural fund into his business accounts. The Trumps ran a similar scam eight years ago, when the 2016 inaugural committee inked massively overpriced contracts for rooms and services purchased from the Trump International Hotel in Washington.
That pattern continued during his administration, with big profits booked from taxpayers footing the bills at Trump resorts for Secret Service agents protecting the president and members of his family.
Where will all the money go this time? In 2017, the Trump inaugural raised $107 million, a total far in excess of what the committee spent on its events. The committee — whose top staff included notorious crooks like Rick Gates and Elliot Broidy — never presented any accounting of its expenditures, let alone an audit. Tens of millions of dollars simply disappeared.
The official story is that funds not spent on this week's festivities will be transferred to the newly formed Donald J. Trump Presidential Library Fund Inc. — ostensibly to establish a repository and museum memorializing his presidency.
Maybe that will happen someday. But the sordid history of the Trump Foundation, ordered to shut down after the New York state attorney general proved its myriad abuses, showed that the Trumps are familiar with every trick for looting a nonprofit. Nobody audits the inaugural committees, which are not required to disclose their spending. The likelihood is that most or all of the tainted inaugural lucre will wind up somehow in their pockets.
Day One won't see a peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia, a drop in grocery prices, or anything else that Trump promised during his campaign. The customary grifting will resume promptly, however, as soon as he takes his hand off the Bible. In fact, it has already begun.
Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund. His latest book is The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism.
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