A Thursday report in The Wall Street Journal revealed new details on President Donald Trump’s attempts to shake down major corporate donors to fund his assorted vanity projects, including the construction of his luxury White House ballroom and his presidential library.
According to the Journal, Trump employs a fundraiser named Meredith O’Rourke whose job is to hound corporations into sending money to the president’s projects.
O’Rourke’s work is so important to the president, the Journal added, that he asks her for updates on her progress in raking in corporate cash almost nightly.
“Trump asks O’Rourke which companies and donors have cut checks and which haven’t, and for how much,” the Journal reported. “He often asks her to make much larger financial requests than she was planning—for some donors the ask is $5 million, for others it is $50 million. And the president gives her names to call, often including people who have recently met with him, according to people with knowledge of the calls.”
The Journal estimated that Trump has raised more than $800 million from corporate donors throughout his second term, and the newspaper found that it appeared to be entirely legal.
“No laws prohibit presidents from raising unlimited sums of money for nonprofits, like the ones used for the ballroom and his presidential library, his super PAC, or political issue committees,” the Journal explained. “For most of these types of transactions, public disclosure of donors isn’t required and reporting on spending is infrequent.”
Regardless of technical legality, many critics called the president’s actions deeply corrupt, especially since many of the companies being shaken down for cash have business before the federal government.
“Donald Trump is the most corrupt president in our nation’s history,” wrote Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) in reaction to the Journal’s report.
Adam Serwer, staff writer at The Atlantic, joked that Trump technically “can’t be bought” because “he is subscription based.”
“You have to keep bribing him forever,” Serwer quipped.
Eric Rauchway, historian at the University of California, Davis, noted the Journal’s reporting that O’Rourke will sometimes try to persuade corporate donors by telling them that “the boss wants this money,” which he likened to a mafia extortion scheme.
“Guys, ‘the boss wants this money’ is not ‘fundraising,’” wrote Rauchway, “it’s a Piranha Brothers operation.”
Scott Horton, contributing editor at Harper’s, made a similar analogy.
“I am trying to see how this operation differs from a classic organized crime protection racket,” Horton wrote. “I see little distinction.”
Amanda Carpenter, writer and editor at Protect Democracy, argued that Trump wasn’t the only party meriting criticism here, as the corporations who give in to his demands deserve blame as well.
“If a politician is selling access and favors, CEOs aren’t off the hook,” she observed. “They don’t get to just pay to play. It’s not a free pass to bribe and extort and corrupt our economy. There are many legal tools to track that on the private side and hold them account for their end of these dirty deals.”