Donald Trump raised nearly $240M for his inauguration

US President Donald Trump’s inaugural committee collected a staggering $239 million for the festivities surrounding his swearing-in this year — with some of the nation’s wealthiest people and biggest companies writing large checks as they sought to ingratiate themselves with the Republican ahead of his return to the White House, Report informs via CNN.

The total haul announced Sunday by the committee swamped the then-record $107 million Trump raised for his first inauguration in 2017 and is four times the nearly $62 million collected by his immediate predecessor, Joe Biden, for his pared-down swearing-in during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021.

The single-largest donor to Trump’s committee was Colorado-based poultry company Pilgrim’s Pride, which contributed $5 million, Sunday’s night’s filing with the Federal Election Commission shows. Cryptocurrency firm Ripple Labs gave nearly $4.9 million, while another crypto interest, trading app Robinhood, donated $2 million.

The data shows that some of the most generous givers have secured roles in the Trump administration, including Arkansas financier Warren Stephens, Trump’s pick to serve as US ambassador to the United Kingdom. He donated $4 million, according to the filing. Jared Isaacman, a billionaire businessman awaiting Senate confirmation to head NASA, gave $2 million — as did Melissa Argyros, Trump’s pick as US envoy to Latvia.

Linda McMahon, who serves as Trump’s education secretary, donated $1 million. His Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, donated $250,000.

Inaugural committees are barred from accepting foreign contributions, but there are no legal limits on the size of donations that these nonprofit committees can receive. In the run-up to the event, major corporations announced they were showering the committee with seven-figure checks. And the heads of some of this year’s big inaugural corporate donors — including Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos — scored prime seats at Trump’s January 20 swearing-in inside the Capitol Rotunda. Each company donated $1 million to the committee.

The Trump Vance Inaugural Committee stated taking in nearly $245.3 million and refunding a little more than $6 million in donations. In all, about 60% of the committee’s money came from more than 130 seven-figure donations, underscoring the outsize role of deep-pocketed interests in underwriting the glitzy events that swirl around inaugurations.

Other notable figures who made personal $1 million donations to the Trump committee included OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, hedge fund honcho Paul Singer and Miriam Adelson, a longtime Trump political benefactor and the widow of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson.

The chipmaker Nvidia, hit with export restrictions to China amid an escalating trade war, gave $1 million.

Steve Kerrigan, who oversaw both of President Barack Obama’s inaugural committees and helped produced Biden’s 2021 event, told CNN the kind of money Trump has raised far exceeds what’s needed to underwrite inaugural events.