For a cool $1 million, you can have a candlelight dinner with the president-elect. That’s just one of the deals being offered by Donald Trump's transition team as part of its efforts to pay for his inauguration. But as our Washington D.C. Bureau reporter Alberto Pimienta explains, the hefty price tag is stirring controversy.
President-elect Donald Trump ran on a populist message. And while D.C. is getting ready for his inauguration, some are saying there won't be anything populist about it.
“This is going to be the most expensive, most lavish inauguration we've ever seen in history," says Craig Holman of Public Citizen.
Trump is reportedly trying to raise up to $75 million to pay for events, including galas, dinners and a concert. The amount would easily surpass the most expensive inauguration in history, which was President Barack Obama's in 2009, at a total of $53 million.
The Trump team is offering some pretty nice perks starting at $25,000. But if you have $1 million to spare, you can attend a candlelight dinner with Trump, plus eight seats on a platform for the presidential swearing-in ceremony, already under construction on the steps of the capitol.
“You can imagine the president would be very grateful to anyone who’s willing to put out a quarter million dollars or $1 million just to party with the president," says Holman. "This is buying immediate one-on-one access to the president."
There's discontent, but this is largely business as usual in D.C. Obama in 2009 didn’t take money from corporations, and individuals couldn’t give more than $50,000. In 2012, some of those restrictions went out the window. Corporations were allowed to dole out cash, and there were no limits for individual donations.
The only restriction Trump has is no money from registered lobbyists.
“When you take a look at the financing of previous inaugurations, you find that it's always the very wealthy who really are funding these inaugural activities," says Holman.
After promising to run an administration with no ties to big money, these six-figure donations and who decides to make them could contradict Trump’s message.