Unpleasant to see Trump setting a new high score record in terms of amount donated to his inauguration fund. Ne’er-do-wells have apparently funneled a record-breaking $170 million in his direction.
Statista summarises the recent history via this infographic:
This is a concept quite alien to me as a non-American, but I gather it funds such absolute necessities as having a massive party in the conventional rather than political sense.
From the Independent:
The donations are usually spent on events surrounding the inauguration, such as the oath of office ceremony, a parade, and several inaugural balls.
Lots, but not all, of it is coming from all those tech billionaire man-babies with their newfound adoration of the forthcoming president, along with their dear friends from the crypto-currency “business”. Disgusting is as disgusting does. Why would these supposedly successful, independent gods of capitalism burn their money at something so awful? Well, I guess it’s possible some of them genuinely like him (or his dancing cringe-tweeter frontman, Elon). Otherwise, I can only imagine it’s pure fear that if they don’t debase themselves both financially and publicly then maybe they won’t make quite as many billions of unnecessary dollars next year as they otherwise would.
Per Brendan Glavin of OpenSecrets:
“They don’t want to be on the president’s bad side,” said Glavin. “If he is upset with someone or upset with a company doing something he doesn’t like, he has no qualms about just coming right out and berating them in public.
“I think that really comes into play much more this time than in [the] past with different presidents,” he said. “I think past experience is dictating some of the actions in this.”
Or as Statista notes in their article accompanying the above chart:
In stark contrast to 2017, when Trump was met with scepticism, corporate America is playing nice with the president-elect ahead of his second term. Tech giants Amazon, Meta, Google and Microsoft as well numerous other companies and the CEOs of Apple and OpenAI have made large contribution to Trump’s inauguration fund in an attempt to curry favor or at least not get on the bad side of the man known for holding grudges and not shying away from favoritism.
A rich man’s selfishness knows no bounds; likewise his cowardice. I can’t remember who first came up with the following pearl of wisdom, but I stand behind it 100%: what even is the point of having f*** you money if you never say f*** you to anyone? Or at least to no-one where doing so might just make the world a generally more bearable place for far more people than it could possibly hurt.