Comcast Ballroom Donation: $7.5M for Trump’s Ballroom
The comcast ballroom donation to President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom project was $7.5 million, according to a report by Deadline based on a donor list obtained by The Washington Post.
The Post’s list reveals all the major contributors to the privately funded ballroom, including previously undisclosed donors — some of whom have benefited from regulatory decisions, government contracts, and in one case a pardon for a family member, according to the report.
The New Donor List
The largest commitments came from tech giants: Nvidia and Apple each pledged $25 million, as did the Adelson family, one of the Republican Party’s biggest donor dynasties, and Charles Ergen, the billionaire co-founder of Dish Network and EchoStar, who committed his $25 million in two installments and requested anonymity.
Other major donors include $22 million from funds tied to Trump’s settlement of his lawsuit against YouTube, the Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Foundation at $20.27 million, and $10 million each from Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Palantir Technologies, and a Rocket affiliate that also asked to stay anonymous. Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss contributed just over $5 million in bitcoin, while Amazon, Meta, Altria, BlackRock, Cisco, Coinbase, Caterpillar, Ripple, T-Mobile and ServiceNow were among the $5 million donors.
The ballroom — a privately funded project estimated to cost $300 million or more — is being built through donations to the Trust for the National Mall, which are tax-deductible.
Why Comcast’s Gift Stands Out
Comcast’s $7.5 million stands out because of who owns whom: the company is the parent of NBCUniversal, whose networks include NBC News and MSNBC, a network Trump has repeatedly attacked. Media columnist Oliver Darcy previously reported that an NBCUniversal executive defended Comcast’s multimillion-dollar donation to Trump’s project at a network gathering as a small price for the company to keep doing business.
The fresh disclosure lands amid a watchdog report by Public Citizen estimating that companies donating to the ballroom have collectively received more than $50 billion in new or expanded federal contracts in the six months since construction began.
Source: Deadline / The Washington Post