Apple has committed $25 million to President Donald Trump’s planned White House ballroom project, matching the contribution from Nvidia as one of the largest gifts disclosed so far, according to a Washington Post report on Thursday.
The Post’s reporting, based on internal fundraising records, shows Apple and Nvidia each at the top of the donor list at $25 million. The Adelson family, longtime major Republican supporters, and billionaire Charles Ergen, co-founder and chairman of Dish Network, each committed the same amount. The documents indicate roughly $333 million in private donations for the project overall.
The White House has declined to release detailed donor information. Spokesman Davis Ingle described the contributors as representing “a wide array of great American companies.” Trump has previously said he and wealthy donors would cover the estimated $400 million cost of the ballroom itself. He later sought additional congressional funding for an underground bunker and security features to harden the facility.
Trump has described the overall project as including a six-story subterranean complex beneath the ballroom, with a military hospital, research facilities, bomb shelters, and other emergency and military installations. He has also said the roof would serve as a drone base or port with capacity for large numbers of drones, designed both to be drone-proof and to support defensive operations protecting Washington. Features he has outlined include hardened steel construction, missile-resistant elements, and blast-proof glass. The president has also described the ballroom itself as essentially a “shed” covering the more complex military and emergency facilities below. The White House has provided limited further details on these aspects, as many of them are classified.
MacDailyNews Note: Apple’s $25 million gift places the Cupertino-based company among the most prominent contributors to the privately funded ballroom portion of the project.
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Let the Trump taint licking continue.
Will the Democrats and the Left be excluded from using the Ballroom when they are in power, or will they be their typical hypocritical self, despite all their whining and complaining of cost, size, destruction of White House etc., be whooping it up with their Hollywood and News Media sycophants in said facility?
tear it down
I have little to say about the new ballroom, but WHY in the World is the CEO of one of the World’s wealthiest companies “chipping-in” for the build?
The White House Ballroom construction is hitting up corporations to donate, so taxpayer money won’t be needed and thus have the construction privately funded. And when Apple and others who donated come back looking for a favor, say EU’s staunch regulations or fines or whatever, as an example, they can always remind the government of their past generosity.
It is an opportunity for citizens (& corporations) to show that they care about the Office of the President of the United States. This will have a lasting impact beyond President Trump’s term in office.
My parents contributed a fair amount of money to build a church in the Houston area. They did it because of their faith, and they viewed it as an obligation that was about more than just themselves. I think of the ballroom improvement in the same way.
I am glad to see money for this being contributed by interests outside the government; I recognize that some of them may not be sincere, but I can still appreciate it as a gift to the United States.
Indi’s donating is NOTHING like a corporation using stockholder’s funds to donate.
Conflation much?
Call it whatever you like, bribery by any other name is still bribery.
Stuff like this is kind of why my current computer is a Linux laptop. I still have an iPhone of course, but there is only so corporate bootlicking that I can handle before escaping to the world of open-source. The nerds that compile open-source software are not exactly the types to bootlick the current corrupt government. The open-source movement was actually a result of the California counterculture of the 1960s even. I’ll stick with the penguin until Apple starts to shape up.