People Are Paying Millions to Dine With Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago

Business leaders are paying as much as $5 million to meet one-on-one with the president at his Florida compound, sources tell WIRED, while others are paying $1 million apiece to dine with him in a gro

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by Leah Feiger Louise Matsakis Jake Lahut Politics, archive.is

Guests are paying millions of dollars to dine and meet with President Donald Trump at special events held at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.

Business leaders can secure a one-on-one meeting with the president at Mar-a-Lago for $5 million, according to sources with direct knowledge of the meetings. At a so-called candlelight dinner held as recently as this past Saturday, prospective Mar-a-Lago guests were asked to spend $1 million to reserve a seat, according to an invitation obtained by WIRED.

“You are invited to a candlelight dinner featuring special guest President Donald J. Trump,” the invitation reads, under a “MAGA INC.” header. MAGA Inc., or Make America Great Again Inc., is a super PAC that supported Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. “Additional details provided upon RSVP. RSVPs will be accommodated on a first come, first serve basis. Space is very limited. $1,000,000 per person.”

Invitees were asked to RSVP to Meredith O’Rourke, who served as national finance director and senior adviser at Donald J. Trump for President 2024, a campaign committee, and who is the owner of The O’Rourke Group, which O’Rourke describes on her LinkedIn page as a “Republican political fundraiser.” Invitees were also directed to email Abby Mathis, the finance coordinator at MAGA Inc. Mathis was previously a staff assistant for Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama—a former Auburn University football coach—and also served as an intern at the White House office of the staff secretary, according to LegiStorm, a research organization that posts information on politicians and their staffers.

O’Rourke and Mathis did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did the White House.

The invitation specifically states that “Donald J. Trump is appearing at this event only as a featured speaker, and is not asking for funds or donations.” The event occurred at 7 pm on March 1 and was listed on the president’s official schedule as the “MAGA INC. Candlelight Finance Dinner.” This is the only event by that name on Trump’s official schedule since he took office.

Michael Solakiewicz, a pro-Trump digital creator, posted photographs of the event on Instagram. WIRED has also viewed photographs and videos of Elon Musk with his son X at Mar-a-Lago the following day during a charity event hosted by a group called Wine Women & Shoes that also featured Trump.

“It’s everyone else who missed the boat,” a Trumpworld source with knowledge of the meetings says, referring to latecomers to the Trump agenda. The source pointed specifically to the tech sector, where executives have scrambled to show fealty to the new administration. While X owner Elon Musk notably spent at least $260 million to elect Trump, other tech companies and executives collectively donated millions to Trump’s inauguration fund: Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Amazon executive chairman Jeff Bezos, Meta, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Uber, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, Apple CEO Tim Cook, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman all donated $1 million each.

The $5 million one-on-one meetings have become a “hot ticket” in the business community, says a source familiar with them.

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It’s unclear where the money is going and what it will be used for, but one source with direct knowledge of the dinners said “it’s all going to the library,” as in the presidential library that will ostensibly be built once Trump leaves office. MAGA Inc spent over $450 million to elect Trump in 2024, though Trump is not legally permitted to run for a third presidential term in 2028.

So-called candlelight dinners offering access to the president are known to have been held prior to Trump’s inauguration, but have not previously been reported to have occurred while he is in office. (Trump did, however, appear at a number of other fundraising events during his first term.) Most recently, The Washington Post reported that such candlelight dinners were held on December 19 and January 19—the night before Trump’s presidential inauguration—for the cost of $1 million per attendee. Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner attended the January 19 event. In the lead-up to Trump’s 2016 inauguration, donors who spent seven figures could secure eight tickets to a candlelight dinner, according to a Washington Post report at the time.

While previous second-term presidents have held fundraisers for their parties, the nature, timing, location, and price tag of Trump’s dinner all raise flags for experts.

“I can’t recall a sitting president in the first weeks of his administration asking for millions of dollars in fundraising,” says Don Moynihan, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan. “The concern is less about fundraising and more about access and influence … People hoping to get favorable treatment view it in their interest to donate money to Trump.”

“Part of what is worrying,” Moynihan adds, “is the lack of ethical guardrails in the current Trump administration, where there doesn’t seem to be a clear line between Trump’s businesses and the presidency.”

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