00:00Hi, everybody. I'm Brittany Lewis, a breaking news reporter here at Forbes. Joining me now
00:07is my Forbes colleague, staff writer Zach Everson. Zach, thanks so much for joining me.
00:12My pleasure as always, Brittany.
00:14You have new reporting on Trump businesses and the money that they're hauling in. And
00:20your headline states that they have hauled in $317,000 from the RNC in March. How exactly
00:29did they do this? What businesses made the most? Give us the details.
00:33So while you're correct, and it is new reporting, it's also kind of old reporting because this has
00:38been going on for years. So what happened was, you know, there's been so much attention paid
00:42recently to Trump's crypto venture with the decentralized finance platform World Liberty
00:47and its interactions with Abu Dhabi in Pakistan. There's the meme coin that you're basically
00:53buying nothing and giving Trump a cut of the money. And there's also Trump Media, which is,
00:58you know, has true social, sells ads, is a public market. Those are all really new ways
01:05that you can get money to Trump this term that weren't available last term. So I decided to go
01:09back and look at, okay, how are the old ones working? How are those old revenue streams working?
01:13And I just took a quick look at the, you know, payments the RNC made in March because the RNC had
01:19been one of Trump's best customers during his first term. And sure enough, they're continuing.
01:23You know, we're not seeing the money that we're seeing from the digital ventures. But you know,
01:28$317,000 worth of business in a month is pretty solid.
01:34Yeah, it seems like the old revenue streams are working just fine. So where exactly is the RNC
01:40spending this money? And how much? I mean, what does that price tag look like? Aside from the 317? So
01:46break it down.
01:47Right, right, right. So $195,000 of it went to Mar-a-Lago in the course of a few expenditures.
01:51And Mar-a-Lago looks like it has overtaken Trump's old DC hotel as the hub of the MAGAverse.
02:00You know, we used to see those expenditures showing up here in DC. He sold the hotel shortly
02:04after leaving office. And, you know, interestingly, one of the things they'd argued about the hotel
02:10was that, oh, people aren't going because it's the president's. They're going because it's a
02:13wonderful hotel. It's convenient. You know, the interesting thing is now they're going to Florida.
02:20Florida is not nearly as convenient as Washington DC is, but it's still raking in money. So, you know,
02:28it kind of looking back at that argument, which didn't really hold water in the first place,
02:31it still doesn't. Doral, his Miami golf course, took in $85,000 from the RNC. And then Winning Team
02:39Publishing, which is a book publishing company co-founded by Donald Trump Jr., brought in $35,000.
02:46I know that Mar-a-Lago, geographically speaking, is in a tougher spot than the Trump DC hotel was.
02:54DC, just down the street from the White House. Mar-a-Lago, you have to hop on a plane and go
02:58down to Florida. Was Mar-a-Lago seeing this volume of political spending when President Trump wasn't in
03:04the White House, either when Biden was those four years or pre-2015, when President Trump didn't
03:10officially yet announce that he was running for president. Interestingly, Mar-a-Lago somehow,
03:16despite staying in the same geographic location, became a lot more convenient for politicians
03:20after Trump became the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party. Since 2016, it's brought in
03:27$5.4 million, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission. Before that, $55,000. So in
03:35all the years before Trump got involved in politics, it made about a sixth of what it made just last
03:40month, just from the RNC. So then, I mean, there has to be the question of, hmm, I wonder why that's
03:47happening. And always you and I talk about ethical concerns when it comes to spending money on Trump's
03:53businesses and the people who are doing it. And you talked to someone from a watchdog group.
03:59What did they say? What concerns do they have?
04:03You know, pointing out, while it's not on the same dollar level as what you're seeing from his
04:08new ventures, you know, every dollar counts with Donald Trump, is what Jordan Leibovitz-Crew told me.
04:14And that, you know, when it comes to Trump, it's not just about the dollar figure, but it's also about
04:18kissing the ring. And we're seeing a lot of people, a lot of committees, the RNC notably, going down to
04:24Mar-a-Lago and, you know, making that pilgrimage and giving him some money.
04:30And I know you touched on that his new revenue streams are seeing a lot of money being spent,
04:37whether it be in the crypto space, whether it be in the media space. But these old revenue streams,
04:42he's profiting from politics in term one. Term two, is it at a similar level that we saw term one?
04:51We really haven't seen enough data yet to be able to make that comparison. You know,
04:54we've only got a few months and the D.C. hotel is no longer. And that was the big moneymaker there.
05:01So it'll be interesting to see as we go through the course of a year or even a whole campaign cycle,
05:05because you are seeing a regular stampede of Republican politicians going down to Mar-a-Lago
05:11to hold campaign fundraisers. So as the midterms heat up, I think we'll get a better read of that.
05:18And what do you think this says really about the RNC's relationship with President Trump?
05:26I mean, it's his party. He's been in charge of the party since 2016. You know, he's made it in his own
05:32image. His daughter-in-law at one point was the co-chairman of the RNC. He, you know, got rid of
05:37the coach that he didn't like previously, Ronan McDaniel. So, you know, it's his party.
05:46Well, Zach, per usual, I love our conversations. Thanks for joining me. And until next time.
05:54Thanks for having me.
06:02Thanks for having me.
Comments