Incredibly unsurprising news: The people who paid millions of dollars to get into Trump’s lavish cryptocurrency dinner did so to directly influence the president’s financial policy in their favor.
“I will definitely not hesitate to share my perspective,” Vincent Liu, CIO of Taiwanese-based crypto firm Kronos Research, who bought enough of Trump’s crypto to attend the dinner Thursday night, told The New York Times. “It’s great to see the current direction that everything’s going.”
“It’s kind of a fund-raiser” for Mr. Trump, Korean crypto executive Sangrok Oh and another dinner attendee, told the Times. “And he’ll always be good to his sponsors.”
The dinner was held at Trump’s private golf club in northern Virginia on Thursday evening for the top 220 holders of the president’s meme coin cryptocurrency—after an auction that brought in $147,586,796.41. Protesters lined the entrance to the building, chanting “Shame, shame, shame!” and holding up signs while attendees arrived.
The event was promoted as the “most EXCLUSIVE INVITATION in the world,” according to an email. While the top 220 buyers got into the gala, the top 25 buyers received a much more personal, “ultra-exclusive private VIP reception” and “Special VIP Tour” with Trump, allowing them unfettered access to the president.
There were also some other high-profile attendees there (with much smaller pockets than the likes of Liu and Oh). Embattled former NBA player and reality TV star Lamar Odom posted a video on X of himself walking into the event while boos and jeers rained down on him from the crowd.
“I’m just about to pass through security and officially walk into the Trump Gala.
Honestly … I’m fired up. Think about it—what meme coin has ever done this?” Odom wrote on X, plugging his own meme coin, as well. “$ODOM isn’t just a token, it’s taking the stage at a presidential gala tonight!”
Trump’s cryptocurrency has been widely condemned as a blatant conflict of interest that completely blurs the lines between executive power and private business.
“Donald Trump’s dinner is an orgy of corruption. That’s what this is all about,” Senator Elizabeth Warren said that evening. “Donald Trump is using the presidency of the United States to make himself richer through crypto, and he’s doing it right out there in plain sight. He is signaling to anyone who wants to ask for a special favor—and is willing to pay for it—exactly how to do that.
Crypto-investors anonymously shelled out a total $148 million to purchase access to Donald Trump, but all they got was a low-quality steak.
Guests at Trump’s supposedly “intimate” gala for the 220 top buyers of the $TRUMP memecoin gathered at the Trump National Golf Club in Virginia Thursday night, hoping for a little facetime with the president. But they were left entirely unsatisfied.
Nicholas Pinto, a 25-year-old social media influencer who spent a whopping $360,000 on the president’s memecoin, told Fortune that he was distinctly underwhelmed by the affair.
Trump, rather than cozy up to his guests, gave an address to the room that was “pretty much like bullshit,” Pinto said. Most guests struggled to get any face time with the president, according to Pinto. The event’s host Caitlin Sinclair, an anchor at OANN, said that she didn’t even get a picture with the commander-in-chief, Pinto recalled.
Christoph Heuermann, who shared a series of photographs from the event on his Instagram page, wrote that Trump gave a brief 20-minute speech “and didn’t interact with the crowd other than enjoying being celebrated.”
Only the 25 biggest investors were given access to a small VIP reception with Trump. The rest were left with only their halibut or filet mignon.
During the banquet, Pinto texted Fortune to say that the food was “trash.”
“Walmart steak, man,” he wrote.
Guests reportedly included the coin’s top buyer Justin Sun, a Chinese billionaire who founded the crypto platform Tron, and former Los Angeles Laker Lamar Odom. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday that a list of attendees would not be made public because the president was attending the event off-the-clock—which doesn’t even begin to resolve the conflicts of interest issues at play for the president of the United States.
On average, each person had spent roughly $1.8 million on the president’s meme coin, in what many critics have called a blatant pay-for-access scheme.
Read more about the dinner:
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