Donald Trump will charge top-paying guests $250,000 to attend a “Take Back Congress Candidate Forum” at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida this month – with proceeds going to his own Super Pac, rather than Republicans who will actually try to take back Congress.
Nor is the top price tag, which guarantees a private dinner and picture with Trump as well as VIP seating at the forum, necessarily the full cost for any couple who chooses to pay it. On Twitter on Wednesday, the New York Times reporter and Trump watcher Maggie Haberman said: “$250k lets you pay for a Mar-a-Lago guest room.”
Further down the menu, a couple paying $100,000 will get a photo with Trump and seating at a private dinner with endorsed candidates, with comments from Trump. For $50,000, guests will get the dinner and the Trump comments, but a picture only with “endorsed candidates”.
Price tags descend to $5,000 per couple, for attendance – but presumably less than primo seating – at the dinner with comments from Trump.
Emphasising Trump’s grip on the Republican party, Haberman pointed out that the former president “is spending almost no money on other Republicans so far. But he’s trying to raise for his group using congressional Republicans.”
The Mar-a-Lago event is notionally aimed at the midterm elections in November this year, when Republicans are favoured to take back the House and possibly the Senate.
A House takeover would see Trump well positioned to dictate to loyalists in party leadership, under Kevin McCarthy, the current minority leader.
They are expected to pursue aggressive investigations of the Biden administration including a revenge impeachment and even, should the former speaker and McCarthy adviser Newt Gingrich be believed, the attempted jailing of members of the committee currently investigating the January 6 insurrection.
Trump has his eyes on the 2024 presidential election, when he has strongly hinted he will run for the White House again.
At a rally in Texas last week, he promised to pardon January 6 rioters and urged supporters to stage huge protests against prosecutors in New York and Georgia investigating his business affairs and election subversion.
Trump has amassed a huge campaign war chest, of $122m.
In a statement this week, spokesman Taylor Budowuch said the former president had “built a political organisation that continues to capture and define the future of the Republican party.
“There is no question that the Make America Great Again (Maga!) wave is set to crash across the midterms and carry forward all the way through 2024.”
But Trump’s leadership committee, Save America, this week declared donations of just $205,000 to endorsed candidates in the second half of 2021 – $45,000 less than the tag for a top-priced ticket to the dinner and forum at Mar-a-Lago on 23 February (not including guest room).
CNN also reported that Trump’s Make America Great Again, Again! committee has spent around $1.7m on legal expenses as Trump fights investigations and congressional oversight. It has been widely reported that the Republican National Committee has helped to pay Trump’s legal bills.
Trump’s Super Pac includes among its officers Pam Bondi, a former attorney general of Florida to whom Trump once controversially donated; the former ambassador to Germany and controversial former acting director of national intelligence Ric Grenell; and Matt Whitaker, briefly and controversially acting attorney general in the Trump administration.
Kimberley Guilfoyle, Donald Trump Jr’s fiancee, is national finance chair.
