Nvidia
BALLROOM 25m$ / APL, TRIED TO HIDE PRIMARY 10 26
SEE CORRUPT 3
CHINA XI DINNER?
AI? CHIPS CHINA ARABS
ALSO VC? AI MONEY LOOP?
---
-=-=
Trump's secret White House ballroom donor list has leaked, revealing that some of the $333 million comes from companies with lucrative government business interests and a $2.5 million pledge by the daughter of a banker who Trump later pardoned.
Internal fundraising records obtained by *The Washington Post* identify 67 donations over $10,000 and show at least $77 million came from donors who requested to stay anonymous. The report says the money was funneled through a nonprofit into a White House account controlled by the president.
One of the more controversial names on the list is Isabela Herrera, who is the daughter of international banker Julio Herrera Velutini. Her father was indicted in 2022 for allegedly helping finance a Puerto Rican governor's campaign in exchange for getting rid of a regulator investigating his bank.
Following Trump's 2024 presidential campaign victory, the Post’s expose revealed that Isabela Herrera gave $3.5 million to a Trump-aligned political committee. In September 2025, she also pledged $2.5 million to the ballroom fund and paid the first installment of $835,000 the following month.
Shortly after the donation, in August 2025, prosecutors had reduced her father's bribery case charges to a misdemeanor through a plea deal. Trump then pardoned him in January 2026, four months after his daughter's ballroom donor pledge.
The reporting does not establish a specific link to the ballroom donation influencing the pardon.
Apple and Nvidia each committed $25 million, as did billionaire Charles Ergen and the Adelson family. Nvidia sought anonymity for its contribution, even though it publicly supported the project.
Ergen put up his $25 million once federal regulators had closed an inquiry into his firm, the telecommunications company EchoStar. In the case of Rocket Companies, a subsidiary put forward a $10 million pledge some weeks after one of its big acquisitions was given the nod by a federal agency, per the documents. Rocket has said there is no link between the gift and the government’s sanction.
The Post found that about half of the funds raised come from companies or executives tied to federal contracts during Trump's second term.
White House spokesman Davis Ingle defended the donors and said the administration would hunt down the leakers. He described allegations of conflicts of interest as baseless and added that the contributors are “a wide array of great American companies and generous individuals.”
Despite Trump’s claim that he will also help fund the project, his name did not appear on the list.
The $333 million in pledges is far below his initial target of $400 million. Furthermore, the cost of building the larger East Wing project has soared to $600 million.
=-==
-=-=
WIKI
In October 2025, Reflection raised $2 billion in a funding round that valued the company at $8 billion.Nvidia Investors in the round included , Eric Schmidt, Citigroup, 1789 Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Sequoia Capital.[9]
---
AN 11 25
Rep. Eugene Vindman (D-VA) alluded to a secret tape of a call between President Donald Trump and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) in his comments on the House floor following a Tuesday Oval Office meeting between the two leaders. Vindman, in his remarks called for the release of the transcripts of the call.
" Trump has the responsibility to release the transcripts of his call with MBS. You will be shocked by what you hear," Vindman posted on X Wednesday.
This comes, reports The Daily Beast, "one day after the president insisted Mohammed bin Salman had nothing to do with Khashoggi’s killing, despite U.S. intelligence officials concluding he ordered the hit, a former Trump national security insider has claimed there is explosive evidence to the contrary."
Vindman was a National Security Council staffer under the first Trump administration, whose work included reviewing certain calls between the president and foreign leaders, The Daily Beast explains.
"Vindman claims that one phone call he reviewed undercut Trump’s astonishing defense of the Crown Prince in the Oval Office on Tuesday, when he said of Khashoggi’s murder by Saudi agents: 'Things happen,'" they report.
“During my tenure on Trump’s White House National Security Council staff, I reviewed many of Trump’s calls with foreign leaders. Of all the calls I reviewed, two stood out as the most problematic,” Vindman says.
"The first, we all know, was between President Trump and President [Volodymyr] Zelensky, which resulted in President Trump’s first impeachment. The second was between President Trump and Mohammed bin Salman," he adds.
“After the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, I reviewed a call between the president and the Saudi crown prince. The American people and the Khashoggi family deserve to know what was said on that call. If history is any guide, the receipts will be shocking," Vindman says.
Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist and Washington Post columnist, was murdered on October 2, 2018, by a team of Saudi government agents inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.
His remains have never been found. U.S. intelligence and a UN investigation concluded that bin Salman approved the operation to capture or kill Khashoggi, an assessment Saudi Arabia denies.
When taking questions from journalists following his meeting with bin Salman Tuesday, Trump berated ABC reporter Mary Bruce after she asked the Crown Prince about his involvement in the murder.
"You’re mentioning someone that was extremely controversial. A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about. Whether you like him or didn’t like him, things happen,” Trump said, adding that bin Salman "knew nothing about it and we can leave it at that."
"You don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking a question like that," Trump snapped.
Trump hosted bin Salman at a state dinner Tuesday night with guests including Elon Musk, soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo, Apple chief executive Tim Cook, Nvidia chief Jensen Huang and billionaire investor Bill Ackerman.
Trump has long-standing financial ties to Saudi Arabia, including past business dealings and recent deals involving his family and the Trump Organization.
These connections have recently drawn scrutiny due to potential conflicts of interest, especially as the Trump family continues to pursue new business opportunities in the kingdom.
Simultaneously, Trump's administration has deepened the US's strategic defense partnership with Saudi Arabia, recently designating it a major non-NATO ally.
Vindman isn't backing down on his calls for the transcript of the call in what some say may be yet another Trump cover-up.
"Speaking on CNN on Wednesday morning ahead of Trump and the crown prince attending a Saudi investment forum, Vindman said the call he reviewed was equally disturbing and shocking 'in light of the enrichment that the Trump family has received in the ensuing years,'" The Daily Beast reports.
---
---
SJMN AN 11 25
As recently as the 1980s, California was still a red state — from Bakersfield to San Diego to Simi Valley to Glendale. Orange County south of Los Angeles was a bastion of conservatism, and the state's famously conservative GOP governors included Ronald Reagan, George Deukmejian and Pete Wilson.
These days, California is a Democratic stronghold. Yet it still has pockets of conservatism, including Silicon Valley tech bros who have allied themselves with President Donald Trump. And according to Mercury News reporter Ethan Baron, that bond is showing no signs of weakening.
Baron, in an article published on November 2, reports, "Silicon Valley technology companies' cozy relationship with President Donald Trump appears to be deepening and bearing fruit, as firms and their leaders show fealty with gifts, policies, and public statements of support, and CEOs show their ability to influence the president on matters of politics and business. In recent weeks, the White House has confirmed that Google, Meta, Apple, and HP donated to the construction of Trump's new White House ballroom, with Santa Clara chip giant Nvidia's CEO, Jensen Huang, later saying he was 'delighted to be part of it'…. Google and YouTube parent Alphabet, in late September, agreed to pay $22 million toward the ballroom, in a settlement over a lawsuit by Trump over his suspension from YouTube after the January 6 insurrection."
Baron adds, "In similar cases, Meta agreed to pay $22 million toward Trump's presidential library, and X agreed to pay a settlement of about $10 million."
Jan English-Lueck, a San Jose State University anthropology professor known for studying the tech industry, told the Mercury News that Silicon Valley tech bros "need to protect the assets of their companies from the very real threats that they could face."
Nolan Higdon, a lecturer at Cal State East Bay lecturer, told the Mercury News, "When they need something, they give him things…. Trump has shown that unless you force him to stop or defeat him, he won’t stop. That begs the question with these tech execs: How much is he going to ask of them and how much are they going to give?"
*Read Ethan Baron's full Mercury News article at this link (subscription required).
---
---
an 8 25
New Republic reporter Timothy Noah said seven out of the ten top donors to the presidential race last year gave to Trump — and now their favored president is turning on them
“… The White House keep[ing] scorecards measuring the loyalty of 553 corporations to President Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful reconciliation bill demonstrates that the relationship between private wealth and this presidential administration isn’t as happy as you might think,” said Noah.
Trump is certainly making corporations happy by “chucking health care for the poor so it can cut taxes for the rich,” said Noah, and he’s also “dismantling regulatory agencies created to check corporate power.” Trump lowering taxes and deregulation “are what oligarchs desire more than anything else,” Noah adds, which is why “people like Elon Musk, Timothy Mellon, and Miriam Adelson supported Trump in 2024.”
READ MORE: 'Complete 180' and 'hot mic moment': Brutal CNN supercut reveals how Trump got played by Putin
However, “Trump’s pathological attachment to high tariffs, his never-ending threats to destabilize the Federal Reserve, and, increasingly, his demands that corporations bend the knee are all more than these plutocrats likely bargained for,” Noah said.
Even as Trump dismantles regulatory agencies legitimately created by Congress, he is introducing a new, “more chaotic regulatory regime dictated by his own whims,” said Noah. “Trump appears intent on ripping up business regulations" and “replacing them with himself.”
Consider the president allowing chip-maker Nvidia to sell AI chips to China. Trump had previously blocked those sales on national security grounds, but Noah said Trump changed his mind and allowed sales, providing Nvidia turned over 15 percent of the resultant revenues to the United States Treasury.
The Constitution does not grant a president the right to demand Invidia surrender a portion of its revenues from Chinese sales to the U.S. Treasury, said Noah, “Nor does the Constitution encourage a president to tell Goldman Sachs to fire its chief economistor Intel to fire its chief executive."
READ MORE: buckle up: Former Trump attorney Alina Habba may be in office for awhile
And then there’s the issue of Trump approving the merger of Nippon and U.S. Steel — provided the federal government retain a “golden share” that allows it to veto certain future actions affecting workers. Language in that agreement refers unnecessarily to Trump by name,which strikes Noah as “unsettlingly authoritarian.”
And now comes the news that Trump has loyalty “scorecards” on corporations that rank their support as “strong, moderate, or low” based on whether and how they supported passage of the Big Beautiful Bill through “social media posts, press releases, video testimonials, ads, [or] attendance at White House events.” The most obedient companies, said Noah, appear to be AT&T, Airlines for America, Cisco, Delta, DoorDash, the Steel Manufacturers Association, Uber and United.
“[I]f history is any guide, businesses don’t fight fascist corporatism; they just grope their way toward accommodating it,” writes Noah. “That’s certainly what we’re seeing thus far. Even when Trump bullies American oligarchs, they can’t see their way to judging him anything other than their guy.”
Read the full New Republic report at this link.
---