Trump team to raise millions for inauguration

palm beach — The scramble to shape his administration underway, President-elect Donald Trump’s team has simultaneously begun turning its attention to raising tens of millions of dollars for festivities related to his Washington inauguration.

Trump, who vowed during the campaign to “drain the swamp” of special interests corrupting Washington, has set $1 million donation limits for corporations and no limits for individual donors, according to an official on the Presidential Inaugural Committee. At the same time, Trump’s inaugural committee will not accept money from registered lobbyists, in line with his ban on hiring lobbyists for his nascent administration.

Barack Obama set stricter limits on donations for his first inauguration, in 2009, holding individual donors to $50,000 each and taking no money from corporations or labour unions, as well as none from lobbyists and some other groups. Plenty of corporate executives, though, gave individually and often at the maximum amount. And he opened the spigots for his 2013 inauguration, setting no limits on corporate or individual donations.

The new details came as Trump gathered with family at his Palm Beach estate Mar-a-Lago on Thanksgiving.

Trump’s team would not say exactly which family members joined him for dinner, although he arrived in Florida earlier in the week with his wife, Melania, and youngest son, 10-year-old Barron.

They dined with other Mar-aLago members from a Thanksgiving menu that featured “Mr Trump’s wedge salad” and main course offerings like oven-roasted turkey, leg of lamb, Chilean sea bass, and braised short ribs, according to a menu provided by a spokeswoman. The dessert options included pumpkin pie, toasted coconut cake, warm brownie pockets and hot apple crisp. —