The Republican National Committee spent more than $300,000 at businesses tied to Donald Trump and Donald Trump Jr. in March—including nearly $200,000 at Mar-a-Lago—showing that even as Trump promotes new revenue streams like crypto and Truth Social, his old assets continue generating political cash. Forbes staff writer Zach Everson joins Brittany Lewis on "Forbes Newsroom" to discuss.
Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacheverson/2025/05/14/trump-rnc-spending-mar-a-lago-crypto/
Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacheverson/2025/05/14/trump-rnc-spending-mar-a-lago-crypto/
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
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.