Here's the gala dining room that Trump meme coin holders spent millions to attend
— Drew Harwell (@drewharwell.com) May 22, 2025 at 6:25 PM
Hand to Goddess, I tried to post about this in advance, but the sheer scope of the fiscal flimflamery and the brazen depth of the corruption were beyond my descriptive capabilities. Here’s Wired‘s mid-May report: “A VIP Seat at Donald Trump’s Crypto Dinner Cost at Least $2 Million”:
Ten days from now, 220 crypto investors will sit down to a lavish three-course dinner and enjoy “stunning views of the Potomac river” with US president Donald Trump at his 600-acre golf club in Washington, DC. To earn an invitation, all they had to do was buy a boatload of the president’s personal crypto coin…
And here’s the CNN report of last night’s “gala”:
More than 200 wealthy crypto bros gathered for a private event at President Donald Trump’s golf club just outside Washington, DC, on Thursday night — dining on filet mignon and halibut while the president stood at a podium regaling them with tales of his 2024 victory.
The black-tie dinner was a special reward for the top 220 holders of the president’s personal $TRUMP meme coin, with those in the room having contributed millions in investment in his crypto token. The 25 biggest investors got an even more exclusive privilege — access to a small VIP reception with the president. Media reports estimate the purchases and associated fees of the coin have generated an estimated hundreds of millions in fees for its issuer.
Guests were required to complete a background check to attend the evening’s festivities, according to a copy of the invitation viewed by CNN. The invite told them not to arrive before 5:30 p.m., with the dinner starting at 7 p.m…
The dinner, which was billed by the White House as an event Trump was attending in his personal capacity, caused a flurry of concern back in Washington, with critics’ chief concern being that it presented foreigners with the opportunity to purchase access to the president. The Constitution bans a president from receiving foreign gifts without Congressional consent…
Pretty intense protests outside the Trump meme coin dinner, which you can see / hear in this video from former NBA player turned meme coin guy Lamar Odom
— Drew Harwell (@drewharwell.com) May 22, 2025 at 6:35 PM
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt pushed back heavily on those claims during a press briefing hours before the dinner, telling reporters it was “absurd for anyone to insinuate that this president is profiting off of the presidency.”
Justin Sun, a Chinese-born crypto mogul who, until recently, was facing civil fraud charges in the United States, was not only among those in attendance — but was lauded as the top holder of Trump’s meme coin.
According to a video Sun posted to Instagram, his investment amounted to 1,319,904.266 in “time weighted $TRUMP holdings,” which are currently valued at about $18 million…
[One attendee] claimed Trump gave a 20-minute speech “and didn’t interact with the crowd other than enjoying being celebrated,” according to his post. “Even VIP token holders (I know some) couldn’t speak or even shake hands with the president. It was still well worth it to experience the president live and watch his mightily secured arrival and departure.” …Video from Chinese crypto billionaire (and Trump coin holder) Justin Sun shows Trump getting off Marine One helicopter at his golf club.
White House keeps saying this is not a White House event – it's president's "personal time" – and yet government aircraft are being flown at taxpayer expense— Drew Harwell (@drewharwell.com) May 22, 2025 at 8:08 PM
Despite many of the guests publicly sharing about their attendance online, a key question moving forward is whether the White House will share a comprehensive list of who was present for the event.
Because crypto is anonymous by design, the identities of the top investors aren’t easy to pin down.
When CNN asked the White House whether a gala guest list would be released, a spokesperson replied with a statement saying: “President Trump only acts in the best interests of the American public — which is why they overwhelmingly re-elected him to this office, despite years of lies and false accusations against him and his businesses from the fake news media.”
Standing at a podium before the crowd, Trump recounted his 2024 presidential victory over former President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris…
While Trump delivered remarks, guests enjoyed a meal from a menu titled “Donald J Trump $TRUMP Gala Dinner.”
The first course featured a “Trump Organic Field Green Salad,” with the second including filet mignon finished with a demi glaze sauce or pan seared halibut finished with citrus reduction sauce, both served with garlic mashed potatoes and a vegetable medley, according to copies of the menu viewed by CNN.
For dessert, guests enjoyed a warm lava cake, “with valrhona chocolate, crispy chocolate pearls and a caramel sauce.”
Beside the tables, guests posed next to sign of Trump holding up his fist with words “Fight, Fight, Fight” printed over him. The sign, which was displayed in a printed golden frame, included a link to a site where the public can purchase more $TRUMP coins: GetTrumpMemes.com.
Bonus read: Cryptocurrency reporter/sceptic Molly White, at her Citatation Needed, with a thorough pre-event exploration — “Meet Trump’s memecoin dinner guests”:
…The $TRUMP dinner represents the latest in a series of crypto ventures that have enriched Trump and his family while creating unprecedented conflicts of interest, as the president simultaneously shapes crypto policy and intervenes in regulatory actions. Even prior to its transformation into a dinner invitation, ethics watchdogs and legislators alike sounded the alarm over the memecoin as “the single worst conflict of interest in the modern history of the presidency”. Now, even some of Trump’s biggest allies are getting uncomfortable, with Republican Cynthia Lummis admitting the dinner “gives [her] pause”. Democrat Jon Ossoff, speaking at a town hall, commented that “granting audiences to people who buy his memecoin” is “no question … an impeachable offense.”
trollhattan
Do VIPs at a Trump even get to sit as far away from Trump as possible?
Also, is there any way not to see $TRUMP and jump straight to STRUMPET?
Parfigliano
The piece of shit just keeps sinking lower and lower. There is no bottom.
SpaceUnit
Anyone
willingeager to throw money at this fool deserves to lose it.Dorothy A. Winsor
So do we call the dinner attendees $trumpets?
Old School
RedDirtGirl
There was a link in an earlier thread to an article in Fortune Magazine where an attendee said the steak tasted like it had come from Walmart.
BlueGuitarist
Gross racist, anti-Semitic gang of crypto nazis:
https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/crew-investigations/50-trump-crypto-dinner-invitees-hold-tokens-linked-to-alt-right-symbols-and-racist-language/
Suzanne
The jokes are writing themselves in my mind. None of them are appropriate.
NotMax
No one is insinuating, they’re stating it as a foregone conclusion loud and clear.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Parfigliano:
With Trump and basically the modern GOP, no matter how low the bar is set, he or they will find a way to slither under it.
Glory b
Once again, with feeling:
https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2022/05/why-this-computer-scientist-says-all-cryptocurrency-should-die-in-a-fire
Gloria DryGarden
@Dorothy A. Winsor: yes, we surely shall call them thusly. Mm-hmm.
meanwhile, since it was private, I trust the criminality and impeachable qualities will be shaped into a pleasant lawsuit.. I won’t care if they serve it up without citrus reduction or organic salad. Just do it..
NotMax
@Old School
“The self-serve boxes of wine on the sideboard were a strange touch.”
//
SpaceUnit
It would have been the perfect touch if trump hadn’t even bothered to show up. They should have placed a mock-up trump dummy at the podium and played a tape recording of him rambling.
Major Major Major Major
I’ll admit that it’s funny how much he despises his own marks.
Gloria DryGarden
@Old School: you get who you paid for it.
is he even as bougie as Walmart? Tractor supply level, maybe…
zhena gogolia
@Major Major Major Major: This has been clear from the day he came down the escalator.
Major Major Major Major
@zhena gogolia: And they just keep coming!
Shakti
On a positive note the Sysco Aramark hockey puck meat and vegetables boiled within an inch of liquidity probably means the attendees won’t get food borne illness. But wouldn’t it be a kick in the pants if the deregulated and defunded FDA meant that happened anyways?
They did serve a salad.
SpaceUnit
@zhena gogolia:
It’s been an escalator with no bottom.
JoyceH
I really roll my eyes at the pretentiousness of “three course meal”, which these days merely means a salad, an entree, and a piece of cake. People should read up on dinner parties in the Regency and Victorian eras to learn what genuinely lavish dining was.
The fact that the food sucked and these fools didn’t even get the “access” they thought they were buying is just the Chef’s Kiss of the whole event.
Westyny
Justin Sun looks like an AI creation come to real life.
sab
@JoyceH:He is just a con man and all of his supporters are marks. The rest of us are just insignificant collateral damage.
Shakti
This inspires incredibly tasteless cascading shaggy dog stories about a swank restaurant in an airplane. Should I be afraid to say it for reasons other than it needs better timing?
Shakti
@Westyny: Oh shit, that’s going to be the blockbuster remake of Disney’s Pinocchio
once they crush all opposition into the ground/AI wins ending copyrights and patents once and for all.JoyceH
@sab: But the Money Guys usually do get something in return for their bribes. The fact that he’s not even listening to them for a few minutes so they could feel like maybe they influenced policy tells me that his arrogance grows as his dementia deepens. But I do love that these crypto clowns got stiffed. Maybe they should have asked Trump U students about the education they received.
Old School
Elizabelle
@Major Major Major Major:
That is true.
And.
I wish that Karoline Leavitt would swallow her tongue. She is such a fucking liar. A psychopath, really. She is a spokesperson for criminals and psychopaths.
$Trumpers on parade.
Jay
Justin Sun got exactly what he paid for by joining the board of DJTdiot’s crypto and buying millions of dollars in DJTdiot’s memecoins.
DJTdiot’s SEC dropped the fraud case against him and his companies, Tron Foundation, BitTorrent Foundation and Rainberry, saving him billions in fines, closure and probable criminal charges.
Elizabelle
and
These liars. I wish the insides of their mouths would catch on fire. All of them, frankly. DIAF, liars.
Jay
https://www.publicnotice.co/p/trump-cabinet-of-dunces-noem-bondi-rfk-mcmahon
Princess
I got better access to Hillary and Obama at events I paid $150 to attend.
The food at the Hillary brunch was ah-mazing
Jay
@Princess:
It’s not about access, it’s about quid pro quo’s. Bribery, plain and simple.
Too bad the US MSM has it’s collective head so far up their own asses that they can’t state the obvious.
Justin Sun stood to lose $8.5 billion dollars of “his own money”, go to jail, have his $400 billion dollars worth of companies liquidated and cost the PRC Government crypto exchanges means of using crypto to do various stuff, anonymously, globally.
RevRick
@Old School: MrsRev and I are having dinner at a local Thai restaurant with our son, and I just know that we’ll have a better meal than the $trump chumps.
Neldob
He who sups with the devil needs a long spoon. What if they’re all devils dining?
RevRick
@SpaceUnit: While that might have made the whole event even more degrading, Trump needs the fix of adulation to fill, though never really, the narcissistic hole where his self should be.
Jay
@Neldob:
Well, as we know, crypto is only good for drug dealing, kidnapping, data hacking, sex trafficking, fraud, etc.
So yeah, a dinner with the Devil, well attended by lesser demons.
DJTdiot and his crew are making Lucifer look like a better choice.
RevRick
@Neldob: You must have read C. S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters to understand how banal, boring, and unimaginative the whole realm of deviltry is.
NotMax
@RevRick
If the power goes out does it become a black Thai dinner?
:)
Tehanu
It wouldn’t be so bad if he would just stick to the grifting. His Nazi minions trashing democracy, vandalizing the government, and trying to destroy science and education are the real problem.
Jay
@RevRick:
Well, it is a bureaucracy of sorts. It’s not like, as a lesser demon you can just “wing it”.
JoyceH
Ha! I’d read that no cellphones would be allowed at this “Gala”, but looks like one got snuck in. Just saw a clip on Ari Melber. Doesn’t it sound like this event had all the glamor and pizzazz of a county Chamber of Commerce or Rotarian dinner?
Elizabelle
@Tehanu: That’s true.
MrPug
It really is very hard to keep up in MAGA world. Do we hate or love China?
Lawrence A Schuman
Lava cake? I can get a fucking lava cake at Chili’s. And steak or fish? JFC, whose idea of luxury is this? Yes, everybody involved should die in a fire, but can’t they do anything right?
Jay
@Lawrence A Schuman:
https://www.publicnotice.co/p/trump-cabinet-of-dunces-noem-bondi-rfk-mcmahon
The Audacity of Krope
$TRUMPETS…
The Audacity of Krope
@The Audacity of Krope: Damn, I should read the comments first.
DAW beat me by three hours.
NutmegAgain
That menu sounds like airplane food. Floofy description, I’ll bet, and sub-par actual food. Those folks in that room have too much money for their own good.
The Audacity of Krope
@NutmegAgain: I never buy it, but I thought filet mignon is supposed to be good, or something.
WTFGhost
I’m trying to imagine someone who spent over 2 million big ones to get a chance to rub elbows with the mighty, and instead just seeing him at a distance, and saying it was still worth it.
A less trusting fellow than I would think that said attendee was told the quid was received, and the pro quo was ready for discussion. Hell, I think the same goddamn thing, so screw the “less trusting”.
Jay
@The Audacity of Krope:
Filet does no work, it’s the best cut of beef, and really hard to screw up. Often wrapped with bacon because it’s low fat.
Jay
@WTFGhost:
Getting to keep $408.5 billion and avoiding jail for a few million dollars in bribes is a pretty good deal.
Jay
@Jay:
Chain is better, but you will never see it. It’s one of the few perks that butchers get.
Sister Golden Bear
@Old School: They might’ve eaten better if El Cheapo had Mickey D’s do the catering. Thoughts and prayers….
WTFGhost
@Jay: Over at digbysblog.net, they have a purported picture of the main course, and it’s worrisome. You could tell me any story about that plate, and I’d believe it. “It actually feel, face down, on the floor, so we just threw stuff on at random, and asked for another ice-cream scoop of potatoes that had at least a teaspoon of garlic powder in them.”
Professor Bigfoot
@Jay: What is this “chain” of which you speak, wise stranger?
WTFGhost
@Suzanne: Alas, all the jokes I can come up with are NC-17 and have nothing to do with sex (as such), so, I guess I’ll skip the ban part.
Another Scott
@JoyceH: I caught that too.
My fuzzy recollection from my Tolstoy course (in English) in college was that “lavish” meals back then meant 20+ courses. Miss Manners talked about a 14 course example.
“lavish three-course dinner” – [ Snort! ]
Perhaps the writer meant us all to do so. ;-)
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Manyakitty
@Elizabelle: honest to god, I keep expecting snakes to come out of her eyes and a long, forked tongue to fall out every time she opens her foul mouth.
JoyceH
@WTFGhost: If that picture of the luxury entree gains wide circulation the value of Trump’s coin will crater.
The Audacity of Krope
:: the sound of Homer Simpson vocally lusting after food::
Excuse me…
NutmegAgain
@WTFGhost: Looks like an ice cream scoop of reconstituted dried mashed potato flakes. A sad lump of a meat-like substance, a piece of fish, or possibly a chunk of leftover rubber from a sneaker factory, and some very depressed carrots. Yum-my!
Jay
@Professor Bigfoot:
It’s a thin muscle strip that runs along both sides of the tenderloin.
Jay
@The Audacity of Krope:
Bacon makes everything better, eg, Brussel Sprouts.
Fish and Brewis, oatmeal, (not porridge) , cod cheeks and bacon fat, for breakfast. Great fuel for a hard day in the North Atlantic.
Another Scott
@WTFGhost: Thanks for the pointer.
There’s more in the Wired story.
FSM bless the protesters. May 47 never get a moment’s peace and quiet.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Jackie
Per CNN:
It must be Friday.
The Audacity of Krope
@Jay: Bacon is my favorite spice (Hat tip, Kamala).
TF79
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt pushed back heavily on those claims during a press briefing hours before the dinner, telling reporters it was “absurd for anyone to insinuate that this president is profiting off of the presidency.”
The distance between what is said and what is known to be true has become an abyss
Timill
@The Audacity of Krope: But can something be both a spice and a vegetable?
Jay
@Timill:
Yes
Jackie
@Timill:
Garlic and hot peppers come to mind…
LeftCoastYankee
Trump organic salad makes me think of a lettuce patch over Ivanka’s grave. Because I can’t think of anything more horrifying and it’s always the worst thing imaginable with him.
laura
@Jay: this is the cut to get if you can find it, but similarly, a butcher’s treat: https://www.foodfirefriends.com/what-is-chuck-eye-steak/
NotMax
@LeftCoastYankee
“Waiter, what are the little chunks of meat in the salad?”
“Those are a selection of diced organs.”
Another Scott
Speaking of Republican Venality, …
Dean Baker at CEPR – Can David Brooks Stop Lying?:
Click on over to read the rest.
Best wishes,
Scott.
prostratedragon
@WTFGhost:
Worrisome indeed.
Quaker in a Basement
@Suzanne: They finally mowed Ivana’s grave?
prostratedragon
sab
@prostratedragon: That is so JD Vance, the king of pull up the ladder that helped you.
A lot of scholarship money was wasted on that boy.
prostratedragon
@sab:
Not just him, though I’m quite sure a similar rogues’ gallery can be assembled for any of the country’s institutions of higher learning.
prostratedragon
Manyakitty
@sab: definitely. He’s TERRIBLE.
WTFGhost
@LeftCoastYankee: Since it’s a dead thread, “…and for the dressing, the finest baby greens, dew picked from his left gluteal range, lightly wilted and blended in a reduction of the garlic-scented cheese from under his left man-boob.”