Trump Turns Mar-a-Lago Dinners Into Pricey Pay to Play Scheme

People are paying millions to wine and dine President Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Florida, Wired reported Tuesday.  

Trump’s team clearly saw an opportunity for a cash grab in the frenzy of business moguls scrambling to court the president and get on his good side. For $5 million, business leaders can meet one-on-one with Trump at his estate, a “hot ticket” opportunity in the business world, sources told Wired. 

For those looking for a classier affair, they can pay $1 million to dine with the president in a candlelit group setting. Invitations to a March 1 candlelit dinner were sent out by MAGA Inc., a pro-Trump super PAC that contributed over $400 million last year to help get him elected. 

“You are invited to a candlelight dinner featuring special guest President Donald J. Trump. Additional details provided upon RSVP,” the invitation read. “RSVPs will be accommodated on a first come, first serve basis. Space is very limited. $1,000,000 per person.” 

“Donald J. Trump is appearing at this event only as a featured speaker, and is not asking for funds or donations,” the invitation continues. 

The dinner was formally titled “MAGA INC. Candlelight Finance Dinner,” and was included on the president’s official schedule, yet more evidence of the blurry lines between Trump and the private business world.

The Washington Post reported that Trump hosted two similar candlelit dinners at Mar-a-Lago before he took office, one on December 19, 2024, and one on January 19, the eve of his inauguration.

Amid the turmoil over his crazy decision to slap tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China, President Trump saw fit to post a bizarre lie about banks in Canada—forcing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to correct him publicly.

“Canada doesn’t allow American Banks to do business in Canada, but their banks flood the American Market. Oh, that seems fair to me, doesn’t it?” Trump posted Tuesday morning. But this isn’t true, and Trudeau made sure Trump knew it.

Hours later, while speaking to the press, Trudeau called out the president for “not really being able to see what it is that he wants.”

“I heard he talked about banking again this morning in a tweet, which doesn’t make any sense because 16 American banks [are] currently active in Canada, holding about $113 billion worth of assets in this country, so American banks are alive and well and prospering in Canada,” Trudeau said.

“What he wants is to see a total collapse of the Canadian economy, because that’ll make it easier to annex us,” Trudeau added, alluding to Trump’s threats to annex Canada as the “fifty-first state.”

In a move usually made by U.S. presidents toward people living under autocratic rule, Trudeau made a direct plea to the American public, telling them Canada was forced to enact retaliatory tariffs against the U.S.

“We don’t want this. We want to work with you as a friend and ally. And we don’t want to see you hurt, either, but your government has chosen to do this to you,” Trudeau said.

“Your government has chosen to put American jobs at risk at the thousands of workplaces that succeed because of materials from Canada, or because of consumers in Canada, or both,” Trudeau added.

Trump is not going to take kindly to Trudeau correcting him, and he’ll never admit that he was wrong. He may even be lying on purpose to stir up the MAGA base. But he’ll have to come up with a better way to spin the economic fallout from his plan, which promises to hike prices on all kinds of goods in the U.S. and cause untold damage to the economy.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s embrace of vitamin A as a course of treatment amid a deadly measles outbreak has sparked concern among health experts, The Washington Post reported Tuesday.

In an op-ed published by Fox News Sunday, Kennedy touted the recent update to CDC guidance on “therapeutic medications.” Last week, a new section outlining the benefits of using vitamin A was added to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s online resources about measles treatment. While the section mentioned the risk of inappropriate dosing, it failed to mention that vitamin A can lead to liver failure and death.

“Studies have found that vitamin A can dramatically reduce measles mortality,” Kennedy wrote in his op-ed, but he also made no mention of the health risks of vitamin A.

Meanwhile, he described the decision to vaccinate as a “personal” one.

But health experts have taken issue with Kennedy’s push for vitamin A, which can be used to treat patients who are already sick but does nothing to prevent the spread of measles.

“In fact, relying on vitamin A instead of the vaccine is not only dangerous and ineffective, but it puts children at serious risk,” Dr. Sue Kressly, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, told the Post Monday. “Taking too much vitamin A can cause serious health problems, including liver damage.”

Summer Davies, a pediatric hospitalist in Lubbock, Texas, told the Post that there wasn’t enough data to support the government’s decision to push vitamin A as a treatment for measles. “There’s not enough information there to say, ‘Yeah, this is great, this will cure you.’ And it’s not a wonder drug and miracle drug,” Davies said.

Much of the data supporting claims of vitamin A’s effectiveness is based on malnourished children, Davies explained.

“So it’s not going to make measles go away. And it may prevent some complications, but we’re not giving it to every child in the hospital because the evidence just isn’t there,” Davies said.

Peter Hotez, the co-director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development, was concerned that the Health and Human Services Department’s lean on vitamin A to ensure public health would present as an alternative to vaccination.

“It could lead to the impression of a false equivalency: To make the best decision for your children, you can either vaccinate or give vitamin A,” Hotez told the Post. “And that would be highly misleading.”

Last week, Kennedy said during a Cabinet meeting that measles outbreaks were not unusual, despite the fact that measles had been declared eliminated in 2000, according to the CDC. The same week, an unvaccinated child in west Texas died of measles. This week, Kennedy’s leading spokesperson resigned over disagreements about his response to the deadly outbreak.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau directly addressed the American people in a pleading appeal on Tuesday after Donald Trump followed through on his promise to implement 25 percent tariffs on goods from Canada.

“I want to speak first directly to the American people. We don’t want this. We want to work with you as a friend and ally. And we don’t want to see you hurt either, but your government has chosen to do this to you,” Trudeau said in a press conference from Ottawa.

The normally cheery Trudeau was stone-faced and somber as he warned Americans about the economic consequences of taxing Canadian products.

“Your government has chosen to put American jobs at risk at the thousands of workplaces that succeed because of materials from Canada, or because of consumers in Canada, or both,” Trudeau said, further warning of rising prices on groceries, gas, cars, and homes.

“What do the American people think? How do Americans feel about jettisoning one’s friends and allies in favor of a country that has never wished Americans well and continues to act in ways that harm the global economy and specifically the American economy and American values and principles?” Trudeau asked, referring to Trump’s recent overtures to Russia on Ukraine.

Last month, Trump paused his plans to implement 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico—the top U.S. trading partners—amid international backlash and the threat of retaliatory actions from both countries.

On Monday, however, the president announced the tariffs would begin on Tuesday, a backstabbing blow to America’s northern ally that Trump wants to annex and make the fifty-first state. The president claims the tariffs will protect U.S. manufacturing and prevent illegal immigration, but they will ultimately just drastically raise costs for both American and international consumers.

Canada has already responded with 25 percent tariffs on $30 billion worth of U.S. imports, effective immediately, Trudeau announced Tuesday.

Anti-American sentiment has skyrocketed in Canada since Trump took office, and support for the wildly unpopular Trudeau and his Liberal Party has grown for the first time in years amid a wave of country-wide nationalist sentiment.

Trudeau’s speech makes it clear that he’s given up all hopes of rational communication with the Trump administration and that America’s betrayal is a dire warning to the rest of the world.

“Every country is very aware that if the American government is willing to do this to their own closest ally, neighbor, and friend, everyone is vulnerable to a trade war.”

Donald Trump’s tariff plan is already spurring tremendous pain in American markets.

The president’s controversial tariffs went into effect first thing Tuesday, imposing 25 percent levies on Canada and Mexico as well as a 10 percent tariff hike on Chinese goods. In return, Canada announced a retaliatory tariff of 25 percent on nearly $100 billion of U.S. imports, while China announced tariffs of 10 to 15 percent on a range of U.S. products. Mexico also said it would retaliate, with details to come on Sunday.

That will raise electronics prices by roughly 10 percent and clothing prices by 8 percent for American consumers, according to Ernie Tedeschi, director of economics at the Yale Budget Lab and former White House chief economist.

Meanwhile, Americans are still grappling with the rising prices of groceries—specifically eggs, which saw the cost of a dozen jump to $8.42 in the Chicago exchange.

But that’s just the beginning of a very long road, according to Trump’s own administration. The Agriculture Department announced last week that the current cost of eggs could rise by more than 40 percent before the end of the year. To alleviate the crisis, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins unveiled a $1 billion investment by the federal government to tighten up biosecurity measures on American farms amid an outbreak of avian flu. Rollins also proposed stripping regulations from the egg industry to further dampen the rising price tag and on Tuesday pitched that Americans should just buy chickens to supply their own eggs.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau warned that Americans would share the brunt of the tariff costs. “Americans will lose jobs. Americans will be paying more for groceries, for gas, for cars, for homes—because we have always done best when we work together,” he said during a press conference Tuesday. “Now that [Trump has] moved forward with tariffs, we’re going to see the real impact of a trade war between our countries. And that impact will be to hurt American families.”

Trump’s previous tariff proposals are predicted to affect just about every product under the sun, from ground beef and bananas to liquor and gas. An executive order signed by Trump in February reinstated his 2018 tariff on steel and aluminum, raising tariffs for both to 25 percent. That regulation is slated to take effect March 12. Once it does, production costs for America’s automakers are likely to jump, as will costs for the country’s construction industry, which is already struggling to meet the demands of a historic nationwide housing crisis.

Trump has leaned into tariffs as a key component of affording an extension to his 2017 tax plan, which overwhelmingly benefits corporations and is projected to add as much as $15 trillion to the national deficit. But experts believe that a trade war would be to the overwhelming detriment of American consumers and its allies abroad—and that the self-inflicted pain could only serve to benefit U.S. adversaries around the globe.

The EU’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas warned last month that if the U.S. and the European Union were to enter into a trade war, then “the one laughing on the side is China.”

Republicans in Congress seem to be afraid of their own constituents, and are now trying to avoid in-person town hall meetings.

At a closed-door Tuesday meeting, the chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, Representative Richard Hudson, told his colleagues to put their phones down and listen, saying that his colleagues should not be holding town hall meetings.

The North Carolina representative compared the atmosphere at recent Republican town halls, which have resulted in protests and heckling, to those during the first year of Donald Trump’s first presidential term in 2017. Hudson also said that protests at town halls, as well as at district offices, are likely to get worse.

Democrats quickly called out the Republicans’ spinelessness.

Democratic Representative Theresa Leger Fernandez said Republicans “are afraid of their constituents,” and a spokesperson for House Majority PAC, the leading political action committee for House Democrats, called them “cowards.”

“If you’re going to have the audacity to raise prices and rip away health care from millions of Americans, you should at least have the courage to face your constituents,” said the spokesperson, CJ Warnke.

President Trump has claimed that “paid troublemakers” are responsible for the unrest at Republican town halls, posting on Truth Social Monday that “it is all part of the game for the Democrats, but just like our big LANDSLIDE ELECTION, it’s not going to work for them!”

House Speaker Mike Johnson has also accused paid protesters of stirring up trouble for Republicans, and another House Republican, Mark Alford, used the age-old bogeyman of “outside agitators” to try to explain away the hecklers at a town hall he held last month.

In reality, discontent is growing across the country as Trump and Elon Musk lead a radical overhaul of the federal government and gut vital policies. Republicans are unwilling to recognize that the growing protests are actually legitimate, and in one case in Idaho, even used violence to squash one of them. The more they ignore the discontent, though, the more likely Hudson’s prediction will come true: The protests will only get worse.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed she had the “facts” to back up Donald Trump’s trade war–launching tariffs on Mexico, Canada, and China but stopped short of saying anything actually true.

During an interview with Fox News Monday night, host Sean Hannity opined that people weren’t talking enough about the tariffs as a rhetorical tool in negotiations with foreign countries, and instead were too focused on how “bad, bad, bad” they are.

“Why don’t people understand the president is a never-ending negotiator?” Hannity asked.

“He’s a never-ending negotiator, it’s the art of the deal,” Leavitt replied.

“But also, the president has proven, as he did in his first term, that tariffs can bring good-paying jobs back here to the United States of America. They protect critical industries here at home. And President Trump is serious when he says he wants to make America the manufacturing superpower of the world,” she continued.

So, even Trump’s chief propagandist seems a little confused about whether the tariffs are a masterful bluff or a legitimate economic policy. Leavitt seemed intent on painting the tariffs as both—carefully eliding the fact that Trump’s so-called negotiations might better be understood as a global trade war that will inevitably affect the lives of everyday Americans.

It’s also important to note that the tariffs that Trump levied during his first term didn’t actually demonstrate any of what Leavitt claims, so her rationale for his newest round of tariffs falls completely flat.

The first Trump administration placed tariffs on Chinese goods, solar panels, washing machines, steel, and aluminum. And ultimately, this had little impact on the economy, positively or negatively. The tariffs certainly never delivered on Trump’s promise of more factory jobs.

This time, Trump’s 25 percent tariffs on Canadian and Mexican exports and 10 percent tariff on Chinese exports are likely to have a greater impact because they will restrict a wider range of products than his previous tariffs, which were placed on industrial, rather than consumer, products.

During her appearance on Fox News, Leavitt gushed about Trump and claimed to have the statistics to back up his masterful tariff plot.

“So, there’s no spin, it’s all truth. We have the facts on our side, you know, in explaining these tariffs, right? Most people would run away from that argument. But we have the truth, and the statistics, and the facts on our side, and everything the president does is backed by what’s right for the American public,” Leavitt said.

Unfortunately for Leavitt, it’s not enough to simply claim “facts”; one must actually provide them.

China, Canada, and Mexico have already retaliated against Trump’s steep tariffs, placing their own tariffs on U.S. exports. A retaliation clause Trump included in the order he signed last month promises that the U.S. will hit back at any tariffs other countries levy with, you guessed it, more tariffs.

Earlier this month, conservatives were aglow after Trump backed off imposing his tariffs on Mexico, claiming that they’d agreed to send more troops to the Southern border (which the country had already agreed to do). This appeared to prove that the threat of dangerous tariffs he’d been wielding was just that: a threat. In reality, Trump seemed to be responding to the stock market plummeting as he announced tariffs on America’s biggest trading partners.

Now his threat has become all too real, sending the stock market sinking once again.

Russian President Vladimir Putin could not be happier that Donald Trump announced Monday he is pausing U.S. military funding to Ukraine, a once unbelievable move Russia could’ve only dreamed about.

If the pausing of aid “is true, then this is a decision that can really encourage the Kyiv regime to [come to] the peace process,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said of the announcement, Reuters reported. “It is obvious that the United States has been the main supplier of this war so far. If the United States stops being [an arms supplier] or suspends these supplies, it will probably be the best contribution to the cause of peace.”

Trump made the shocking announcement following a horrific meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy last week, in which he and Vice President JD Vance yelled at Zelenskiy for being ungrateful, told him he was gambling with World War III, and then proceeded to kick him out of the White House, an embarrassing and devastating act from Ukraine’s crucial ally.

Immediately following the meeting, Russian officials couldn’t contain their excitement.

“The insolent pig finally got a proper slap down in the Oval Office. And @realDonaldTrump is right: The Kiev regime is ‘gambling with WWIII,’” deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia Dmitry Medvedev wrote on X following the meeting.

Now Russia’s perverse goal is even closer—the U.S. has been Ukraine’s largest supplier of defense aid since Russia’s invasion in 2022, and Trump’s aid withdrawal is a nightmare for the war-torn country.

Putin and Russia are still awaiting details, but they are no doubt celebrating Trump’s stupidity behind closed doors.

“We hear (Trump’s) statement about his desire to bring peace to Ukraine, and this is welcome. But we will continue to see how the situation develops in reality,” Peskov’s statement concludes.

Democrats are willing to take the budget fight all the way to a shutdown.

Top Democrats in the House have reportedly spent days asking party members if they’d be willing to boycott the GOP’s budget resolution, and they’ve received very little pushback in return, Politico’s Rachael Bade reported Tuesday.

Representative Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, told NBC News Tuesday that Democrats will vote against the one-year continuing resolution. That leaves Republicans with few other options, as the conservative party simply doesn’t have the votes to push it through without bipartisan support.

DeLauro was a little less diplomatic in private. During a recent meeting between Democratic committee leaders and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries about whether they’d accept the budget extension, DeLauro reportedly shouted, “No fucking way!”

Democrats have pointed to Elon Musk’s effective seizure of the executive branch, as well as his DOGE-directed cuts, as the source of their ire. Even some liberals who have long been anti-shutdown feel that voting for a “clean” spending bill would, in effect, greenlight Musk’s destruction of the federal government.

DOGE, the so-called “government efficiency” organization, has had a wide-ranging grasp on government agencies. So far, its juvenile employees have gained access to and gutted portions of the CDC, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the Education, Commerce, Defense, and Energy departments, the IRA, the EPA, FEMA, NOAA, USAID, and, among other agencies, the Federal Aviation Administration, even as the nation experiences an unprecedented uptick in critical aviation crashes.

“At some point you’ve got to have a goddamn backbone. I am not giving them a blank check until September,” an unnamed senior Democratic lawmaker told Politico.

The House GOP passed a budget resolution last week that would gut major social services, including Medicaid, which provides health insurance to more than 72 million Americans. The $880 billion cut is a trade-off for conservatives who were tasked by Donald Trump to extend his 2017 tax plan, which will overwhelmingly benefit corporations and is projected to add as much as $15 trillion to the national deficit.

In the days since the vote, House Speaker Mike Johnson has reportedly “ruled out” the largest cuts to the health insurance program, though he’s failed to offer any specifics as to how his party will do so without affecting Americans’ benefits.

Meanwhile, Republicans at home have faced fiery town halls led by their irate constituents, furious to discover that their elected representatives are selling them down the river in order to advance Trump’s agenda.

Potentially fueled by the nationwide backlash, liberal lawmakers have effectively reversed course on where they stood on the issue just a handful of weeks ago, when the party was upset with its own constituents for failing to see how pushing back on Musk would only further empower him to burn more agencies.

“People now feel like the more perilous position is giving votes without the perception there’s been any change in accountability,” a senior House Democratic aide told Politico. “The incentive structure right now is not to provide votes for them.”

Congress has until March 14 to find a solution for funding the government.

In yet another attack on the Constitution, President Donald Trump is threatening to pull funding from schools, colleges, and universities that allow “illegal protests.”

“Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came. American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on the crime, arrested,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post Tuesday morning. “NO MASKS,” he added, to boot.

Trump’s threat is a direct assault on the First Amendment, which protects the “right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances,” a core pillar to the functioning of a peaceful democracy.

It’s not clear what exactly Trump considers an “illegal protest”—but this is just the latest move in his crackdown on school funding and institutional neutrality in higher education. In January, he signed an executive order on combating antisemitism on college campuses, a clear response to the wave of monthslong protests on college campuses against Israel’s deadly attack on Gaza.

A fact sheet that accompanied the order specifically targeted pro-Palestinian international students. “To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you. I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before,” the fact sheet read.

Also in January, Trump signed a sweeping executive order that would defund schools that teach any kids about “critical race theory” or gender.

And on Monday, the Trump administration announced it would review federal grants and contracts with Columbia University over allegations of failure to address antisemitism, despite the school taking strict disciplinary actions against pro-Palestinian protesters, including calling the New York Police Department on protesters to arrest students and, most recently, the expulsion of two students from Barnard College.

A total of $5 billion in grant commitments will be reviewed by the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Education, and the General Services Administration.

“We look forward to ongoing work with the new federal administration to fight antisemitism, and we will continue to make all efforts to ensure the safety and wellbeing of our students, faculty, and staff” Columbia said in a statement in response to the announcement.