On the morning after he won a second term as president, Donald Trump placed an unexpected call to his top fundraiser, Meredith O’Rourke. The night before, he’d told a ballroom of supporters in West Palm Beach, Florida, that he had held his last political rally—“Can you believe it?”—and was ready to focus on governing. But his message to O’Rourke after the break of dawn was different. “I want you to keep going,” he told her.Within weeks, that message had gone out to his Republican donors, as well as to Fortune 500 companies and billionaire investors who typically avoided electoral politics. Their first opportunity was his second inauguration committee, which would eventually raise $241 million, about $90 million more than organizers needed to fund the events—and nearly four times as much as Joe Biden had raised for his own inauguration, in 2021. But that was just the beginning.Trump wanted money for the sorts of political operations that many politicians support—the Republican National Committee, his own political action committee, a new dark-money nonprofit group, a super PAC run by longtime advisers. But he was also requesting money for technically apolitical nonprofit causes that offered corporations and wealthy individuals a chance to make tax-deductible contributions, including a dramatic White House renovation, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (now under his control), his presidential library, and a celebratory Army parade on his birthday. By August, Trump estimated that he had collected at least $1.5 billion since the election, more than all the money raised to support his 2024 campaign over two years, including funds raised by supportive independent super PACs. The tally is now approaching $2 billion, two people familiar with the effort—who, like others, were not authorized to speak publicly—told us.[Read: “I run the country and the world.”]Trump has kept careful track of the money coming in, regularly calling O’Rourke late at night for updates. He monitors who is giving, who is not, and the role of lobbyists who bundle donations, those familiar with his efforts told us. At times, the actual donation amount is less important to the president than the percentage of the donor’s overall assets. He thanks the most generous benefactors at swanky events at the White House and his clubs.Much of the money has come from people or entities that have business before the government. Defense contractors, cryptocurrency investors, and technology companies have put in tens of millions of dollars as he has deregulated the industry or dropped enforcement proceedings. A select group of companies and executives—Amazon, Lockheed Martin, Coinbase, Palantir CEO Alex Karp—are top donors to multiple Trump projects.Nothing on this scale was ever attempted by a sitting president prior to Trump. Other recent administrations have faced their own scandals over fundraising efforts. But Trump’s approach—in the extent of the donations he’s soliciting, the secrecy with which some are handled, and the frankness of the exchange of dollars for presidential favor—puts even the most ambitious prior efforts to shame. And he’s just getting started. “He hasn’t stopped,” a third person told us, “and I don’t anticipate that we will stop.”Trump’s relentless fundraising has alarmed ethics watchdogs who have worked for years to reduce the role of large donations in buying access or protection from government regulation.“While it is not unusual for lame duck presidents to fundraise for their Libraries, what we are seeing from President Trump in his first year of office is shockingly unprecedented,” Trevor Potter, a former Republican chair of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) who now runs the Campaign Legal Center, told us in a statement. “The president’s seemingly insatiable drive for money from corporations and billionaires seeking government favors (or merely hoping to procure protection from Trump attacks on their business interests) sends a clear signal to everyday Americans that their needs come far behind those of the ultrawealthy who are buying access and favor.”Trump advisers maintain that the only reason people are giving is that they support the president’s agenda. The White House spokesperson Davis Ingle described Trump as “the most dominant figure in American politics from fundraising to the campaign trail,” and said that donors were willing to give because of the “historic progress” of his administration.Others familiar with the efforts say that more transactional motivations are at play. Media and technology companies that Trump has sued have collectively made $85 million in payments to some of his pet projects in order to settle the lawsuits. These include donations made by Meta (sued for deplatforming Trump after January 6) and Paramount (the parent company of CBS News, which Trump sued) to the Trump library, and a donation from Alphabet (the parent company of YouTube, which deactivated Trump’s account after January 6) for the ballroom. The donations came at a time when those companies were also seeking regulatory favor from his government. In Paramount’s case, the incoming chair of the Federal Communications Commission said that Trump’s unsettled complaint could complicate its planned merger with another company, pressuring Paramount to pay up despite significant doubts over the case’s merits. Some companies and executives also fear unfavorable government action if they don’t give.[Read: Trump targets Google after Meta and X payouts]“There are people being asked to do 10-to-25-million-dollar checks for the ballroom, for the inauguration, for the presidential library,” another person familiar with the requests told us. “That spigot is never going to close, ever. This is just the cost of doing business. They will write a multimillion-dollar check to avoid the $2 billion lawsuit. It’s a business decision.”Only parts of Trump’s $2 billion haul have been publicly disclosed, often in media reports or in comments by the president. Under public pressure, the White House released a list of three dozen major donors to the new ballroom, which Trump expects to cost $300 million. (The president said late last month that “more than $350 million” had been raised.) Trump’s team disclosed the $241 million in inauguration fundraising to the FEC, as required by law. Trump’s team raised about $33 million for an Army parade in Washington, D.C., and other celebrations, The Atlantic previously reported. The Kennedy Center raised $58 million last month, according to its president, Richard Grenell, after a separate Trump fundraiser for the center in June requested checks of $100,000 to $2 million.Little is known about how much fundraisers have collected for the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library Foundation, which Trump’s son Eric and Trump’s son-in-law Michael Boulos established in May. Efforts by Miami Dade College to give land to the foundation for a future library site in downtown Miami have been blocked by Florida courts. The foundation has yet to report any revenue, though ABC News announced that it would pay a $15 million settlement to the future library to resolve a lawsuit by Trump against the anchor George Stephanopoulos for his false claim that Trump had been found “liable for rape,” when the jury verdict was for sexual abuse. (A New York judge said that the jury’s findings against Trump described rape “as the term commonly is used and understood in contexts outside of the New York Penal Law.”)Trump is also continuing to run a presidential-scale political-money operation alongside the fundraising efforts by House and Senate leaders for the 2026 midterm elections. From the end of November 2024 to June 30, 2025, his team brought in $229 million to MAGA Inc., a super PAC run by aides that is not directly controlled by Trump. During the same period, he raised an additional $63 million through Trump National Committee JFC, a small-dollar joint fundraising operation with the Republican National Committee, according to FEC records. Both groups will report their fundraising for the second half of the year at the end of January.His team has also collected funds for a dark-money group, Securing American Greatness. The organization will not disclose its fundraising in 2025 until it releases its tax forms next year, and it has no legal obligation to reveal individual donors. One technology company, Qualcomm, disclosed to its shareholders a donation of $1 million to Securing American Greatness along with a gift of $1 million to the inaugural committee, suggesting the possibility that other corporations are also pairing their public donations with secret ones. Since early May, Securing American Greatness has spent nearly $18.5 million on advertising, according to independent tracking of ad spending that a political operative shared with us. The ads, which included a major spring campaign in support of Trump’s budget bill, have targeted congressional districts that are expected to be competitive in 2026, and the group also spent money to get out the vote before the off-year elections in Virginia this month that Democrats dominated.Trump and his aides cast donations to his political groups or priorities as acts of patriotism, often celebrating donors at lavish dinners. About 125 donors to the ballroom project gathered with the president in the White House’s East Room on October 15. As they sat around candlelit tables decorated with white roses, Trump debuted a model for a memorial arch, inspired by the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, that he has discussed building near Arlington National Cemetery—which could soon present another opportunity to donate.“We have a lot of legends in the room tonight, and that’s why we’re here, to celebrate you,” Trump told the crowd. “So many friends in the audience, and I just want to thank you all. You’re very special people. You love the country, you love the White House, and what you’ve done is very important.”