Washington D.C. – A newly unveiled list of major donors to Donald Trump’s White House ballroom project, obtained by the Washington Post, includes $5 million from Altria Group, Inc. (Parent of tobacco giant Philip Morris USA), and $2.5 million from RAI Services Company (Subsidiary of tobacco company Reynolds American). The revelation of Big Tobacco’s generous contributions to Trump’s politically toxic pet project comes after the Trump FDA opened the floodgates to more harmful fruit flavored vapes, deregulating poison that specifically appeals to kids in order to pad industry profits.
A pattern of quid pro quos: Protect Our Care’s recent analysis, ‘Up In Smoke’, documented the many ways Trump and his Health Secretary RFK Jr. sold out public health to big tobacco for Trump’s benefit, including: shutting down a longtime and hugely successful CDC anti-smoking program, marketing Zyn pouches as a health product, mass layoffs at the CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health, and trying to fire the entire FDA tobacco enforcement team.
All the while, Trump’s stock holdings in big tobacco have grown to as much as $1.64 million this year and millions of tobacco industry dollars poured into Trump’s super PAC.
“Donald Trump and the industry behind the leading cause of preventable death are deeply invested in each other,” said Brad Woodhouse, president of Protect Our Care. “The more money Big Tobacco dumps into Trump’s PACs and White House ballroom, the more his administration deregulates them — lighting up both industry profits and Trump’s stock portfolio in the process. But more despicable than the blatant corruption, Donald Trump is pushing children towards lifelong nicotine addiction by making poisonous fruit flavored vapes widely available. Anything and everything is for sale from the Trump White House, even kids’ health.”
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