#DinnerWithTrump

Trump Pumped and Dumped His Crypto Backers With Dud Dinner Party

As though launching his own meme coin days before the inauguration wasn’t potentially corrupt enough, three months later, President Donald Trump had his crypto team announce a special dinner party for the 220 top holders of $TRUMP, calling it the “most EXCLUSIVE INVITATION in the World.” It temporarily juiced the value of the token by 60 percent as investors spent millions to secure their seats — all in a day’s work for a head of state who has gone above and beyond to cash in on his office, with his family’s fortune ballooning by almost $3 billion thanks to their various crypto plays.

Attendees of the Thursday night banquet at Trump National Golf Club outside Washington, D.C., paid an average of $1 million to get in the room, spending close to $400 million in total. But while the 25 biggest $TRUMP whales were treated to a more exclusive reception with the president, it seems the rest forked over that cash for little more than one another’s company, a reportedly sub-par meal, and generic remarks from Trump, who didn’t even stick around to meet anyone before catching a golf cart back to his helicopter. It had to be something of a disappointment for guests, including foreign executives, who went with the idea of swaying Trump on crypto issues and regulation.

It was the worst food I’ve ever had at a Trump golf course,” Nicholas Pinto, a business influencer who poured around $300,000 into Trump’s coin, told Wired of the entree, a surf-and-turf dish that included halibut and filet mignon. Speaking to Fortune, he criticized the latter as a “Walmart steak.” Pictures of the plates suggested that the dinner was barely up to airline standards — though it’s not as if you can expect much better from the kitchen at the country club of a man who also put his name on what was once suggested to be.