The ‘Princess of Darkness’ Behind Trump’s Fundraising Machine

We recently reported that President Trump [music] had fundraised an unprecedented $800 million during his second term. We wanted to know, what did that fundraising [music] look like, and which companies were cutting checks?

Trump's opinion about fundraising has dramatically shifted since 2015 when he first ran for president.

>> Super PACs are a disaster, they're a scam, they cause dishonesty, and you better get rid of them.

>> Now in his second term, he's largely embraced [music] and sought out large checks from corporate America.

>> I mean, I have so many friends, and so many of you have been really, really generous. I mean, a couple of you I'm sitting here and saying, "Uh sir, would $25 million be appropriate?" I said, "I'll take it."

>> As we were making our phone calls to report [music] out this project, the name Meredith O'Rourke kept coming up.

And she is Trump's top fundraiser. She is often the person calling CEOs or heads of government [music] at these companies asking for big checks for various projects. She's become one of the most powerful people [music] in fundraising, but isn't a name that most people in America know. Meredith is

[music] at Trump's side a lot, even though she's not a government employee. She sends out invites for $1 million seat [music] candlelight dinners at the White House and other Trump properties for CEOs.

She flies aboard Air Force One. She sits in on some of these meetings where the CEOs attend, and she's become a very close confidant [music] for the president refers to Meredith as the princess of darkness, and that's because she's such a killer with donors. [music] We had four reporters on this story, and across the

four of us, we spoke to more than 100 sources. [music] We learned that in these phone calls with companies, Meredith repeatedly invokes President Trump's [music] name. She will say things like, "The boss wants this money." We were told that the asks from different companies range. It could be 5

million to 25 million to 50 million. Behind the scenes, when we speak to CEOs and board members, they acknowledge that there's sort of a price to pay for doing business in this administration. One Wall Street analyst even coined a term, the Trump transaction tax. We were able to learn that for the ballroom project

alone, Apple gave it $25 million, Microsoft gave around 10 million, and [music] Amazon gave around 5 million.