Trump immediately doubled the membership fee to $200,000 when he became President in 2017 and has kept increasing the price since then. Pay-to-play, indeed. “Trump is the ultimate grifter,” said Robert Weissman, president of the Washington DC-based pro-transparency group Public Citizen.

Source: The Guardian

Donald Trump has set a million-dollar price tag for the ability to whisper in his ear should he win back the presidency in November, prompting ethics watchdogs to worry that the Republican nominee is selling access and political influence for personal gain.

Trump is making available four new and rarely available memberships at his exclusive Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, where he mingled freely with unvetted patrons during his first term of office and accepted policy advice from guests scrawled on cocktail napkins.

The $1m cost of each membership, which will open for applications in October, exactly one month before the presidential election, also represents a 43% hike from the current initiation fee of $700,000 – an eye-popping increase given the former president has railed against Joe Biden for what he sees as out of control inflation.

The revelation came in a wide-ranging interview with Trump published by Bloomberg last month, in which Bernd Lembcke, Mar-a-Lago’s long-time manager, justified the price rise by claiming the opulent waterfront Palm Beach club was “not desperate” for would-be members.

And why would anyone be willing to pay this extortionary amount? Access, of course.

Ethics observers say the move suggests that Trump is courting a new clique of wealthy donors eager to pay for access, while tapping a lucrative, fresh income stream to alleviate his substantial legal bills and settlement obligations.

“Trump is the ultimate grifter,” said Robert Weissman, president of the Washington DC-based pro-transparency group Public Citizen.

“It’s possible some people just want to hobnob with a president and be around him, but it was explicit in his first presidency that it was an opportunity to tell him what you thought, and also to seek favor.

“So of course, the people who are most interested in this are going to look at it as a really sound investment. Why not pay a million dollars and talk to the president?”

And what have some of these wealthy members gotten? (Beyond tax breaks, deregulation, and other perks, of course.) Ambassadorships.

They include Lana Marks, the luxury handbag designer, who became US ambassador to South Africa with no diplomatic training or experience; Adrian Zuckerman, a lawyer and Trump’s golfing buddy who served the same role in Romania; and David Cornstein, the jewelry magnate, a longstanding Trump friend sent to Hungary as ambassador to woo strongman prime minister Viktor Orbán.