Trump ‘Stunned’ Oil Execs Demanding They Raise $1 Billion for His Campaign, Promising ‘Deal’ of Lower Taxes, Regulations: Report

AP Photo/Evan Vucci.

Former President Donald Trump made a “remarkably blunt and transactional pitch” to oil company executives at a meeting at Mar-a-Lago last month, demanding they raise $1 billion for his re-election campaign in exchange for a “deal” that they would benefit from the tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks he would support in his second term, reported The Washington Post.

Trump’s campaign fundraising is lagging far behind his Democratic opponent, President Joe Biden, who had built up a massive war chest with $155 million cash on hand in March, more than three times as much as Trump’s $42 million. The ex-president’s ongoing court dates and legal fees have continued to consume a significant portion of his time and funds, as well, leading the Trump team to reach out to mega-wealthy donors like Elon Musk.

The Mar-a-Lago dinner in April had “roughly two dozen executives” among the attendees, reported the Post, including “Mike Sabel, the CEO and founder of Venture Global, and Jack Fusco, the CEO of Cheniere Energy,” and executives from “Chevron, Continental Resources, Exxon and Occidental Petroleum.”

One of these oil bigwigs complained about the burden of environmental regulations imposed by the Biden administration on their industry, despite spending hundreds of millions of dollars on lobbyists, according to the Post, and then Trump offered a reply that “stunned” the attendees:

Trump’s response stunned several of the executives in the room overlooking the ocean: You all are wealthy enough, he said, that you should raise $1 billion to return me to the White House. At the dinner, he vowed to immediately reverse dozens of President Biden’s environmental rules and policies and stop new ones from being enacted, according to people with knowledge of the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private conversation.

Giving $1 billion would be a “deal,” Trump said, because of the taxation and regulation they would avoid thanks to him, according to the people.

The Post article goes on to spell out the differences between Biden and Trump’s approach to environmental and energy industry regulation, and notes that “[d]espite the oil industry’s complaints about Biden’s policies, the United States is now producing more oil than any country ever has, pumping nearly 13 million barrels per day on average last year,” with America’s two biggest energy companies, ExxonMobil and Chevron, raking in their largest annual profits in a decade in 2023.

However, what Trump is promising is “an even greater windfall” for these companies, with their coffers to be bolstered by new offshore drilling permits, speedier review of permit applications, and relaxation or elimination of Biden-era regulations.

So far, Trump’s solicitations have not borne much fruit, with oil industry allies giving less than $7 million to Trump’s joint fundraising committee in the first quarter of 2024. There is a fundraiser in the works hosted by Harold Hamm, a billionaire shale oil magnate who was an energy adviser to Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, where organizers “expect large checks to flow to [Trump’s] bid to return to office,” and one oil executive was quoted by the Post saying that now that Trump had locked in the GOP nomination, it was a “no-brainer” that people in their industry would open their wallets for him.