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On a Friday in late September, Donald J. Trump took time off the campaign trail for a closed-door meeting at Mar-a-Lago with officials representing the vaping industry.
The vaping emissaries talked about loosening regulations and told the former president he had “saved” the industry in the past. The group — including Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, and another 2016 campaign aide, Michael Rubino — showed him mock-ups of mailers they were sending out through Election Day. Mr. Trump asked for input on what he could say on social media about a complicated regulatory issue.
Within hours, Mr. Trump had posted about his allegiances to the embattled e-cigarette sector. “I saved Flavored Vaping in 2019,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media. “I’ll save Vaping again!”
The head of the Vapor Technology Association, Tony Abboud, who was also in the meeting, quickly declared he was “pleased” that Mr. Trump was “continuing to fight for vapers.” The vaping industry has not been a significant contributor in the presidential race, but the Vapor Technology Association has been quietly sending versions of those mailers to voters in battleground states warning that Democrats want “to steal vapes from freedom-loving Americans.”
As Mr. Trump seeks a return to the White House, he has come a long way from his 2016 campaign pitch that he was so rich he was incorruptible. Back then, he mocked the G.O.P.’s donor-lobbyist class and boasted in his announcement speech, “I don’t need anybody’s money.” Today, Mr. Trump is looking everywhere for cash: asking small donors online, pressing fellow billionaires over private meals in Trump Tower and lobbying for donations from industries regulated by the government.
As he does so, he is sometimes making overt promises about what he will do once he’s in office, a level of explicitness toward individual industries and a handful of billionaires that has rarely been seen in modern presidential politics.
In some cases, Mr. Trump has sought to shake loose cash from industries like oil and energy that have long aligned with his deregulation agenda. In others, Mr. Trump has flipped his positions, such as on crypto.
Not long ago, he was warning that cryptocurrencies seemed “like a scam” that could facilitate crimes, and he supported stiff regulation. Now, he is aggressively courting the industry, promising to make America “the crypto capital of the planet” and to fire its most hated regulator on Day 1.
Millions of dollars in crypto-industry contributions have followed.
“Former President Trump has a ‘For Sale’ sign around his neck and appears to be willing to sell basically any policy in exchange for campaign contributions,” said Dennis Kelleher, president of Better Markets, a nonprofit that seeks stronger regulations.
The Trump operation had feared being outspent when it was competing against President Biden. But the matter of raising money became especially urgent once he was running against Vice President Kamala Harris, who raised twice as much as him over the summer.
In a statement, Karoline Leavitt, a Trump campaign spokeswoman, said the former president had proposed policies to help people “struggling from the weak and terrible policies” of the current administration.
“President Trump only takes his cues on policy from one group of people: the American people,” Ms. Leavitt said. She said he was supported by “people who share his vision of American energy dominance” as well as “crypto innovators and others in the technology sector” who are “under attack.”
In 2016, Mr. Trump vowed to “drain the swamp,” though he was not initially enamored with the phrase. “A little hokey,” he called it. But crowds roared, and he kept repeating it.
As president, he did no such thing. Far from it: He hired top executives from Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs and from the fossil fuel and pharmaceutical industries. He ended the practice of making public White House visitor logs. His family operated a for-profit hotel blocks from the White House that became a den of lobbying activity and a must-stay place for those looking to curry favor. People who paid pricey membership dues to join his private club at Mar-a-Lago had easy access to Mr. Trump as he dined on the patio, often taking the opportunity to pitch their pet interests.
“Trump was the first transactional president,” said Scott Reed, a longtime Republican consultant and former top political strategist for the United States Chamber of Commerce. “He’s now taken it to a new level.”
Crypto
There are few industries Mr. Trump has done more to court than the crypto world. And there is no industry for which his policy reversal has been more headturning.
Five months after leaving office, in June 2021, Mr. Trump said cryptocurrencies should be regulated into near oblivion. “I don’t think we should have all of the Bitcoins of the world out there,” Mr. Trump said. “I think they should regulate them very, very high.”
Three years and plenty of campaign cash later, the former president sounds a lot like a budding cryptocurrency entrepreneur. That’s because he is one.
Mr. Trump’s sons have embarked on a cryptocurrency endeavor that his advisers anticipate could prove lucrative.
In June, Mr. Trump met at Mar-a-Lago with a group of Bitcoin miners. Within hours, he posted about Bitcoin mining and how he wanted “all the remaining Bitcoin to be MADE IN THE USA!!!” He stopped by a different crypto event at Mar-a-Lago the month before and shook hands with one crypto executive, Ryan Selkis, who posted a photo with the caption: “$100 million+ from the crypto community. Consider it done, Mr. President.” Mr. Selkis soon gave $50,000.
The $100 million figure overstates the disclosed crypto-industry investment in Mr. Trump. But industry leaders have given him significant support amid concerns they have about the Biden administration’s strict regulation attempts. Mr. Trump’s main fund-raising committee has reported receiving more than $8.2 million in cryptocurrency donations through September, his campaign said. Millions and millions more have been given in actual dollars.
Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, co-founders of the crypto platform Gemini, each gave more than $1.25 million to Mr. Trump and supportive super PACs after attending a fund-raising dinner for him in San Francisco. The dinner was hosted by David Sacks, who is an outspoken crypto booster.
Mr. Trump dramatically trimmed the Republican Party’s official platform in 2024, but the revised version still made space for “the right to mine Bitcoin,” “the right to self-custody of digital assets” and opposition to a central bank digital currency.
In July, Mr. Trump appeared at a crypto industry conference and promised to fire Gary Gensler, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, on his first day — a top crypto priority. It is unclear whether the president would have that authority, but Mr. Trump has made it clear he intends to try to bring independent agencies under direct presidential control.
Ms. Harris has taken some steps to woo the deep-pocketed crypto community, including inserting a line in an economic speech about the importance of “blockchain.” And she has some crypto megadonors, such as Chris Larsen, who has contributed more than $12 million to her super PAC and her campaign.
Mr. Trump is also promising to free from prison Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the online illicit marketplace Silk Road, by commuting his sentence. Mr. Ulbricht has become a cause célèbre of the crypto community. Jesse Powell, the founder of the crypto exchange Kraken, posted in June on X about his $1 million donation to Mr. Trump with the hashtag #freeross and a thumbs-up picture of his meeting with Mr. Trump.
“If crypto had no money to give, Trump would still be the crypto president,” said Trevor Traina, who served as Mr. Trump’s ambassador to Austria, is now in the crypto business and has given more than $400,000 this year. “But fortunately for Trump, crypto does have money to give.”
Big Tobacco and Marijuana
Mr. Trump has personally long opposed smoking. The tobacco industry, however, is wagering heavily on him in 2024.
A subsidiary of the tobacco giant Reynolds American is the largest corporate contributor to Mr. Trump’s main super PAC. The business, RAI Services Company, has contributed $8.5 million so far.
The donations come as cigarette makers are seeking to fight off a proposed ban on menthol cigarettes that has been advanced — and then paused — by the Biden administration.
Brian Ballard, a lobbyist and fund-raiser for Mr. Trump who himself has given $260,000 this year, heads a lobbying firm that has represented Reynolds for years. Executives for Reynolds American and Mr. Ballard have met several times with Mr. Trump, according to two people familiar with the meetings, which were first reported by The Washington Post. They discussed policies in a second potential Trump term.
Mr. Ballard declined to comment. Reynolds American did not respond to a request for comment.
Another group, Americans for Consumer Protection, is spending $10 million in five battleground states targeting Black voters with a message blaming “Harris and Democrats” for the proposed menthol ban. The group does not disclose its donors.
Mr. Trump has not yet staked out a public position on the menthol ban. He has, however, taken a proactive and new position on marijuana.
In 2015, he said that legalizing it was “bad” and that “I feel strongly about that.” But this year, there is a major legalization measure on the ballot in Florida, and Mr. Trump has been lobbied to support it.
Over the summer, Mr. Trump met privately with Kim Rivers, the chief executive of Trulieve, the cannabis company behind the Florida measure, according to people briefed on the meeting, including State Senator Joe Gruters, who is also supporting the Florida measure and had his own meeting with Mr. Trump.
Mr. Gruters called Mr. Trump the “King Kong” of the Republican Party and said his support was important. “I would say it was a collective effort to try to educate him and encourage him to come out on the positive on this,” he said.
Mr. Trump did just that in two posts at the end of August and in early September. “It is time to end needless arrests and incarcerations of adults for small amounts of marijuana for personal use,” he wrote in a social media statement, announcing he would vote for the Florida measure.
Ms. Rivers’s company has poured more than $100 million into the Florida ballot measure but has not made any disclosed donations to the former president. She told Mr. Trump in the meeting that she “wants to be helpful,” according to a person with knowledge of her remark.
“We don’t talk about our contributions to anyone,” Ms. Rivers said on Wednesday at an event in a Trulieve dispensary near Fort Lauderdale, Fla. “And we contribute widely and broadly.”
Elon Musk and Jeff Yass
In April 2023, when Elon Musk was considering supporting Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, the former president sharply criticized the world’s richest man for seeking favors from the federal government.
“Elon is just trying to make friends with the absolutely horrible Biden Administration because of all the government subsidies he gets, and all the permits he needs,” Mr. Trump posted on his social media website, Truth Social.
A year and a half later, Mr. Musk is leading an effort to elect Mr. Trump that has no parallel in American history.
He is steering a super PAC that he has seeded with $118 million of his own money. He is relentlessly promoting Mr. Trump’s candidacy on X, the platform he owns. And he has campaigned for Mr. Trump in Pennsylvania, offering $1 million payouts to voters who sign his petitions.
Mr. Trump has responded in kind. Far from being concerned that Mr. Musk is seeking favors as a major contractor with the federal government, Mr. Trump has promised that if he’s elected, he will appoint Mr. Musk to run an audit of the government to root out waste, fraud and abuse. The move would create conflicts of interest on a scale unseen in recent memory, with Mr. Musk potentially exercising power over parts of the government that pour billions of dollars into his businesses.
Mr. Trump has recently praised Mr. Musk’s space business, which receives government funding. And while he still opposes electric vehicle mandates, Mr. Trump no longer bashes them like he used to.
“I’m for electric cars — I have to be, because Elon endorsed me very strongly,” Mr. Trump declared at a rally in August.
Mr. Musk is not the only billionaire former critic Mr. Trump has courted.
In early 2024, Mr. Trump met briefly backstage at an event with Jeff Yass, the billionaire investor whose firm owns a significant stake in the Chinese company that owns TikTok. The two men did not speak about TikTok, people familiar with the encounter said, but rather Mr. Yass’s animating cause of school choice.
Still, Mr. Trump soon opposed a bill in Congress that demanded the sale of TikTok and eventually joined the platform himself.
At a recent event in Erie in Mr. Yass’s home state of Pennsylvania, Mr. Trump, reading from the teleprompter, gave an unusually detailed shout-out to state-level legislation that Mr. Yass has lobbied aggressively for on school choice.
“The lifeline scholarship bill would be a great start for those students trapped in the worst-performing schools in Pennsylvania,” Mr. Trump said in Erie. The former president seemed surprised as the crowd cheered. “Oh, you do know that? Good,” he said.
Mr. Yass has made more than $90 million in federal donations since 2023 but has not given any disclosed funds to Mr. Trump. Mr. Yass is a major financier of Republican politics in Pennsylvania, which is seen as 2024’s most consequential presidential battleground.
Mr. Yass has given more than $6 million to two groups called Win PA and Keystone Renewal PAC, focused on down-ballot races. Mr. Yass has also previously given money to a group that in 2022 transferred $1.2 million to Citizens Alliance of Pennsylvania, which is leading a 2024 get-out-the-vote drive that could help Republicans up and down the ticket.
Cliff Maloney, the lead organizer, said they had raised $3 million to hire 120 staff members to chase ballots. Mr. Maloney declined to comment on his financial supporters but said, “Jeff Yass is a patriot.”
Oil and Gas
Mr. Trump began October with a fund-raising trip to Texas, with stops in energy-rich Midland and Houston.
Among the co-hosts on the Texas trip were Jeff Hildebrand, the billionaire founder of Hilcorp Energy Company, and his wife. The couple have donated $1.2 million to Mr. Trump and the Republican National Committee in 2024.
In contrast to the crypto industry, Mr. Trump has for a long time been aligned with much of the oil, gas and energy industry. He has derided climate change as a “hoax,” and since 2016, Mr. Trump has aggressively opposed Democrats’ environmental regulations, promoting a deregulatory agenda as president that delighted many fossil fuel executives.
Mr. Trump has received millions of dollars in donations from top energy executives, including $10 million across two pro-Trump super PACs from Kelcy Warren, the chief executive of Energy Transfer. Joseph Craft III, who leads a major coal company, and his wife, Kelly, a former Trump ambassador, have given nearly $3 million to Mr. Trump, the party and a super PAC.
One evening in April, Mr. Trump hosted an “energy round table” at Mar-a-Lago of industry executives and lobbyists, including the oil billionaire Harold Hamm, executives from major companies like Exxon Mobil and a representative from the industry lobby group, the American Petroleum Institute.
At the dinner, Mr. Trump repeated his public pledge to eliminate new Biden administration climate rules designed to speed up the transition to electric vehicles. And he told the executives that as president he would open up more public lands for oil and gas exploration.
He also made an audacious request. The oil and gas industries would do so well under a Trump president that the people in the room should donate $1 billion to his presidential campaign.
“It’s enticement and coercion — the carrot and the stick,” said Walter Shaub, a former director of the United States Office of Government Ethics. “He has been making clear through his actions that any industries that support him stand to be rewarded and any that oppose him stand to be punished.”
Patricia Mazzei contributed reporting. Kitty Bennett contributed research.
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