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An invitation to a “candlelight” dinner held this past Saturday at President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club asked prospective guests to spend $1 million per seat. Trump attended the dinner along with Elon Musk, according to multiple photographs and videos of the event viewed by WIRED.
Elon Musk, wearing his standard uniform of a black sport coat over a black T-shirt, was seen shaking hands and waving to other attendees. He was with a woman wearing a floor length gown who appeared to be Shivon Zilis, according to Instagram Reels posted by multiple guests. Zilis, a Neuralink executive who previously sat on the board of OpenAI, is the mother of four of Musk’s 14 known children. (Zilis did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)
Musk, whose so-called Department of Government Efficiency has spent the last six weeks ransacking federal agencies, sat next to Trump at the dinner.
WIRED previously reported on another candlelight dinner held on March 1 where guests were also invited to spend $1 million per person. That event appeared on the president’s public schedule with a note reading “the President attends the MAGA INC. Candlelight Finance Dinner.” The March 15 candlelight dinner did not appear on the official schedule.
“You are invited to a candlelight dinner featuring special guest speaker President Donald J. Trump,” states the invitation, obtained by WIRED. “$1,000,000 per person.” The invitation has a “MAGA INC.” header and a note at the bottom of the invitation reads, “Donald J. Trump is appearing at this event only as a special guest speaker and is not asking for funds or donations.” MAGA Inc., or Make America Great Again Inc., is a super PAC that supported Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign.
WIRED has also reported that business leaders could secure a one-on-one meeting with Trump for $5 million at Mar-a-Lago. The $5 million meetings have become a “hot ticket” in the business community, a source familiar with them previously told WIRED.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the event or the lack of the event’s inclusion on the president’s official schedule.
Experts WIRED has spoken with about these candlelight dinners have noted concerns about their unusual nature. “I can’t recall a sitting president in the first weeks of his administration asking for millions of dollars in fundraising,” Don Moynihan, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan, previously told WIRED. “The concern is less about fundraising and more about access and influence. People hoping to get favorable treatment view it in their interest to donate money to Trump.”
The candlelight dinner occurred over the same weekend as the Palm Event, an annual celebration of motorsports in Palm Beach, Florida. One of the celebration’s weekend events occurred at Mar-a-Lago on Sunday afternoon and featured “street sportscars and cars with a motorsports heritage, one-of-a-kind, concept cars, celebrity-owned and cars with a racing history,” according to the Palm Event website. A number of these cars appeared the night prior at the candlelight dinner, according to Instagram reels that featured guests milling around a Rolls Royce, Bugatti, and Lamborghini, among other luxury vehicles displayed on the lawn.
The evening also coincided with a serious escalation in Trump’s crackdown on immigration. On Saturday, while Trump and Musk dined with MAGA donors, a federal judge ordered the White House to stop the deportation of people the Trump administration alleged were Venezuelan gang members. Despite that ruling, two planes carrying the alleged gang members flew from Texas to El Salvador. Senior officials reportedly told Axios that the ruling held no force “because the flights were over international waters.”
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