Item — HN Reader

Silly me...its true!

- $1,000,000 donation from NVIDIA CORPORATION to the Trump–Vance Inaugural Committee.

- $1,000,000-per-head Mar-a-Lago dinner where Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang attended.

- Jensen Huang’s contribution toward Trump’s "White House ballroom" project. Confirmed, but undisclosed value...lets says at least another $1,000,000?

2 comments

>> Well, you see, that's completely different. Nvidia agreed to give them money!

Also I believe NVIDIA's supposed to pay the US government 15% of its revenues from Chinese sales:

https://www.ft.com/content/cd1a0729-a8ab-41e1-a4d2-8907f4c01...

Which is incredibility short term thinking. You're in strategic competition, and you compromise you position for a bit of cash?

No one has ever accused Trump of being in this for the long term strategic vision lol

$1,000,000 doesn't seem like a lot of money for them, why would it matter to them?

A good reason to outlaw bribes is that politicians tend to be incredibly cheap and offer an extremely high ROI. Albeit at the cost of a nice democracy.

Ghengis Khan didn’t need your chest of gold, he owned many gold mines. Regardless, he was going to take it from you the easy way or the hard way.

You're forgetting that this is the same guy who managed to bankrupt a casino. He's not actually that good with money and until the latest bribe channels opened, eg Trump Coin and the Board of Peace, opened their finances may have been in a bit of a mess. Also I'd bet the ballroom donation was much larger, it's a massive blackhole of graft waiting to happen.

It's also not solely about money, you can get far just knowing how to chum it up with Trump when you get in the room with him. Look at the odd quasi-bromance between him and Mamdani who you'd expect to be enemy #1 but Mamdani knows how to schmooze the exact type of New York Guy Trump is.

Ahem, depending on how you count, he bankrupted 4-6 casinos.

To Nvidia, or to the recipients?

Both?

For fascism, it's not always about getting something you think is a lot. It's about a power relationship. Trump has demonstrated that Nvidia will bow to his will.

It's also potentially an implementation of the foot-in-the-door technique (https://www.simplypsychology.org/compliance.html). It's a common manipulative strategy where you get someone to do a small favor for you which makes them much more likely to do a large favor for you later.

Ah yes, again the: "I am so rich I could not possibly be corrupt!"

"Trump’s Profiteering Hits $4 Billion" - https://www.newyorker.com/news/a-reporter-at-large/trumps-pr...

"How much money President Trump and his family have made" - https://www.npr.org/2026/01/14/nx-s1-5677024/trump-profits-m...