MELANIA, softly: I was told I would not have to speak to the cameras.
IVANKA, jogging in from another room, slightly out of breath: No, no, you’ll just have to smile! But Eric, we need you to smile less. You’re still creeping people out, remember. OK, where are the kids’ furs? Are they still at the cleaner? Jared?
JARED KUSHNER, looking at his phone, wordlessly holds up three glistening white fur coats slung over his arm. ARABELLA and JOSEPH enter the room wearing bejeweled gold crowns, followed by a nanny who carries THEODORE, draped in shimmering velvet.
KUSHNER, confessional: I actually just had the groomer do the furs after Ivana’s dog the other day. [Grins]
Camera pans to DONALD TRUMP and STEVE BANNON speaking intensely off to the side.
BANNON: So Breitbart and Liberty Writers are in Pen 1, about 20 feet from the stage, and everyone else will be in Pen 2, which will be over by the Washington Monument.
DONALD TRUMP: [Nods]
Ext. Capitol Building.
SEACREST, sipping from a straw planted in an opaque Coke-branded water bottle: America, the moment has finally come. Let’s take a look at these crowds! Let’s hear what they’re chant ― Um, let’s move over to the stage.
KID ROCK emerges to sing the national anthem. DONALD TRUMP takes his oath on the Lincoln bible, which has been covered in gold leaf for the occasion. Upon his final word, the U.S. Army Band emerges wearing red “Make America Great Again” T-shirts over their uniforms to play “Hail to the Chief,” which morphs seamlessly into the theme from “Game of Thrones” as two large #MAGA banners unfurl from the Capitol Building between a heavily Photoshopped profile of Trump in the center. Cut to commercial.
It is customary for president-elects to raise money for their inauguration, which costs millions.
President Barack Obama limited his 2009 inauguration to raising $50,000 per individual, though past inaugurations had set higher limits. But for his 2013 inauguration, donor solicitations
obtained by The Associated Press also sought $1 million donations.
Trump initially mostly self-financed his primary campaign, using it as a selling point on the stump that he was not beholden to special interests.
But in the general election, Trump raised hundreds of millions from private donors with the Republican National Committee, and though he
pledged to spend $100 million of his own money, never met that amount, giving less than $60 million of his own money through October.
In 1993, Terry McAuliffe authored a memo that would essentially turn the Lincoln Bedroom in the White House into a hotel for top campaign donors. It would "be an excellent opportunity to energize our key people for the upcoming year," McAuliffe wrote. Now McAuliffe, who is currently the governor of Virginia, is defending the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation's acceptance of foreign cash.
"If the biggest attack on Hillary’s going to be that she raised too much money for her charity, okay, I’ll take that," McAuliffe told the Washington Post. "No one’s alleging anything beyond that she raised money and people gave her money and foreign governments gave her money. At the end of the day, that’s fine. It went to a charity. It helped a lot of people."