No one loves the outdoors like Eric and Donald Trump Jr., and nobody loves coming up with new, wildly creative ways to give the nation’s ethics lawyers a headache like the entirety of the Trump family. Thus, it is perhaps not surprising that a newly created nonprofit that combines hunting and bizarrely high-level access to the new President during Inauguration Day Weekend appears to be the work of Eric Trump and Don Jr.
The Center for Public Integrity reported Monday night that Trump’s large adult sons are behind a newly-created nonprofit called the Opening Day Foundation, incorporated in Texas. The two of them sit on its board, along with two Dallas businessmen, a hedge fund manager named Gentry Beach and Tom Hicks Jr. (the son of billionaire investment banker Tom Hicks).
TMZ was the first place to report on Opening Day’s existence, via this very exciting brochure that itemizes in outstanding detail how much money you have to pay to get next to Donald Trump. For instance, if you donate $1 million to Opening Day, you get all this fun stuff, via TMZ:
There are other levels— “Wild Turkeys” who donate a mere $25,000, for example, only get some tickets to the inauguration, and something called an “Outfitter’s Pro Package.”
The Center for Public Integrity reports that the nonprofit was created on December 14, and notes that its donors don’t have to reveal themselves, unlike, say, a PAC. Opening Day is promising that the net proceeds will go to “conservation charities,” but not, like, which ones or how “net proceeds” will be determined. One of the co-chairmen defended the whole thing to the CPI as just a gentlemen’s weekend full of denim and leather:
Mike Ingram, an Arizona developer who is listed as one of the co-chairmen, said Beach approached him to help.
“I’m honored to do it,” he said. “It’s not going to be a black tie event. It’s going to be boots and jeans and camouflage and it’s going to raise a lot of money to go to sportsman’s charities” and conservation charities, he said.
Cool. This is, if we’re keeping track, the third time that the Trump Children TM have tried to use their dad as a marketing opportunity: Ivanka’s team used her appearance with him on 60 Minutes to try to sell one of her hideous bracelets, then insisted it was all a big mistake and they’re new at this. Then Eric Trump tried to sell a coffee date with Ivanka to raise money for the sick children but had to defensively cancel it after questions were raised about whether it looked exactly like another influence-selling operation.
It remains to be seen how this already-exhausting cycle will play itself out with Opening Day. Credit where it’s due, though: the Trump family, while novices at the presidency, sure are good at selling themselves.