President Donald Trump and Ivanka Trump both donated across the political spectrum over the years. | Molly Riley-Pool/Getty Images 2020 elections Awkward: How Trump’s past donations could haunt 2020 Dems Donations from Trump and his family add another wrinkle to a Democratic primary where candidates are trumpeting their distance from the president.

Kamala Harris received money from Donald Trump as recently as six years ago. Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner hosted a Park Avenue fundraiser for Cory Booker. Kirsten Gillibrand took in Trump family donations three times across a seven-year period — and then gave a similar amount of money to a nonprofit years later after the president mocked her in a tweet.

As the president gears up for his re-election fight, donor records show that six of the declared or potential Democrats itching to take him on have themselves been the beneficiaries of his — or his daughter’s — largesse.


Harris, Booker and Gillibrand — along with Joe Biden, John Kerry and Terry McAuliffe — all share a common bond of receiving Trump family donations, adding another wrinkle to a crowded primary where candidates are expected to trumpet their distance from the president.

An ideological shapeshifter whose decades in the public eye have spanned stints as a Republican, Democrat, Reform Party candidate and independent, Trump has donated across the spectrum from the establishment left to the far right. The recipients include both Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and politically exiled Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa).

Many of Donald Trump’s donations fall into two categories: contributions to local pols and officials with whom he wanted to curry favor, or one-offs to prominent players on the national stage.

COUNTDOWN TO 2020 The race for 2020 starts now. Stay in the know. Follow our presidential election coverage. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

But he strayed outside his usual New York and New Jersey turf to give Harris two donations totaling $6,000 in 2011 and 2013, when she was already considered a rising Democratic star as California attorney general.

Those were two of several contributions he made to state attorneys general who were investigating or had previously investigated Trump University.

Harris also landed $2,000 from Ivanka Trump for her re-election campaign, and another $2,000 from future Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin when she ran for Senate in 2016.

Trump historians who have studied his family and real estate career said he learned his political worldview from his father — and in a New York City industry where greasing politicians for favorable zoning exemptions or tax abatements was par for the course.

“This was completely irrespective of anything to do with principles, political perspectives,” said Gwenda Blair, a Columbia University journalism professor who wrote “The Trumps: Three Generations That Built an Empire.” “It was about levers of power, period. And this has not changed. This has never changed.”

Spokespeople for the Trump re-election campaign, Biden and McAuliffe declined to comment on the record. Other campaigns did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The Harris campaign told The Sacramento Bee that Harris gave away the $6,000 from Donald Trump to a nonprofit in 2015 — and that she never met with him or gave him special treatment.

Whether their prior financial entanglements could surface as attack lines against Trump or any of these Democrats remains to be seen. In 2016, Trump won over crowds by insisting that his wealth inoculated him from undue external pressures. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) tried to turn Trump’s contributions to Harris and other California Democrats into a cudgel, but Trump was already cruising to the nomination by the state’s late primary.

During the primary campaign, in fact, Trump touted his donations to opponents. “It’s interesting: I was looking at the ones I’m running against. I’ve contributed to most of them. Can you believe it?” he said in an Iowa stop. “I’ve given to Democrats. I’ve given to Hillary. I’ve given to everybody! Because that was my job. I gotta give to them. Because when I want something, I get it. When I call, they kiss my ass.”

Clinton, on the other hand, took tremendous flak for her sources of money, and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) bashed her repeatedly for giving paid speeches to Wall Street firms. And with the Democratic Party’s insurgency on the left this year — and a long list of contenders for the nomination — financial litmus tests could once again come into play.

Harris, for one — among the early front-runners and a lightning rod for some Twitter backers of Sanders — has attracted some negative liberal attention for her donations from Trump and Mnuchin. The Black Socialists of America tweeted disapprovingly; a meme popped up last month.

Nobody in the burgeoning Democratic 2020 field has taken as much from the Trumps as McAuliffe and Booker. McAuliffe landed $25,000 from Trump in his failed Virginia gubernatorial primary bid in 2009. (He won four years later.)

Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, now top advisers to the president, each sent Booker $10,400 in 2013. They bundled $41,000 and hosted a fundraiser for his Senate campaign that year.

Kushner hails from a prominent New Jersey Democratic family; his brother, Joshua, made identical donations to Booker. (Joshua Kushner has also given to former Rep. Beto O’Rourke and Rep. Seth Moulton, who are both considering White House runs.)

But in the wake of Trump’s 2016 election, some Democrats began to look askance at the money they once took from his family.

In 2017, Booker reflected on the support from Ivanka Trump and Kushner in an interview with BuzzFeed’s “Another Round” podcast. The headline: “Booker Doesn’t Regret Fundraising With Jared And Ivanka In 2013, But ‘Wouldn’t Take A Dime From Them Now.’”

Harris isn’t the only candidate to have rid herself of Trump’s money. Trump gave Gillibrand $5,850 across three donations in 2007 and 2010. And the New York senator took $2,000 from Ivanka Trump in 2014.

But in December 2017, Gillibrand gave the $5,850 away to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network after Trump tweeted that she “would come to my office ‘begging’ for campaign contributions not so long ago (and would do anything for them).” She turned the moment into some of her best-ever fundraising days.

President Trump gave Kirsten Gillibrand $5,850 across three donations in 2007 and 2010. But in December 2017, Gillibrand gave the $5,850 away to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network. | Scott Olson/Getty Images

Not all of Trump’s donations as directly reflected angling for his self-interest. He gave Biden, then a senator from Delaware, a $1,000 gift in 2001.

Kerry, a more peripheral figure in 2020 speculation who has nonetheless said he’s mulling a bid, landed $5,500 from Trump in seven donations spanning 1989 to 2003.

In one striking example, Trump made equal $2,000 donations to rivals Kerry and President George W. Bush — just eight days apart in June 2003.

“He’s a person who believes in nothing more than he believes in transactions,” said Michael D’Antonio, author of the 2015 Trump biography “Never Enough.” “So this was his down payment. And he didn’t care who won. Either way he was going to win. Because he was going to back the winner. And he’s not alone in that, I don’t think.”

Of course, the president’s past contributions to Democrats are nothing new. His repeated gifts to Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation throughout the mid-2000s made hay when they battled for the presidency in 2016, but they didn’t derail either’s path to a party nomination.

In the 2008 presidential election, Trump sent money to Clinton, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Republican National Committee.

Trump himself has defended his donations to Democrats on much the same grounds: as simple realpolitik for a New York City real estate developer.

“Everyone’s Democratic,” he told Sean Hannity in 2011, when he was weighing a White House challenge to President Barack Obama. “So what am I going to do, contribute to Republicans? … I mean, one thing I’m not stupid.”