The scenes illustrate a daily spectacle of Washington influence at 1100 Pennsylvania Ave., the city’s newest luxury hotel that has quickly become a kind of White House annex.

Downstairs that same day in the grand ballroom, hundreds of bankers discussed their industry’s future under Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who lived in the hotel for six months at his own expense, according to a spokesman, after Trump picked him for the job.

WASHINGTON – On a June morning, Romanian President Klaus Iohannis and his wife enjoyed croissants in the lounge of the opulent hotel, a day before joining President Trump a few blocks away at the White House for a Rose Garden news conference.


Since Trump’s election, the Trump International Hotel has emerged as a Republican Party power center where on a good day — such as July 28 around 8 p.m. — excited visitors can watch the president share intimate dinner conversation with his just-named chief of staff, John Kelly, and be the first to brag about it on social media.

This is nothing Washington has ever seen. For the first time in presidential history, a profit-making venture touts the name of a US president in its gold sign. And every cup of coffee served, every fund-raiser scheduled, every filet mignon ordered feeds the revenue of the Trump family’s private business.

In conversations with The Washington Post, the hotel’s management described its strategy to capitalize on the president’s popularity. It markets the hotel to Republican and conservative groups that embrace Trump’s politics but takes care not to solicit business from fringe groups that would embarrass the president.

Trump supporters in red “Make America Great Again” caps get a chance to rub elbows with White House officials against an American flag backdrop at the Benjamin Bar, where a signature concoction of winter wheat vodka, oysters, and caviar goes for $100.


“While we can’t quantify how much business we have received because of politics, neither can we quantify how much we have lost,” Patricia Tang, director of sales and marketing, said in an interview.

It is difficult to see comings and goings at the hotel. There are no signs in the lobby to direct guests to daily events, velvet ropes block the public from meeting areas, and some groups holding conventions and banquets omit references to Trump’s name in their promotional materials. Many decline to answer questions about why they chose the Trump hotel from the many similar luxury Washington venues.

The Washington Post spent part of every day in May in the hotel’s bars, restaurants, and lobby.

What reporters saw ranged from events hosted by foreign groups with policy priorities to Republican glitterati — Rudolph Giuliani posing for selfies at the bar the night Trump fired FBI Director James Comey; White House aide Omarosa Manigault conferring with the former producer of “The Apprentice”; then-press secretary Sean Spicer scrolling through his phone in the lobby.

The parade included out-of-town tourists gawking in the lobby; bartenders hawking $2,500-per-bottle champagne; a light artist at nightfall projecting a protest message on the gray stone facade that read “Pay Trump Bribes Here.”

Trump, as titular leader of the Republican Party, has showcased the hotel as a destination of choice for GOP loyalists.

In July, about 300 Republican donors, paying $35,000 apiece, gathered at the hotel for a fund-raiser headlined by the president. The event raised an estimated $10 million for Trump’s campaign, the Republican National Committee, and other GOP groups, according to news reports at the time.


No one has yet calculated how much taxpayer money is being spent at the hotel. A Texas newspaper is seeking records of state expenditures at the hotel.

Business from foreign customers is brisk, the hotel says, but as an ethical precaution, it says it does not market directly to foreign embassies.

Under an agreement signed by Trump, the hotel has promised to donate any profits made from foreign governments to the US Treasury. An obscure constitutional provision known as the emoluments clause prohibits the president from profiting from foreign governments without specific approval from Congress.

But groups with foreign interests have found that the location helps attract Washington star power.

Since Trump’s election, his critics have charged that anyone seeking favor from the White House has an incentive to stay in posh rooms that can be booked on the Internet for $400 per night or more.

One of Washington’s most expensive hotels, the Trump International brought in $19.7 million between its opening last fall and mid-April, according to Trump’s most recent financial disclosure.

Trump tried to address ethical concerns by turning over the hotel’s management to his two eldest sons and vowing to take no hotel profits during his tenure. But he retained his ownership interest, allowing him to eventually profit from the holdings.