Hi there, everyone. It's 4 o'clock in New York. We made it to Friday.

Donald Trump has made it clear that he will stop at nothing to get his prized, precious.

I carry around a picture of it in my pocket golden ballroom done,

even as his base and members of his own political party and the courts all try to slow or stop him.

Now as support for funding his ballroom becomes politically toxic, there's brand new reporting

that finds that the companies that have

donated toward the demolition and rebuilding of his golden ballroom have received federal

contracts worth billions of dollars. Washington Post is reporting this, quote, more than half of

the publicly identified donors to Donald Trump's White House Ballroom Project, have won new or

expanded federal contracts collectively worth more than $50 billion during the past six months.

That's according to a report by a government watchdog group.

Fourteen of the 27 known corporate donors to the $400 million project, which would replace the East Wing that

Donald Trump demolished in October, have seen their government business grow in that window,

that's according to the report from Public Citizen, a nonprofit group.

The new report focuses on contracts awarded in most of the seven months since the East Wing's demolition,

which Trump's critics have argued created new urgency around potential conflicts of interest.

Of the known donors, no single contributor received more new business with the government

since giving to the project than Lockheed Martin.

That defense giant received roughly $43.8 billion in new or expanded

contract funding since last fall, according to the report. Booz Allen Hamilton followed with

more than $4.2 billion and Palantir with just over $1 billion. Other donors that receive

newer increased contracts include Amazon, Microsoft,

...