The Weekly season 1, episode 5 recap: Inauguration, Inc.

Jerald Raymond Pierce

THE WEEKLY “Inauguration, Inc.” Episode 5 (Airs Sunday; June 30, 10:00 pm/ep) — Pictured: New York Times Reporter Saron LaFraniere reads a document with the Executive Director of George W. Bush’s Inaugural committee Greg Jenkins. CR: FX

This episode of The Weekly looks all the way back to the inauguration of President Trump to highlight a major problem in Washington.

Maggie Haberman, a New York Times White House correspondent, leads and narrates this episode of The Weekly that centers around how much money was raised (and spent) during Trump’s 2017 inauguration. Joining her in this episode are investigative reporter Sharon LaFraniere, Washington investigative correspondent Mark Mazzetti, Washington reporter Kenneth P. Vogel and Washington investigative correspondent Matthew Rosenberg.

Yes, there are a lot of reporters in this episode and once you see how dense this story is, you’ll understand why.

Let’s start at the top. The episode digs into the amount of money raised for Trump’s inauguration—$107 million, the most in history. In fact, it doubles the previous record (held by Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration) of $53 million.

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Interviews with Greg Jenkins (who was in charge of George W. Bush’s second inauguration) and Steve Kerrigan (in charge of both Obama inaugurations) ask the obvious question: Where on earth did all of that money go?

Haberman explains that, by tradition, Congress hosts the actual inauguration. Everything outside of that official ceremony (i.e. the parades, concerts, dinners, parties, etc.) are up to the President-elect, who selects a Presidential Inaugural Committee to raise money for those events. For Trump, the chairman of that committee was Tom Barrack, the real estate investor who sold Trump the Plaza Hotel.

This episode features a couple of surprises in terms of who The Weekly was able to round up for interviews. One surprise is Steve Bannon talking about meeting with Barrack about the inauguration plans. Bannon claims his idea was to skip the expensive aspects in favor of appearing different from the previous administrations. In fact, it was his goal to spend $1 less than what Obama spent.

His idea didn’t win out.

Anyway, while interviewing Jenkins and Kerrigan, LaFraniere shows them documents the Times had received from a source that showed how the Trump organization spent the funds raised for the inauguration.

As the episode points out, the issue isn’t that money is missing. The issue is that almost every penny of this outrageous $107 million is accounted for. It’s best captured by a flabbergasted Jenkins trying to figure out how and why the Trump inauguration spent $30 million more on events alone than his team raised for the total inauguration.

Where did the money go?

THE WEEKLY “Inauguration, Inc.” Episode 5 (Airs Sunday; June 30, 10:00 pm/ep) — Pictured: New York Times Reporter Ken Vogel sits at Paval Fuchs’ table. CR: FX

Follow the money

The Weekly then picks one example to show where this money went. WIS Media Partners received $1.6 million for eight weeks of work. That company? Created mere weeks before the inauguration and run by an event planner friend of Melania Trump.

That event planner, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, made $500,000 for her work—more than previous senior staff members made, as Kerrigan points out.

Jenkins does couch this segment in the fact that no, it’s not illegal…it’s just a dumb way to spend money.

This is one example, but as The Weekly points out, there were other major vendors with connections to the Trump family or to people close to the Trump family. Those vendors collected a third of the money raised for the inauguration—including $1.5 mil to the Trump hotel in Washington.

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Jenkins then notes how much money was spent on private events for donors. Events like a candlelight dinner were thrown for donors who had given between $250,000 and $1 million.

The Weekly then jumps to Jan. 19, 2017, the day before the inauguration, to talk more about that candlelight dinner. The episode highlights some of the extravagant spending that went into the $675,000 in decorations for that event (one of eight donor events that week).

Craziest expense: Makeup treatments for staff working the event, coming in at $500 each.

While showing pictures of the event, the episode highlights just how much some top donors spent, since there was no cap on donation amounts. Then, Mazzetti asks a big question: if you’re giving someone millions of dollars, what are you expecting in return?

This shifts The Weekly‘s focus to some of the attendees of these events, including a Russian oligarch with ties to the Kremlin (later brought up in the Muller investigation), a Russian agent who infiltrated the NRA and a lawyer linked to the Kremlin who offered dirt on Hillary Clinton in a Trump Tower meeting.

But they’re brought up for the sake of mentioning that there were many people outside of the United States who were trying to get into these events and weren’t able to.

One Ukrainian/Russian businessman (worth $250 million) had worked with Trump in the early 2000s when trying to build a tower in Moscow with him. He had wanted to go to the inauguration events, but it’s illegal for foreigners to donate to an inaugural fund. So, he tried to go through a Ukrainian-American donor who offered him tickets to an event for a $50,000 discount.

But, after wiring the $200,000 for the tickets, the businessman was then told that he could be introduced to Trump for $500,000 more—smartly, he turned that down. He should have turned down the first offer because, like buying tickets from a bad scalper, the businessman didn’t get anything for his money.

The Weekly brings up this example to point out that people were willing to drop hundreds of thousands of dollars for events like these. And with the willing come those content to take their money.

THE WEEKLY “Inauguration, Inc.” Episode 5 (Airs Sunday; June 30, 10:00 pm/ep) — Pictured: Anthony Scaramucci sits in his office. CR: FX

The rich get richer

This includes Elliott Broidy, a man who pled guilty to bribing New York State officials and became a pariah for those in the Republican party looking for donations. Well, that is until Trump came along and made him the finance vice chairman and a key fundraiser.

Vogel takes over here and talks about how he received emails showing Broidy’s plans to invite foreign officials to exclusive inauguration events. One that The Weekly focuses on shows Broidy offering an inauguration invite that is essentially linked to foreign officials entering into a contract with his private security firm.

The security firm received $6 million. The officials were seen at the candlelight dinner.

These sorts of transactions continued after the inaugurations. The Weekly then zooms out to show how the Trump team as a whole cared less about the rules and were just find with taking money to give people access to the President.

Cut to the Chairman’s dinner, hosted by Barrack, on Jan. 17, 2017. Five hundred people are invited to this dinner that cost millions.

It was billed as a Washington tradition, a way for foreign dignitaries to meet the administration they’d be working with. So what is the owner of the New England Patriots doing there?

Well, top donors were also invited. People with connections to Barrack were also there—including wealthy investors from the Middle East cozied up next to executives from Barrack’s company.

The Weekly juxtaposes this with a clip of Trump lambasting Washington politics for how much money is able to influence politicians.

As the episode wraps up, Rosenberg sits down with Anthony Scaramucci, the former White House communications director. It’s the perfect cap to this episode. Scaramucci talks about how greed always wins. Plus, he points out, no one is checking people in Washington, there’s no referee, so there’s a feeding frenzy.

Haberman ends this episode of The Weekly by saying that the Trump administration has blurred the line between public service and private gain. The events surrounding Trumps inauguration are a big reminder of that.

What did you think of this episode of The Weekly? Let us know in the comments!

Jerald Raymond Pierce

Jerald Raymond Pierce is a writer and journalist whose work has appeared in American Theatre magazine, the Seattle Times, the Charleston Post and Courier and the Syracuse Post-Standard. He has his BFA in Acting from Ohio University and MA in Arts Journalism from Syracuse University.