Don Jr and Kimberly Guilfoyle received $50,000 for University of Florida speaking event at Trump campaign official's request: Student newspaper

Don Jr and Kimberly Guilfoyle received $50,000 for University of Florida speaking event at Trump campaign official's request: Student newspaper
Image via Wikimedia Commons.
Alex Henderson
November 01, 2019

During an October 9, 2006 appearance on Larry King’s show on CNN — ten years before he was elected president of the United States — Donald Trump declared, “I like nepotism.” That is among the most honest things Trump has ever said; he likes nepotism a lot — so much that, according to the student newspaper at the University of Florida, his reelection campaign urged the student body to bring in his son, Donald Trump Jr., for a paid speech given on October 10.

Trump’s fondness for nepotism has been impossible to miss. His daughter, Ivanka Trump, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, are both senior advisers in his administration — and Donald Trump Jr. is a prominent figure on his 2020 reelection campaign. And as affluent as Trump Jr. is, his father’s campaign was happy to help him earn thousands more, according to the University of Florida’s student newspaper, The Alligator.

Trump campaign official Caroline Wren, The Alligator reports, directly e-mailed the University of Florida’s student body president, Michael Murphy, in September and asked him to bring in Donald Trump Jr. to speak along with GOP operative Kimberly Guilfoyle (who previously co-hosted “The Five” on Fox News), and Republican National Committee (RNC) official Tommy Hicks. Although Guilfoyle has been very involved in Republican politics, she was once married to a prominent Democrat: California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

The $50,000 payment for Trump Jr., Guilfoyle and Hicks (described by The Alligator as a “joint payment”) for the October 10 event was funded by student tuition.

In a September 10 e-mail, according to The Alligator, Wren told Murphy, “We met at my house on the 4th of July. I wanted to follow up with you regarding a speaking engagement at the University of Florida for Donald Trump Jr.” And on September 11, Murphy responded and said he would to “love to hop on a phone call” to discuss bringing Trump Jr., Guilfoyle and Hicks to the campus.

Wren told The Alligator that, in her e-mails to the University of Florida, she used a Trump campaign-related e-mail signature by accident and that she was communicating “via my private e-mail in my personal capacity and mistakenly forgot to remove my Trump Victory signature."

Report typos and corrections to: feedback@alternet.org.

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