The White House is offering a new corporate sponsorship opportunity-slash-potential-ethics-catastrophe: The annual Easter Egg Roll.
According to a CNN report published Sunday, the Trump administration is soliciting sponsors for the nearly 150-year-old tradition—which is slated for April 21 and features games and activities for kids—through a production company that is helping stage the event. For sums ranging from $75,000 to $200,000, participating companies can get their logos or names slapped on Easter baskets and signage, along with an invitation to a brunch hosted by First Lady Melania Trump and a private tour of the White House, among other perks, according to a document obtained by CNN.
“Sponsors of WHEER [White House Easter Egg Roll] provide financial support, activities, and giveaways to enhance the event while gaining valuable brand visibility and national recognition,” the document says, per CNN’s report.
Corporate backing for the Easter Egg Roll is itself something of an annual tradition. But according to CNN’s reporting, this year’s “unprecedented” planned event goes well beyond prior arrangements:
The Egg Roll, which began during the Rutherford B. Hayes administration in 1878, has long been privately funded without taxpayer dollars, largely through the American Egg Board, which also provides tens of thousands of eggs for the occasion. And all money raised by [the production company] Harbinger will go to the White House Historical Association…
Donald Sherman, the chief counsel and executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), said he had “never seen anything like this before” associated with a White House.
“I understand that there are corporate sponsors for the Easter Egg Roll,” Sherman told CNN. “What I have not seen before is sort of the outright solicitation and the use of the imprimatur of the White House to give corporate sponsorship.”
Previous egg rolls have been a source of tension between those involved with planning and the [White House] Counsel’s Office. Multiple administrations had to tell Coca-Cola that thousands of Dasani water bottles donated for the event could not be served in Coke-branded coolers, for instance, because of the branding restrictions placed by the White House lawyers.
CNN also quoted Richard Painter—who served as an ethics attorney in the White House counsel’s office under President George W. Bush—as saying that what Trump is planning “would have been vetoed in about 30 seconds in my day…We’re not running this like a football stadium where you get all logos all over the place for kicking in money.” On X, Painter pointed to a federal law barring the use of public office for private gain, writing, “Back in the day, the White House staff followed rules.”
Of course, potential ethical entanglements haven’t always stopped Trump administration officials in the past; it was only about two weeks ago, after all, that Trump and Elon Musk turned the White House driveway into a Tesla sales lot, with Trump buying a car on the spot to show his support for the company in the face of increasing nationwide protests and plummeting stock prices. And just a few days ago, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick urged Fox viewers to “buy Tesla…[the stock] will never be this cheap again.”
CNN reports that all money raised from Easter Egg Roll sponsorships will be put in an account run by the White House Historical Association, a private educational nonprofit. According to an anonymous source familiar with the planning of the event who spoke to CNN, excess funds raised will go toward other White House events, such as July 4 or Halloween celebrations.
Regardless, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) called the news “absurdly corrupt” in a Facebook post.
The White House is working with the same event production company—Harbinger, founded by former Mitt Romney campaign staffers—that produced the Easter Egg Roll during Trump’s first term, CNN reports. Spokespeople for the White House and Harbinger did not immediately respond to questions from Mother Jones.
