Not metaphorical. A $5 million residency card with his face on it. Dinners priced at $1M–$10M. A memecoin gala where the guest list was the top 297 wallets. And a donation that preceded an FDA decision by one week.
Sen. Dick Durbin's official Senate release documents the cleanest example in the file: Reynolds tobacco donated $5 million to the pro-Trump super PAC, executives dined with the president at his golf club, and one week later he directed the FDA to authorise the company's vaping products.
This matters because it is documented by a sitting senator through an official government channel — not media reporting that can be dismissed as biased. And because the same three-step structure appears repeatedly: donation, access at a Trump property, favourable federal action.