Donald Trump held a secret meeting with nearly a dozen special interest groups in Washington last week, including a veteran lobbyist and the chief executive of an airline trade group,
The New York Times reports.
According to the Times, those attending the private meeting arranged by Alabama GOP Sen. Jeff Sessions included Nicholas Calio, a former lobbyist who worked on legislative affairs for President George Bush and is now the president and chief executive of the trade group Airlines for America.
Also at the session was Juanita Duggan, the president and chief executive of the National Federation of Independent Business, another trade group; Duggan also is a former aide in the first Bush and Reagan administrations, the Times reports.
Trump's GOP presidential campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks tells the newspaper in an email that Sessions invited people for whom he has "great respect."
"Mr. Trump didn't know them, but it was a brief meeting that took place right after the lengthy foreign policy team meeting," she said of the meeting last Thursday at the Old Post Office Building in the nation's capital.
Trump has derided
special interests and lobbyists, and touted his own self-funded campaign as being free of outside pressure.
© 2024 Newsmax. All rights reserved.