On the opposite shore of Lake Virginia from the Rollins campus sits a 13,000-square-foot mansion, with an amber-hued facade, palatial columns, and white statues that flock a pristine swimming pool.
The loudly luxurious villa is home to Eric and Diane Holm, the largest owners of Golden Corral franchises in the nation—it was also the site of a key fundraiser for Donald Trump, who just became the first convicted felon to win a U.S. presidential election.
“You are cordially invited to a Lunch Reception with the next Vice President of the United States, Senator JD Vance.”
Those words marked the invitation to the September 25 luncheon, where tickets were priced up to $100,000 per couple for those itching to get their hands on a lunch plate served with a side of a roundtable discussion on the future of Trump’s America and a photo with Vance.
Perhaps it should come as no surprise that the Golden Corral couple pledges allegiance to Trump; to many, the true American buffet is the perfect emblem of caving into gluttony, greed, and indulgence. Eric Holm had fashioned a $165 million empire, but closures due to the sanitary questionability of buffet restaurants during the Covid-19 pandemic led him to file his holding company, 1069 Restaurant Group, for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2020. Now, nearly all of his 33 stores are back in operation.
Trump’s rejection of democratic norms and decency, denigration of immigrants as rapists and criminals, abject racism and support of White supremacists, 27 rape allegations, 34 felony counts, and support for White nationalists and neo-Nazis (who he called “very fine people”) were all overlooked or outright embraced by America’s wealthiest benefactors.
Following the election results, donors like the Holms are eagerly anticipating an all-you-can-eat special of tax cuts for their businesses to compound their philanthropic tax write-offs (see this recent report on how the direct taxpayer subsidy for “charitable giving” is $111 billion a year), tariffs on foreign goods, deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants, and drastic changes to an economy that has been found to be healthy by economic specialists of all political leanings.
The 2024 election cemented the state of Florida as a deep-red state, with Miami-Dade voting for a Republican for the first time in 36 years and Tampa and large areas of central Florida turning red as well. Vice President Kamala Harris won in Orange County, Florida, receiving about 42 percent to his 57 percent of the vote in the peninsula overall.
Executives and founders at many of America’s biggest businesses are what ultimately fueled Trump’s campaign; 26 billionaires gave over $1 million each to PACs funding Trump in a combined $162 million; Elon Musk’s super political action committee donated $200 million to return Trump to the White House. According to the U.S. Treasury Department, total federal revenue dropped between 2017 and 2018 during Trump’s presidency, rising once he left office in 2021; he increased the national debt by $7.8 trillion but benefitted the richest Americans by creating legislation to enforce large tax cuts for profitable corporations and wealthy Americans; the cuts were costly for the rest of America and failed to trickle down and benefit working class citizens.
Largely because of the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, individuals and corporations can dance around legal limits to campaign donations by giving unlimited amounts of money to super PACs.
Someone with the username “Curtis” left a searing comment on the Winter Park Voice’s report of the September fundraiser: “I wonder what the employees of Golden Corral would think of a $5k – $100k a plate luncheon and owners that support a party that voted against an increase in the minimum wage. Did we the taxpayers pay for all of the police and security or is that something the Holms Family will pay?”
If one could elect to be any member of our American society in its increasing income equality, polarization, and greed-driven moral decay, it would likely be the Holms’ English bulldog, Boo, who lives in a custom carousel dog-bed and has his own room in the Lake Virginia mansion— just skim through these photos from Winter Park Magazine to see it.
I only hope that Boo did not take Trump’s remark that immigrants are “eating the dogs” too literally—it seems his owners may have fallen for it.
“Money in its proper place is a worthwhile and necessary instrument for a well-rounded life, but when it is projected to the status of a god it becomes a power that corrupts and an instrument of exploitation.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
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