President Donald Trump gathered Thursday evening at his Virginia golf club with the highest-paying customers of his personal cryptocurrency, promising that he would promote the crypto industry from the White House as protesters outside condemned the event as a historic corruption of the presidency.

The gala dinner held at the Trump National Golf Club in suburban Washington, where Trump flew from the White House on a military helicopter, turned into an extraordinary spectacle as hundreds of guests arrived, many having flown to the United States from overseas.

At the club’s entrance, the guests were greeted by dozens of protesters chanting “shame, shame, shame.”

It was a spectacle that could only have happened in the era of Donald Trump. Several of the dinner guests, in interviews with The New York Times, said that they attended the event with the explicit intent of influencing Trump and U.S. financial regulations.

“The past administration made your lives miserable,” Trump told the dinner guests, referring to the Biden administration’s enforcement actions against cryptocurrency companies.

The gala attendees made whooping noises while Trump spoke, and applauded as the president declared: “They were going after everybody. It was a disgrace frankly,” according to a video provided to the Times by a dinner guest.

Trump promised to change everything for crypto. “There is a lot of sense in crypto. A lot of common sense in crypto. And we’re honored to be working on helping everybody here.”

Trump and his business partners organized the dinner to promote sales of his $TRUMP token, a meme coin launched just days before Trump’s inauguration. A meme coin is a type of cryptocurrency tied to an online joke or mascot; it typically has no function beyond speculation. But Trump’s coins have become a vehicle for investors, including many based overseas, to funnel money to his family.

The president’s business partners called the dinner the world’s “most EXCLUSIVE INVITATION” and posted a leaderboard online that allowed crypto investors to calculate how many $TRUMP coins they would have to buy to earn one of the approximately 220 seats.

The start of Trump’s second term has been punctuated with more than a dozen of these lucrative transactions for his family and partners: real estate deals from Qatar to Serbia that involve foreign governments, a new banklike crypto venture that has pulled in $2 billion from the government of the United Arab Emirates, a golf tournament at his Miami club sponsored by a Saudi-funded venture.

But none of these profit-seeking pitches has been more explicit than the meme-coin dinner. The event was unlike anything in recent American history — not a campaign fundraiser but a gathering arranged by the president’s business partners to directly enrich the first family.

As guests were flowing into the club, protesters held signs with slogans like “Stop Crypto Corruption,” “Release the guest list” and “No Kings.”

“This is the crypto corruption club,” Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., yelled at the entrance to Trump’s golf course, speaking so loudly that he had to stop after he lost his voice.

“This is like the Mount Everest of corruption,” Merkley said.

At a news conference on Thursday, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, rejected any suggestion that Trump was acting inappropriately by hosting the dinner.

“It’s absurd for anyone to insinuate that this president is profiting off of the presidency,” she said before Trump headed to the club. “This president was incredibly successful before giving it all up to serve our country publicly.”

Outside the club, men in tuxedos began gathering by a sign-in table at 5 p.m., collecting wristbands and raffle tickets as they made their way inside to escape the rain. Some of the guests flashed foreign passports as a means of identification.

The dinner menu featured filet mignon and pan-seared halibut, as well as a “Trump organic field green salad.” Trump spoke from a lectern adorned with the presidential seal.

Perhaps the best known crypto investor at the dinner was Justin Sun, a Chinese billionaire who runs the crypto platform Tron. He spent more than $40 million on $TRUMP coins, earning himself the top spot on the leaderboard.

Wearing a black bow tie and accompanied by an assistant who held an umbrella over his head, Sun was among the first guests to arrive. In a brief interview at the club, he told the Times that the dinner would be his first meeting with Trump.

“I’m very excited to meet him and discuss about crypto’s future,” Sun said.

As the event ended, a raffle was held for two Trump-branded watches, and guests posed for a group photo Trump hats on their heads.