The 2024 United States presidential election is looking increasingly likely to be a face-off between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.
But before they were political rivals, Trump was actually one of Harris' financial donors.
State records show that Trump donated US$6,000 ($9,107) in total to the then-California attorney-general's campaign — US$5,000 ($7,589) in September 2011 after she was first elected, and another US$1,000 ($1,518) in 2013.
The former president wasn't the only member of his family contributing money to Harris; his eldest daughter Ivanka donated US$2,000 ($3,036) in 2014 to her re-election campaign.
The resurfacing of the historical donations on social media has put the spotlight back on Trump's changing political affiliations over the years.
How Trump's political affiliations have changed over time
Trump first registered as a member of the Republican Party in 1987. But records show that since then he's changed his party affiliation five times.
In October 1999, he joined the Independence Party of New York.
Not long after, he declared himself a potential candidate for the Reform Party's presidential nomination for the 2000 election. The Independence Party of New York was at that time the state affiliate of the national Reform Party.
But after just four months, Trump withdrew from the race.
Then in 2001, Trump became a Democrat — and remained one for eight years.
In a 2004 interview with CNN, he said that "in many cases" he identified more as a Democrat than Republican.
"It just seems that the economy does better under the Democrats than the Republicans," he said.
"It shouldn't be that way. But if you go back, I mean it just seems that the economy does better under the Democrats … certainly, we had some very good economies under Democrats, as well as Republicans. But we've had some pretty bad disaster under the Republicans."
Despite his praise for the Democrats, Trump returned to the Republican Party in 2012 and has remained a member since.
Records show Donald Trump has changed his political party affiliations several times. Source: SBS News
Why did Trump fall out of love with the Democrats?
Trump has always been "ideologically inconsistent" on most issues, according to Emma Shortis, a senior researcher in international and security affairs at public policy think tank The Australia Institute.
"The through line is always his desire to access power and access elite circles," she said.
"He's always been pretty desperate to be validated by the American elite, as often as disdainful as he is of them, he wants access to that … so every time I think Trump has changed, you can explain that change by that desire for power, and elite access."
At the time of Trump's donations to Harris' campaign, he was facing a class action about whether Trump University had defrauded its students.
While Harris' office didn't take action against Trump University, officials working for her at the time said the donations had nothing to do with that decision.
"I think those political donations are always, generally speaking, done because somebody is seeking influence or they want something out of a candidate," Shortis said, adding that Trump's contribution to Harris' campaign wasn't much in the scale of US election financing.
"It's very common, not unlike it is in Australia, for individuals and businesses to donate to both major parties, basically in the hope has a kind of insurance move, I suppose, in the hope of maintaining influence when and if somebody gets into a position of power – so I think it's likely that he was seeking to influence something in the Harris campaign.
"It's also more broadly an indication that Trump doesn't really have an ideology, he will swing to wherever he thinks it's politically convenient to him."
Associate Professor David Smith from the United States Studies Centre agreed, saying that as a real estate developer and celebrity, it was "politically expedient" for Trump to give money to whomever he believed would be useful to him.
"Whatever his business interests involved, that was who he was donating to at the time – or more broadly, just to curry favour with the political elite wherever he was," he said.
"When he was in heavily Democratic jurisdictions like New York or California, he would donate to Democrats, he would appear at fundraisers with Democrats, and when he was asked about his political views, he would often give answers that were broadly in line with Democratic Party thinking around things like gun control and abortion — although not always."
Smith said the only political beliefs Trump has consistently held have been on foreign policy and his "tough on crime" approach.
"Just about everything else has changed when it suits him, essentially," he said.
Given Trump's more immediate rise to political prominence came off the back of , Shortis said it made sense that he would remain a Republican
"This conspiracy that Obama wasn't born in the United States and therefore was an illegitimate president — which in a way, they're doing it again now — is a way of saying that anybody who's not white doesn't deserve the position that they've earned. It's a way of delegitimising candidates," she said.
"It was kind of only logical in his opposition to Obama, who's a Democrat, that he would side with the Republicans.
"I think he saw quite clearly a path to power through the Republicans, and again, if that path had been somewhere else, he would've taken it."
