Poor Donald Trump is having a rough time this week, what with nobody willing to lend him half a billion dollars to pay for his appeal bond in his New York civil fraud case and the potential loss of some of his real estate holdings as a result. So sad.
AVEC SO!
On top of that, it turns out that Trump’s “presidential campaign” is having trouble raking in cash, too. CNBC reports that the small-dollar donors who kept throwing money at him in 2020 have slowed their giving, according to unidentified knowledge-havers, and for that matter, so have big Republican donors too. Says CNBC:
Evidence from earlier in the 2024 election cycle already hinted at an erosion of Trump’s small-dollar donor base, or support of $200 or less.
In 2023, Trump’s reelection campaign raised 62.5% less money from small-dollar donors than it did in 2019, the year before the last presidential election.
And according to the campaign fundraising tracker OpenSecrets, the campaign’s January fundraising haul from small donors came to about $3 million, which is a lot of money for little fish like you and me, but by comparison, the story notes, Joe Biden’s “political operation raised nearly $2 million in just one day, Feb. 29, according to a campaign spokesman for the president.” And that was the week before the State of the Union speech, which prompted donations of about $10 million to Biden the next day, Politico reports.
During his losing 2020 reelection bid, when Trump lost, bigly, to Joe Biden, because Trump is a big LOSER, the $378 million Trump took in from small donors (whom he also took in) accounted for about half his total fundraising. The bulk of those small donor funds, $264 million, were given during 2020. Gosh, $3 million for January 2024 doesn’t seem like a great start by comparison.
CNBC carefully muses that the small-donor shortfall this year
could be due to donors not engaging as much with his often bombastic online pitches as they have in the past. It could also be the result of donor fatigue after nearly nine years of supporting him with contributions, people close to the Trump fundraising effort acknowledged.
Maybe his multiple daily emailed moneybegs need more underlining and exclamation points, have they tried that? How about more fear and racist dogwhistles?
On top of that, the story notes, rich Republican donors haven’t been opening the money spigots either, not for Trump PACs, nor for the Republican National Committee, even though the RNC is now staffed with actual Trump family members. How can this beeeee?
Their reluctance stems, in part, from concerns that the RNC will use the money not to help elect Republicans, but to pay for Trump’s extensive legal fees, sources said.
Oh, THAT. Where would anyone get the idea that donations to Trump’s campaign adjuncts would simply go to his vast legal bills? Like, sure, there’s this reporting on how Trump’s “Save America” leadership PAC burned through $230,000 a day on legal fees in February, but that’s a completely separate entity from the RNC, so if you give money to the RNC, no way will it go to Trump’s legal bills!
Um, unless maybe that, too, as CNBC also points out:
A newly established joint fundraising committee, the Trump 47 Committee, plans to split proceeds between the RNC, Trump’s campaign, state parties and — crucially — Save America, the Trump-affiliated leadership PAC that spent $24 million on the former president’s legal bills in the latter half of 2023.
One really attractive feature of joint fundraising committees, the story points out, is that they can accept almost a million dollars per donor. That’s working out pretty well for a similar committee on the Democratic side, Biden Victory, which has brought in at least five single-donor donations of more than $900,000 each.
But even that mechanism isn’t helping Trump, we learn, since
Outside of longtime allies like veteran investors John Paulson and Howard Lutnick, Trump has not received pledges or contributions from many other wealthy Republicans, sources familiar with the matter told CNBC.
That’s probably because of treasonfraudrigging by Dems, don’t you think? Trump isn’t even getting many big donors holding fancy soirees hosted by sleazy tech dudes, the story points out, although one schmuck with too much cash on hand, a “New York businessman” named Stephen Louro, plans an event sometime this year in the Hamptons, where he’ll raise money for Trump and Republicans who represent Long Island. And also, we shit you not, Louro says he plans to demonstrate a “jet suit” for the assembled donors. As it turns out, CNBC reported on Mr. Louro’s half-million dollar jet suit a few years back:
Thank heavens there are no myths about guys with a lot of hubris trying to fly, only to come crashing to earth, because that would be a downer, now why would we go thinking of such a sad allegory the end.
[CNBC / Politico / Daily Beast via Yahoo News]
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