Welcome to the age of the GigaFundraiser
Plus: Trump’s daughter-in-law is the face of his new joint fundraising committee
Hello, in this issue we’ll look at…
Welcome to the age of the GigaFundraiser
Trump’s daughter-in-law is the face of his new joint fundraising committee
It’s 2024. Do you know who you’re following?
Scroll to the end to see: which former FLOTUS just got a new stamp
Welcome to the age of the GigaFundraiser
Former President Donald Trump’s campaign says it raised more than $50 million at a single fundraiser in Palm Beach, Fla., on Saturday. It’s a stunning sum equal to roughly three-fourths of what he raised all last month and it heralds a new era in political fundraising. Welcome to the age of the GigaFundraiser.
Money from small-dollar donors, as defined as donations of $200 or less, made up about 22% of all cash brought in during the 2020 campaign. That was up from 16% in 2016, according to data from Open Secrets. But in 2024, with small-dollar donors burnt out from politics and squeezed by inflation, pols could increasingly find themselves megadonormaxxing.
Trump’s Florida fundraiser shattered the previous single-fundraiser record set just last month by President Joe Biden, who brought in $26 million with former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton in New York City. Trump’s following it up with two fundraisers today, one outside Orlando (see invite below), and another in Atlanta where the attendees are expected to include Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus and former Atlanta Dream co-owner and ex-U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler, per the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
With the return of in-person events following 2020, “big-dollar fundraisers are back,” Politico reports, and not just at the presidential level. “It’s across the board,” Ami Copeland, a former Obama deputy finance director said, because “high-dollar folks want to make sure they’re in the room.”
The large fundraising sums are possible thanks to joint fundraising committees, or JFCs, which have become increasingly popular and allow donors to make one big donation that’s then divvied up among multiple organizations up to the maximum Federal Election Commission-mandated limit.
The Trump 47 joint fundraising committee, for example, prioritizes sending money first to Trump’s campaign, followed by the Save America PAC, which is helping to pay his legal bills, then the Republican National Committee and state Republican parties, according to a donation contribution form obtained by NBC News.
Trump still trails Biden in overall fundraising, which helps explain his mad dash for cash. Biden and the Democratic National Committee raised more than $90 million last month compared to $65.6 million raised by Trump and the Republican National Committee in the same time period. And Democrats say they have $192 million on hand, more than double the $93.1 million held by Republicans.
Trump’s increased reliance on mega donors could undercut his appeal among voters who perceived him as not beholden to big money (“This whole Super PAC scam is very unfair to a person like me who has disavowed all PAC's & is self-funding,” Trump once tweeted in 2015). His campaign is claiming otherwise (see section below), but the Biden campaign is encouraging the association between Trump and mega donors.
In a social media post, Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) watch a clip of Trump speaking at his Florida fundraiser and react. “You are all people who have a lot of money. I know 20 of you and you’re rich as hell,” Trump says in the video. “We’re going to give you tax cuts.”
“That’s everything you need to know about Donald Trump,” Biden says. “When he thinks the cameras aren’t on, he tells his rich friends ‘we’re going to give you tax cuts.’”
Trump’s daughter-in-law is the face of his new joint fundraising committee
Trump’s daughter-in-law, it seems, is his Obama.
Former President Barack Obama was the Biden campaign’s biggest draw for small-dollar donors last year, appearing in ads under a red banner asking for just a few bucks, and as part of a “Meet the Presidents” promotion.
Now Lara Trump, the wife of Eric Trump and a newly installed Republican National Committee co-chair, is the star of a new series of digital ads encouraging Republican small-dollar donors to give to her father-in-law’s campaign. Appearing under a red banner, she asks viewers for $1, $5, or $10.
“Think about what the Democrats have, they have a legion of billionaires on their side,” she says in one ad, as if her father-in-law didn’t just bring in more than $50 million at the home of a billionaire hedge fund manager.
The ads, along with others from Donald Trump Jr. also asking for small-dollar donations, are running from the Trump National Committee joint fundraising committee, a recently formed JFC between the Trump campaign and the RNC.
According to Meta’s ad library, Lara Trump’s ads are running most heavily in Florida, California, and Texas among viewers who are 65 and older.
It’s 2024. Do you know who you’re following?
Though the Q behind QAnon isn’t posting, anonymous accounts are still influencing right-wing discourse.
Last week, a pseudonymous account called “End Wokeness” shared information falsely claiming that voter registration for people without an ID was skyrocketing in Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Texas.
The post received not one but two “Extremely concerning”s from Elon Musk and prompted responses from Trump and Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-Ga.). But it wasn’t true, state election officials said.
“It is totally inaccurate,” Texas’ Republican Secretary of State Jane Nelson said in a statement disputing the voter registration numbers. Stephen Richer, the Republican recorder in Arizona’s Maricopa County, called it “extremely false” in a post on X.
The Associated Press highlighted the story as an example of how anonymous users are spreading false information. There’s an “allure of covertness” to these kinds of accounts, Samuel Woolley, director of the Propaganda Research Lab at the University of Texas at Austin told the AP. But while these accounts are “co-opting the language of genuine whistleblowing or democratically inclined leaking,” he said, “what they’re doing is antithetical to democracy.”
While there are examples of the value of anonymity — remember, Thomas Paine wrote Common Sense under a pen name and genuine whistleblowers have helped inform the public about things that would have otherwise been kept under wraps — anonymous accounts like QAnon and End Wokeness misinform their followers and end up polluting the information ecosystem. Under X’s policy to pay users for views and thanks to Musk’s spotlight, this kind of behavior isn’t just tolerated, it’s encouraged.
Despite state election officials disputing the false claims about voter registration made by the End Wokeness account, a community note hasn’t been added to the post. Instead, a button underneath reads “See similar posts.”
Have you seen this?
Former first lady Betty Ford’s new stamp was unveiled outside the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, California. The stamp uses Ford’s official 1977 White House portrait by Felix de Cossio.
Kansas City voters refused to fund stadiums for the Chiefs and Royals. Other cities are refusing too. Research shows that the benefits of stadiums fall well short of the enormous infusions of public money used to build them. [Fast Company]
Right-wing operatives Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman agree to pay up to $1.2 million for misleading 2020 robocalls. Far-right operatives Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman have agreed to pay New York Attorney General Letitia James' office up to $1.2 million for a robocall campaign they put together to suppress the Black vote ahead of the 2020 election. [NBC News]
🔒Mike Pence just declared war on TikTok. You’ll never guess who he’s giving air cover to. Pence’s advocacy group Advancing American Freedom announced this week it’s spending $2 million on an ad campaign calling on Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to bring the bill passed by the House that could ban TikTok to the Senate floor for a vote. [Yello]
History of political design
“I Like Ike” compact (ca. 1952). The compact, along with a version for Dwight Eisenhower’s Democratic opponent Adlai Stevenson (click through to see it), was designed to look like a rotary telephone dial.
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