"The big rip-off." Who would you guess that refers to? Do we need to actually follow the money to have a good idea where most of a quarter of a billion dollars in chump money went/will go? Fools gave it to Trump. So guess.
[...] As noted by The New York Times,
Trump and the RNC raised over $2 million every day on WinRed from the
election until Dec. 14, the day of the Electoral College vote, pulling
in an average of $2.9 million in the two weeks leading up to that vote.
The number dipped after the Electoral College voted to make Joe
Biden president, and then spiked again at the end of the year, as
Republicans rallied around the (false) claim that Biden’s win could be
overturned when Congress voted to certify the Electoral College’s
results on Jan. 6.
Fundraising then dropped off after the deadly Capitol attack when
Trump largely stopped soliciting money from his supporters to support
his election fraud claims.
Key Background
CNNcalculated
that during the first month of Trump’s post-election battle, the
president’s political operation sent out 414 fundraising appeals via
email and 132 by text message. Hundreds more were sent before Jan. 6,
with many directing supporters to an “Election Defense Fund,” according
to a tracker
of the emails. Though the pitch in many of the messages was to help
finance Trump’s unfounded—and ultimately unsuccessful—legal challenges
to the election outcome, it’s unclear yet how much of the money actually
went toward this cause. Bloomberg reported that as of Dec. 4 the total
spent on overturning the election by the Trump campaign was $8.8
million. The fine print at the bottom of some emails disclosed that
large portions of the donations would go to Trump’s leadership PAC, Save
America, which was created in the days after the election. Unlike
contributions to a regular PAC, money in leadership PACs can be used “to
fund basically anything,” explains the Washington Post’s Philip Bump.
Crucial Quote
“The money in the Save America PAC, unlike money contributed to a
standard campaign committee, can be used to benefit Trump in innumerable
ways,” wrote Bump. “Memberships to golf clubs. Travel. Rallies. Even
payments directly to Trump himself, as long as he declares it income.”
Surprising Fact
The Republican National Committee will also take a chunk out of the
fundraising sum, according to The New York Times, which reports that
roughly 25% of the funds raised through Trump’s email and texting
operations will go to the RNC
Presumably RNC mailing lists were made available to Trump in exchange for a cut of the haul. For those snail-mailing cash to the grift, tearing up dollar bills and flushing them down a toilet would have saved a stamp. The money then going to a better cause.
Former President Trump and his die-hard allies raised $250 million off their claims the 2020 election was stolen
— but most of the funds went toward his newly created Save America PAC
rather than to pay for various challenges to Joe Biden’s victory, the
House select committee probing last year’s Capitol riot revealed Monday.
In a video presentation near the end of the committee’s second public hearing in five days,
the panel’s senior investigative counsel, Amanda Wick, said the 45th
president’s campaign “pushed false election claims to fundraise, telling
supporters it would be used to fight voter fraud that did not exist.”
According to Wick, more than $100 million alone was raised in the first week after Election Day.
[...] The video included screenshots of emails imploring Trump supporters to donate to an “Official Election Defense Fund.”
“The select committee discovered no such fund existed,” said Wick.
The committee also played audio of Trump 2020 campaign digital
director Gary Coby agreeing with an interrogator who suggested the fund
was merely a “marketing tactic.”
The House select committee investigating the Capitol riot revealed Trump’s fraud on Monday.Reuters
Most of the money, Wick said, went to entities that directly
benefited Trump’s family and friends rather than “election-related
litigation.”
Among the outlays Wick cited from Save America PAC were $1 million
each to a pair of pro-Trump think tanks — the Conservative Partnership
Institute and the America First Policy Institute — as well as more than
$200,000 to the Trump Hotel Collection and $5 million to Event
Strategies, the firm that helped put on the Jan. 6, 2021 ‘Stop The
Steal’ rally that precipitated the Capitol riot.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), accused Trump and his backers of
swindling supporters who donated in good faith to help the former
president’s legal cause.
[...] “Small-dollar donors use scarce disposable income to support
candidates and causes of their choosing, to make their voices heard, and
those donors deserve the truth about what those funds will be used
for,” she said. “Throughout the committee’s investigation, we found
evidence that the Trump campaign and its surrogates misled donors as to
where their funds would go and what they would be used for.
“Not only was there the big lie, there was the big rip-off,” Lofgren
added. “Donors deserve to know where their funds are really going. They
deserve better than what President Trump and his team did.”
Deserve better than what President Trump and his team did? A skeptic could conclude those rabid "Fight Back" donors got precisely what they deserved. And they're still there. A suggested slogan, "Fight the Steal, wheel and deal, pluck that teal." (A teal half-plucked means more plucking is feasible. Until all you've got left in the course of time is a fully butt-naked dead wild duck. Getting what it deserved.)
