Donald Trump’s presidential marketing campaign raised lower than half as a lot as Kamala Harris’ marketing campaign throughout the month of July—and Harris didn’t even enter the race till July 21. That’s an astounding comparability, however there’s one thing even stranger lurking behind these numbers.
Trump’s fundraising for July was truly up in comparison with earlier months, pushed largely by a burst of donations that got here in after a failed assassination try on July 13. Even so, the whole of $138.7 million raised by the Trump marketing campaign was dwarfed by the $310 million Harris collected in only over every week.
An incredible 94% of the cash Harris collected reportedly got here in donations smaller than $200, with two-thirds of the cash coming from first-time donors. As compared, Trump’s July Federal Elections Fee submitting confirmed lower than $7.5 million coming within the type of small donations. This makes it appear as if, even throughout a month the place Trump was screaming about “taking a bullet for the country,” his MAGA properly was going dry.
Perhaps that’s as a result of a few of his supporters have found that Trump marketing campaign donations are going right into a mysterious black gap—a rip-off so giant that it makes Trump College and the Trump Basis seem like peanuts.
As The New York Occasions studies, throughout the 2020 election cycle, $516 million of the $780 million spent by the Trump marketing campaign—an astounding 66%—went to at least one firm: American Made Media Consultants. Of the 150 largest payments paid by the marketing campaign, 132 have been from AMMC. None of those payments was itemized to clarify what the marketing campaign obtained for these large expenditures.
American Made Media Consultants is a Delaware-based personal firm that seems to be fastidiously constructed for no different function than to cover the place the cash goes as soon as it comes throughout the brink. Even Trump’s marketing campaign employees formally doesn’t know what AMMC does with the cash. Nevertheless, ABC Information reported in 2020 that AMMC is essentially run by former Trump marketing campaign director Brad Parscale.
In any case, what’s clear about AMMC is … nothing.
The Federal Election Fee requires candidates to reveal the place funds are being spent, expressly in order that donors know that their candidate isn’t just sticking the cash in his pocket. In 2020, an FEC grievance was filed charging Trump’s marketing campaign with utilizing AMMC to cover bills and never offering donors with data. FEC commissioners deadlocked in a 3-3 vote over whether or not Trump’s marketing campaign had violated disclosure legal guidelines. Then the case was dropped. Makes an attempt to revive it in court docket ran right into a wall as a result of some FEC selections are thought of “unreviewable.”
The Occasions studies that AMMC’s first president was Lara Trump. Now that Trump’s daughter-in-law has moved on to turning the Republican Nationwide Committee right into a grifting engine, AMMC’s present management is unclear. Nevertheless, offspring Eric Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner have been concerned in organising and working AMMC.
No matter AMMC does, it’s nonetheless doing it. Trump’s 2024 marketing campaign is following the identical sample as in 2020, with a big share of funds merely handed off to AMMC, with no data on what’s generated in return.
Nevertheless, because the Occasions studies, it’s not the one such firm that advantages from Trump’s marketing campaign funds. A second personal firm, Pink Curve Options, has obtained no less than $18 million. Based on the Marketing campaign Authorized Middle, Pink Curve is used to pay Trump’s authorized payments, with the cash that it spends then being reimbursed by Trump’s PACs. The pinnacle of Pink Curve can be the pinnacle of two PACs, so it’s all dealt with very neatly.
That’s not the final of Trump’s thriller corporations. As NBC Information reported in June, one other Delaware-based LLC named Launchpad Methods has taken in virtually $15 million. Due to the best way it’s arrange, there isn’t any public data of who owns the corporate, who works for it, or how any of this cash has been spent.
It’s lengthy been clear that cash coming into Trump’s marketing campaign was going to pay his authorized payments. Trump has even marketed to his followers, instantly begging them to pay for his military of attorneys. He’s made these pleas and brought cash from decidedly not-wealthy supporters although his web value has gone up by billions over the previous few years.
The reality is, all of the cheesy footwear, Bibles, and NFTs that Trump sells are a drop within the bucket. So is the $7.5 million in small-dollar donations he received in July.
Trump’s huge cash comes within the type of huge checks. The 4 largest megadonors on The Washington Submit’s checklist all reduce checks to Trump. That features $125 million from railroad inheritor Timothy Mellon (and that’s not counting the $25 million Mellon spent organising a spoiler marketing campaign for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.).
These billionaires reduce Trump huge checks, then the checks go into a giant black gap. What comes out doesn’t seem like any recognizable marketing campaign exercise. Even earlier than Harris entered the race, President Joe Biden was outspending Trump three-to-one on tv promoting.
The cash going into these corporations appears to vanish … which actually makes it exhausting to discern whether or not Trump is working his marketing campaign in a professional vogue or just pocketing lots of of thousands and thousands in bribes.
