- President Donald Trump has failed to attract the millionaire and billionaire megadonorists who have given him in the past, according to a report by the New York Times.
- Just six of the top 38 donors to super-PACs with Trump votes in the past two cycles have donated to America First, the super PAC created to collect all of the largest donations to Trump’s 2020 campaign, The Times.
- Meanwhile, Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, has amassed massive sums of mega-donors. Pro-Biden super PACs have raised a combined $ 45 million in dark money so far this cycle, Business Insider reported Monday.
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President Donald Trump has failed to garner support from most of the megadonors who bankrolled his campaign in 2016 and gave it to him in 2018, The New York Times reported.
Just six of the top 38 donors to super-PACs with Trump votes in the past two cycles have donated to America First, the super PAC was created to collect all the largest donations to Trump’s 2020 campaign, The Times reported.
Sources told The Times that many donors were concerned about the chances of the presidential re-election and that some diverted their money to groups working to secure the Republican Senate majority, which is increasingly in play .
Sheldon and Miriam Adelson are one of the most prominent examples. The Adelsons gave $ 20 million to Trump in 2016 and $ 10 million in 2018. They did not send this bike cash to the president – after telling him angrily – but they donated $ 25 million this year to a PAC that support the Republicans of the Senate. The Times notes that Sheldon Adelson was concerned about the public support of Trump’s anti-China rhetoric given the major business interests of the casino magnate in Asia.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, has amassed massive sums of mega-donors. Pro-Biden super PACs have raised a combined $ 45 million in dark money so far this cycle, Business Insider reported Monday. That figure is seven times what Hillary Clinton-affiliated PACs raised over the entire 2016 cycle. Biden’s largest PAC had more than doubled what America First did in June.
Democrats are increasingly campaigning against dark money, and some, like sen. Elizabeth Warren, have banned PAC money for companies and large lenders disappeared during their campaigns.
Business Insider’s Dave Levinthal reported that many Democrats put those concerns aside in their race to defeat Trump.
Linda McMahon, the former head of Small Business Administration and a major Trump donor who now leads America First, said in June 2019 that she thought the PAC and its associated nonprofit would raise $ 300 million for Trump’s campaign in 2020. Times reported that the two groups had raised just $ 107 million on this cycle.
McMahon, who donated $ 7 million to Trump’s 2016 bid, blamed the pandemic and the economic crisis for the significant gap in funding. She has given $ 4 million of her own money to Trump’s reelection.
Even some mega-donors who continue to send large sums of money to Trump have been openly critical of him.
“Sure, Trump, you wish he’d just stop sometimes – do not go there, it’s not necessary,” Liz Uihlein, a magnate of shipping, told The Times. Uihlein and her husband gave Trump $ 3 million this cycle.
The Times reported that despite Trump’s success with smaller donors, both Vice President Mike Pence and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, were concerned about the lack of big money.
But there are still three months until the election, and major donors have a history of getting through in the last crucial days of a campaign.
