Earlier today, we looked at how Trump is leaning into his bad boy— and criminal— image in the 2024 campaign. He’s no Pancho Villa, John Brown, Nat Turner, Guy Fawkes or even Koose Muniswamy Veerappan, but his willingness to lie and make absurd promises appeals to nearly half of American voters, albeit generally the more gullible, more ignorant and stupider half. Josh Dawsey covered the promises yesterday, pointing out that Señor T frequently ties fundraising requests to GOP fat cats to of promises of tax cuts, oil project infrastructure approvals and other favorable policies and asking for sums more than his campaign and the GOP can legally accept from an individual and testing the boundaries of lax-to-near-nonexistent federal campaign finance laws.
“In one recent meeting staged by his Save America super PAC,” wrote Dawsey, “Trump asked oil industry executives to raise $1 billion for his campaign and said raising such a sum would be a ‘deal’ given how much money they would save if he were reelected as president… Larry Noble, a longtime campaign finance lawyer, said Trump was technically allowed to ask only for contributions of $3,300 or less for his campaign, according to federal laws. But he can appear at events for his super PAC where the price of admission is far higher — as long as he doesn’t ask for the money directly. ‘He can’t say, I want you to give me $1 million,’ Noble said.” Of course, Trump’s modus operandi since he was a kid has always been “try to stop me” and basically no one is. “[E]ven if presented with evidence Trump might have gone over the line, multiple prominent campaign finance lawyers said, the Federal Election Commission, which is gridlocked with three Republicans and three Democrats, is unlikely to investigate any of Trump’s fundraising in an election year.”
[Trump] was once reluctant to call donors and decried the role of big money in politics. He also often railed about having to take pictures— berating advisers for scheduling too many “clicks”— and sought to cast himself as an outsider who was not beholden to the traditional moneyed interests that shape Washington.
“He didn’t want to make fundraising calls,” said Sam Nunberg, a former aide on Trump’s 2016 campaign. On the 2020 campaign, he would reluctantly participate in fundraisers, advisers said, seeing them as an unpleasant necessity.
Part of his opposition to making calls was that he liked the perception that he was an outsider who was going to “drain the swamp.”
“I will say this— [the] people [who] control special interests, lobbyists, donors, they make large contributions to politicians and they have total control over those politicians,” Trump said during a 2016 debate. “And frankly, I know the system better than anybody else, and I’m the only one up here that’s going to be able to fix that system, because that system is wrong.”
This time, campaign advisers say, Trump needs the money and he is taking an active role in raising it. The Trump campaign and RNC reported that they jointly raised $76 million in April, about $25 million more than the Biden campaign said it raised across all its committees in the same month. But the Biden operation still had about $60 million more cash on hand than the Trump campaign.
Trump has met with an assortment of real estate, legal, finance, oil and other business executives in recent months, according to people familiar with invitation lists. He has often promised agenda items they would like passed as part of his broader fundraising pitch, and sometimes has asked allies to bundle millions or more, according to people close to the former president. Some of the meetings have included tours of his Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., and his New York apartment.
Trump, four people close to him say, is closely tracking who gives what amount to his campaign and associated efforts— and which allies are bundling large checks for him. He has often told allies how much money he expects them to raise.
In the days following the recent meeting with oil industry donors, executives discussed whether it would even be possible to meet Trump’s $1 billion request, according to four people in the oil industry familiar with the discussions.
But they are trying. Trump has repeatedly pressured oil magnate Harold Hamm to raise significant money for him, telling Hamm that he is “behind” and “needs the money,” according to a person familiar with the outreach. Hamm had an event for Trump in Texas on Wednesday, where the price of admission was about $250,000 for oil executives, according to people familiar with the matter.
The meeting stretched for many hours, attendees said, and included photos with the top donors. At the fundraiser, he promised to cut taxes on corporations and give oil executives an array of policies they wanted and said he was being outraised by the Democrats and the unions, asking the crowd to “be generous, please.”
So give me some of your money,” he said, drawing laughs. “True. I’m begging for your money.”
He and Biden need the money to reach two types of voters:
their parties bases who have to be exhorted to turn out
the politically unengaged (and even disengaged) who don’t really follow politics or are woefully “low-information” voters
“Politically disengaged Americans,” wrote Katie Glueckand Nick Corasaniti, “are emerging as one of the most unpredictable, complex and potentially influential groups of voters in the 2024 race. They are fueling Trump’s current polling leads but in many cases hail from traditionally Democratic communities, giving Biden a chance to win some of them back— if he can get their attention. No shortage of events could jolt alienated voters over the next five months, starting with a verdict in the first criminal trial of a former president in American history, which could arrive this week. Even though many of these people are historically infrequent voters, those who do cast ballots could make the difference in an inevitably close race.”
But reaching them is a problem. Campaigns up and down the ballot are operating in an ever-more-fragmented media landscape where misinformation thrives— spread especially by Trump and his allies [including Putin]— and basic facts are often ignored, disputed or filtered through a partisan lens.
“People have really separated into their own information cul-de-sacs,” said former Representative Stephanie Murphy, a Florida Democrat. “It’s harder now to reach people than it was in previous elections because of that disaggregated or decentralized information network.”
…Voters who are paying less attention, pollsters say, tend to be younger or more working-class, and are more likely to engage late in the race, if they do at all.
“It’s not that politics is unimportant to them, but they have other priorities,” said Whit Ayres, a veteran Republican pollster. “Turning out the low-information voters who favor your candidate is one of the major tasks of political consultants.”
An NBC News poll conducted last month found that 15 percent of voters surveyed said they did not follow political news closely. Among those voters, Trump had an edge of 26 percentage points over Biden.
By contrast, among voters who primarily consume news through newspapers, national network and cable news— 54 percent of those surveyed— Biden was up by 11 points.
Trump’s commanding lead among the politically disengaged underscores how hard it may be for Biden to translate his record and vision into a galvanizing and attention-grabbing message for these voters, some of whom are firmly committed to Trump.
But some Democrats also see an opportunity.
“A single piece of information might have a radical impact on them, because they are by definition low-information,” former Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York said.
Pointing to subjects like Trump’s record on abortion rights or Biden’s work to lower the cost of insulin for older people, he added: “That doesn’t take a lot of explaining. It takes focusing people, it takes jolting them, but these are not complex points to get across.”
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