Don't Worry About Trump's "Record Fundraiser" Because It's A Con

Trump and the RNC claim to have raised $50.5 million yesterday, but insiders say don't fret because Trump is using gimmicks to inflate the number.

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Trump’s “Record Fundraiser”

In a truly fair democracy where representing the people came first, and governing took priority over all else, there would be no need for stories and newsletters about political fundraising.

Money is the wedge that the founders never saw coming when they devised with help from the work of Enlightenment thinkers a system of governance that functioned as a representative democracy.

I have spent decades first academically researching and then writing as a journalist about campaign finance, and campaign finance reform. Someday, some of this space may be used to focus on campaign finance in the United States, which is such a huge topic that diving into it would take us down a rabbit hole, and distract from the matter at hand, which is Donald Trump, and the Republican Party’s claim to have raised $50.5 million yesterday from a single fundraiser.

A bit of insight into what is really going on came from Trump’s comments on Saturday night and his post on Truth Social, “Biggest night in Fund Raising of ALL TIME!!!Will double up the Biden number of last week at Radio City. People are desperate for change. They want to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! DJT”

People are so desperate for change that Donald Trump’s party has lost or underperformed in every election since President Biden took office.

Trump suggested that people want change, so it is important to ask who these people are who want change?

The answer is, given who attended Trump’s fundraiser, is conservative millionaires and billionaires.

Trump’s fundraiser was intended to counter negative headlines about how the ex-president is not campaigning, and is increasingly trailing in polls, as President Biden gains momentum.

The reality is that Donald Trump didn’t raise $50.5 million.

The actual dollar amount is likely much less than Republicans are touting.

There are various gimmicks and tricks that the Trump campaign certainly used to get to that big number, which just so happened to double Biden’s big fundraiser, and we’ll talk about them below.