Mastodawn

Chuck Darwin Oct 20, 2024

In July, after a would-be assassin’s bullet grazed Trump’s ear during a rally in Butler,
Pennsylvania,
-- another wave of giving came in to the Trump campaign.

Musk officially endorsed him on X within an hour of the shooting.

But the following week,
Biden dropped out of the race
and endorsed Kamala Harris as his successor.

Democrats, especially those who had been reluctant to support the eighty-one-year-old incumbent,
began dumping record sums into the race:

Harris brought in $200 million in her opening week as the Party’s official candidate.

In August, her first full month atop the ticket, Harris’s network raised $361 million to Trump’s $130 million.

Her operation, the Times reported, was bigger than Trump’s “in nearly every discernible category.”

But, even as Trump’s momentum faded,
most of the billionaires who had returned to his side were sticking with their choice.

“Do they have buyer’s remorse? No,”
one veteran Republican fund-raiser told me in August.

He allowed that “there’s concern about Trump being able to turn to a disciplined message,”

but, for this group, at least, Harris was never a conceivable option.

“They view her as even further left than Biden from a policy perspective,” the veteran fund-raiser said.

“There wasn’t an alternative to not be for Trump
—the alternative would be for no one.”

Another possibility was for major Republican donors to switch their emphasis to the Party’s efforts to hold on to the House and win back the Senate.

One Republican fund-raiser, a former Haley supporter,
spoke to me from the sidelines of a summer retreat that House Speaker Mike Johnson held for big givers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming,
where he found a number of donors more skeptical about the White House race.

“They’re just saying they’re going to sit out the Presidential for the time being and focus on the down ballot,” he said.

“The races where, even if Harris wins, if we unleash gargantuan resources in that particular race, we can still win.”

Among the donors who have reluctantly swung to Trump was the billionaire
#Thomas #Peterffy,
a Wall Street mogul and a six-figure donor to Trump in 2020,
who had vowed to do
“whatever I can”
to make sure the G.O.P. had a different nominee in 2024.

Federal campaign-finance records show that,
through the summer,
Peterffy donated some $7 million to G.O.P. politicians and Party organizations,
-- but he had given nothing publicly to Trump.

In August, he donated $844,660 to the Trump 47 joint fund-raising committee,
which helps support the ex-President’s campaign.

Chuck Darwin Oct 4, 2024

Donald Trump’s foul-mouthed migrant rant captured in private pitch to donors

Donald Trump unleashed a foul-mouthed tirade about undocumented #immigrants and predicted that this “could be the #last #election we ever have”
if Kamala Harris wins during a private fundraising dinner this summer.

The Guardian obtained a 12-minute recording of a speech that the Republican presidential nominee gave at a dinner on 10 August in Aspen, Colorado,
👉 where attendees were required to donate anywhere from $25,000 to $500,000 a couple.

Trump devoted most of his address to #border security and #immigration, recycling xenophobic claims now familiar from his rallies.

“Radical leftwing lunatics” want people to come in from #prisons, mental institutionsand insane #asylums, he asserted without evidence, adding that the US was harbouring “a record number of #terrorists”.

The former president insisted that “smart, very streetwise” leaders of Venezuela and other South American countries were sending murderers and drug dealers to the US to reduce their own crime rates, relieve the burden on their prisons and save money.

Trump cited a false example of 22 people he claimed had come to the US after being released from prison in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. -- “We said, ‘Where do you come from?’ They said, ‘Prison’.
-- ‘What did you do?’ ‘None of your fucking business what we did.’ You know why? Because they’re murderers.”

The candidate added, “I hate to use that foul language”, apparently recognising that his use of the F-word went further than his campaign rallies. -- The Congolese government has said there is no truth to Trump’s statements.

The candidate went on: “These are the toughest people. These people are coming in from Africa, from the Middle East. They’re coming in from all parts of Asia, the bad parts, the parts where they’re rough, and the only thing good is they make our criminals look extremely nice. They make our Hell’s Angels look like the nicest people on earth.”

Studies show that immigrants are less likely to commit crime than native-born Americans.

Trump flew to Aspen on a Gulfstream G-550 jet once owned by #Jeffrey #Epstein, the late disgraced financier and convicted sex offender, after his own private plane – a Boeing 757 known colloquially as Trump Force One – encountered engine trouble.

The dinner was held at the $38m home of the investors and art collectors ♦️John and Amy #Phelan.
Guests included the casino mogul Steve #Wynn, billionaire businessman Thomas #Peterffy, Texas governor Greg #Abbott, Florida congressman Byron #Donalds, Colorado congresswoman Lauren #Boebert and former Colorado senator Cory #Gardner.

Trump, who instigated an attempted coup on 6 January 2021 and has claimed that his Democratic rival Harris poses the true threat to democracy, used the exclusive event to warn of dire consequences if she becomes president.

“Look, we gotta win and if we don’t win this country’s going to hell,” he said.
“You know, there’s an expression, this could be the last election we ever have and it’s an expression that I really believe, and I believe that this could be the last election we ever have.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/04/trump-fundraiser-recording?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Donald Trump’s foul-mouthed migrant rant captured in private pitch to donors

Republican nominee claims Harris is threat to democracy in recording of top-dollar fundraiser in Colorado in August

The Guardian