by WorldTribune Staff, July 9, 2019
President Donald Trump is on pace to raise $2 billion to $2.5 billion for his re-election effort, political insiders say.
“Republican donor enthusiasm is reaching new levels more than a year before the presidential election, sparking wild predictions that President Trump and the Republican National Committee’s joint fundraising committee will raise more than Trump and Hillary Clinton collected in the 2016 election,” Washington Examiner columnist Paul Bedard wrote on July 8.
If Trump fundraising tops $2 billion, it was amount to double what Clinton and former President Barack Obama took in for their most recent campaigns and about four times the amount Trump raised in 2016.
“With that kind of money, we’ll be hard to beat,” a Trump insider, noting that Clinton out-raised Trump in 2016 2-to-1 and still lost, told Bedard.
During the first day of his re-election campaign, Trump raised more than $1 million an hour.
“Not only did he host a huge rally in Orlando, Florida, but his campaign team and children, including Eric and Lara Trump, and Donald Trump Jr. and his girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle made calls to 200 top donors,” Bedard noted.
Teamed with the RNC, Trump raised $24.8 million on June 18. By comparison, Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, said he raised $24.8 million over three months, and former Vice President Joe Biden raised $6.3 million on the day he declared, the most one-day take of all Democrats in the race.
Fundraisers told the Bedard that both small-dollar and big donors are eager to contribute, citing Trump’s successes in packing courts with conservative judges, cutting taxes, eliminating costly regulations, and boosting the economy.
“I raised six figures from a businessman who got a tax refund of seven figures. It’s the same dynamic for middle-income Americans — they’re more likely to support us with $5, $20, or $100 because they see the difference in their own paycheck and want to keep it going,” one fundraiser told Bedard.
Trump friend and fundraiser Bill White described a meeting with 300 Trump surrogates and national finance chairmen in which plans were set for each to attract five more, and those 1,500 will raise $100,000 each, or $150 million.
“Donald Trump can raise that type of money. People love the economy, they love what he’s done with NATO and getting other nations to pay their share, they love that he’s cut the African American unemployment numbers. They want to say thank you for saving our country,” White said.
The amounts will also be high as a result of the joint fundraising by Trump Make America Great Again Committee, Donald J. Trump for President Inc., and the Republican National Committee.
Meanwhile, leftist billionaire Tom Steyer on July 8 announced he will join the already crowded field seeking the Democratic Party nomination for 2020.
“The other Democratic candidates for president have many great ideas that will absolutely move our country forward, but we won’t be able to get any of those done until we end the hostile corporate takeover of our democracy,” Steyer said in a statement along with a four-minute announcement video.
“As an outsider, I’ve led grassroots efforts that have taken on big corporations and won results for people. That’s not something you see a lot of from Washington these days. That’s why I’m running for president,” Steyer said.
Steyer allies have reportedly told The Washington Post that he had grown increasingly dissatisfied with the nearly two dozen Democrats already in the running for the White House.
Steyer has spent millions seeking to gain support for the impeachment of Trump, who has called him a “weirdo.”
As Steyer was entering the race, Rep. Eric Swalwell was departing.
Swalwell, who at the first Democratic debate had advised Biden to “pass the torch” to younger Dems such as himself, announced on July 8 that he was ending his presidential bid.
“Today ends our presidential campaign, but it is the beginning of an opportunity in Congress,” Swalwell said at a press conference in his home state of California. A candidate for just 90 days, he told reporters that his team had “to be honest about our campaign’s viability.”
Swalwell is the first to drop out of the large Democratic field. He will instead return to his congressional district to defend his House seat from a primary challenge.
Donald Trump, Jr. tweeted of the news of Swalwell’s departure from the race: “This is SHOCKING!!! I mean with his total lack of charisma & personality it’s a wonder even he thought he could be a contender. Every soundbite basically needed to end with ‘PLEASE CLAP’ ” a reference to a quote from former GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush.
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