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President Donald Trump told a crowd of supporters in October that if he really wanted to defeat Joe Biden’s supremacy in fundraising, he could call the executives of any big company and they would come to his aid.
“All I have to do is call the head of every company on Wall Street, the head of every big company, the head of every big energy company,” Do me a favor, send me 10 million dollars for my campaign. “Yes, sir,” Trump told crowd of supporters in Arizona in October.
However, new Federal Election Commission records, which follow the October 15-November 23 fundraiser, show that wealthy GOP financiers largely did not help Trump in the final weeks of the deadly battle with Biden. as he fell in the polls or parachuted by the millions into his current legal battle.
It’s the latest sign that many leaders may be ready to work with President-elect Biden. In the case of the legal struggle, some of the party’s major donors had previously turned to the campaign and the Republican National Committee, leaving Trump’s political team unable to turn to them for financial aid.
The Trump campaign, the Republican National Committee, its two joint fundraising committees, and the president’s executive committee, Save America, have raised more than $ 200 million since election day. Save America will likely be used to fund any political initiatives Trump is planning after he leaves the White House, including possibly running for president again in 2024.
Trump’s fraud rhetoric, while apparently not moving many business leaders, seems to resonate with small donors, who may be convinced their money is specifically going to fight fraud and have likely provided much of the money collected during the period.
Steve Schwarzman, CEO of private equity giant Blackstone, and longtime Trump confidant, has not contributed to any pro-Trump groups in recent weeks, according to election documents. Instead, he gave $ 15 million in November to the Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with Senator Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
As reported by CNBC, Schwarzman was one of several Wall Street leaders who gave up on helping Trump in the home stretch of the election. Schwarzman said in late November that after supporting the president for the past four years, he was now ready to “help President-elect Biden and his team as they face the significant challenges of rebuilding our post-Covid economy” .
Since election day on November 3, the Trump campaign has launched dozens of legal battles in states where Biden has been deemed the winner, including Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia. Trump and his allies essentially lost or withdrawn all election-related court cases, without invalidating the votes for Biden.
Attorney General William Barr said this week the Justice Department found no evidence of widespread electoral fraud, let alone fraud that would nullify Biden’s intended victory. Campaign spent millions on ‘recount’ legal fees, claims, including $ 600,000 which went to the law firm Kasowitz Benson Torres. The firm was founded by longtime Trump lawyer Marc Kasowitz.
The Trump campaign demanded a partial recount in Wisconsin, for which it paid $ 3 million.
But Reuters reported last month that large amounts of contributions are, in fact, not going to efforts to overturn the election results and instead go to Save America or the Republican National Committee. The fine print on the Trump Election Defense Fund donation page indicates that “75% of every contribution [goes] first to Save America, up to $ 5,000, ”suggesting that the majority of legal contributions actually go to Trump’s committee for other purposes.
“We are enjoying unprecedented financial support from an ever-growing group of investors, large and small, as President Trump and Republicans continue to fight over issues that concern a majority of Americans, including by ensuring the integrity of our elections and by defending the Republican majority in the Senate, ”Cassie Smedile, RNC deputy director of communications, said in a statement.
Representatives of the Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment.
Trump donor Dan Eberhart told CNBC that many Republican business leaders were not interested in investing in a candidate whose public poll results soared in the final weeks of the election or its elections. next moves in politics. On election day, a national poll average from Real Clear Politics had pushed Biden up seven points.
“Only fools still believe it,” Eberhart told CNBC, discussing who gives Trump again. “These are the grassroots, true believers,” he added.
A former senior campaign official told CNBC, on condition of anonymity, that big donors who had yet to donate to the cause avoided at the end of the campaign because the president was not attending certain events in person because of the coronavirus pandemic and some leaders wouldn’t be present if he wasn’t there. This person refused to be named in order to speak freely.
Some GOP megadonors had given much earlier in the electoral cycle to Trump’s mutual fundraising committees, which allow donors to write six-figure checks, or pro-Trump super PACs, which accept an unlimited amount of the share of contributors. More recently, many have decided to spend millions on the battles fought in the Senate and House campaigns.
Of the major Republican backers who, combined, have given more than $ 500 million throughout the 2020 election cycle to Trump and other GOP campaigns, only a handful have given to entities supporting the Commander-in-Chief in the during the six-week period starting at half-time. October to the end of November.
The few Republican megadonors who have spent a lot on the president in the final weeks of the election include casino moguls Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, who have contributed $ 15 million to the pro-Trump PAC Preserve America program. Bernard Marcus, co-founder of Home Depot, made a contribution of $ 5 million to the same PAC. This PAC is currently not involved in the president’s legal battle, and records show these large donations arrived in the last two weeks of October.
The new records show Miriam Adelson recently donated $ 106,500 to the RNC, as did Marcus. The Adelsons ended the 2020 election cycle by donating at least $ 200 million to Republican efforts.
Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein, the founders of the Uline shipping company and longtime Trump supporters, have also all but disappeared by helping the president financially, recording minimal contributions since mid-October. The couple, who recently tested positive for the coronavirus, had previously spent more than $ 65 million on GOP-related causes this cycle.
Timothy Mellon, president of Pan Am Systems, donated $ 5 million to the Senate Leadership Fund in November. Pro-Trump groups have seen very little of him during the same period, after he donated millions to the president’s cause earlier in the campaign.
In September, Ike Perlmutter, chairman of Marvel Entertainment and Trump’s renowned outside advisor to the Department of Veterans Affairs, teamed up with his wife to donate $ 21 million to America First Action. As of mid-October, records show no sign of Perlmutters spending in the later stages of the campaign to help Trump.
Even some of Trump’s friends who have supported him in the past seem to distance themselves from the president’s future efforts. Ronald Lauder, heir to Estee Lauder Companies and friend of Trump, donated $ 3.5 million to the Senate for leadership in October. The most recent records show that since the final stages of the election, he has given the president nothing.
CNBC reported in August that Lauder had remained silent in supporting Trump.
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