How Trump's Billion-Dollar Campaign Lost Its Cash Advantage (1 Viewer)

[wardorican]

How Trump's Billion-Dollar Campaign Lost Its Cash Advantage

Money was supposed to have been one of the great advantages of incumbency for President Donald Trump, much as it was for President Barack Obama in 2012 and George W. Bush in 2004. After getting outspent in 2016, Trump filed for reelection on the day of his inauguration -- earlier than any other...

news.yahoo.com

Overall a good article detailing all of the spending that the Trump campaign did, and when.

One thing that caught my eye was the issue with funneling so much cash through LLC's...

Trump, who once joked he could be the first candidate to make money running for president, has steered, along with the Republican Party, about $4 million into the Trump family businesses since 2019: hundreds of thousands of dollars to Trump’s club at Mar-a-Lago in Florida, lavish donor retreats at Trump hotels, office space in Trump Tower, and thousands of dollars at the steakhouse in Trump’s Washington, D.C., hotel.

Many of the specifics of Trump’s spending are opaque; since 2017, the campaign and the RNC have routed $227 million through a single limited liability company linked to Trump campaign officials. That firm, American Made Media Consultants, has been used to place television and digital ads and was the subject of a recent Federal Election Commission complaint arguing it was used to disguise the final destination of spending, which has included paychecks to Lara Trump and Kimberly Guilfoyle, the partners of Trump’s two adult sons.

Millions more followed to firms tied to RNC and Trump-linked officials, including more than $39 million to two firms, Parscale Strategy LLC and Giles-Parscale, controlled by Parscale since the beginning of 2017.

Parscale said that he had “no ownership or financial interest in A.M.M.C.” and that he had “negotiated a contract with the family for 1% of digital ad spend and after becoming campaign manager took no percentage.”

Side note, I have gotten a couple texts from the Trump campaign (or a PAC, probably)..

"Conservatives are counting on you to vote this November. Do you duty, and request your ballot to vote right now! Click here..."

Uhh... you got the wrong guy. But thanks, I did request my ballot already.

 

[insidejob]

Weird. They just did a piece on this on MSNBC. Not nearly as in depth but the same topic and conclusions.

 

[JimEverett]

How Trump's Billion-Dollar Campaign Lost Its Cash Advantage

Money was supposed to have been one of the great advantages of incumbency for President Donald Trump, much as it was for President Barack Obama in 2012 and George W. Bush in 2004. After getting outspent in 2016, Trump filed for reelection on the day of his inauguration -- earlier than any other...

news.yahoo.com

Overall a good article detailing all of the spending that the Trump campaign did, and when.

One thing that caught my eye was the issue with funneling so much cash through LLC's...



Side note, I have gotten a couple texts from the Trump campaign (or a PAC, probably)..

"Conservatives are counting on you to vote this November. Do you duty, and request your ballot to vote right now! Click here..."

Uhh... you got the wrong guy. But thanks, I did request my ballot already.

Money is more important for Trump this go around, so poor spending hurts him doubly.
Money will be more important because it looks like he is not going to be able to hold huge rallies that carry with it a lot of "free" media coverage.

 

[The moose]

Money is more important for Trump this go around, so poor spending hurts him doubly.
Money will be more important because it looks like he is not going to be able to hold huge rallies that carry with it a lot of "free" media coverage.

I would not be worried about that. He will hold mini rallies that are press conferences just like the pandemic press conferences became him winging it in front of america until the pandemic press conferences became useless.

 

[wardorican]

Weird. They just did a piece on this on MSNBC. Not nearly as in depth but the same topic and conclusions.

It's from the NY Times.

Any time one of the big papers puts something in depth out, it becomes the talk of the news.

 

[bdb13]

I would not be worried about that. He will hold mini rallies that are press conferences just like the pandemic press conferences became him winging it in front of america until the pandemic press conferences became useless.

They stopped them imo when someone was finally able to convince Trump that "winging it" with the Covid press conferences was actually hurting his re-election odds. Anecdotally, my fiance decided she had to vote for Biden instead not voting at all after watching Trump make a fool of himself with those press conferences.

 

[wardorican]

Money is more important for Trump this go around, so poor spending hurts him doubly.
Money will be more important because it looks like he is not going to be able to hold huge rallies that carry with it a lot of "free" media coverage.

I think the message being sent is that they spent too much cash up front and are running low. That's probably a problem, but building an individual donor infrastructure most big campaigns didn't have, building social media, etc, is a long game that's expensive. They raised 1.1 Billion dollars!

I think the 'lavish' part of it is likely a bridge too far. And, it's something to be concerned about when you have billionaires, or near billionaires running for office. That their daily life is lavish to a scale that most wouldn't consider. So, even their campaigns over spend on things just because they have a lot of wealthy people involved.

I'd also think that he propaganda machine has done their damage a long time ago and it doesn't matter that there isn't current spending.

Honestly, I just think there is too much money in politics, but I'll save that for another time.

What I do see as troubling, along that line of campaign finance rules, is how much money is going to LLC's that run aspects of the campaign, or are like mini PAC's themselves, so it makes it harder to follow the money. This makes dealing with violations much harder.

 

[insidejob]

It's from the NY Times.

Any time one of the big papers puts something in depth out, it becomes the talk of the news.

Oh, I know. I just thought how he posted the thread at at the exact same time they had just wrapped up talking about it on teevee was a cool coincidence.