Donald Trump managed to vacuum up hundreds of millions of dollars of donations as a lame-duck president. This was not money offered by supporters to advance his final policy wishes or in service to some future political bid. It was, instead, mostly money thrown at Trump in response to his incessant and dishonest claims that he\u2019d been the victim of nefarious behavior in the 2020 presidential election. For a time, it appeared that special counsel Jack Smith was investigating whether that exchange of lies for contributions violated federal law. No charges were filed.<\/p>\n
While the acute prompt for those contributions, a mostly theoretical legal effort to retain power, evaporated Jan. 20, 2021 (or really, two weeks before), Trump continues to generate enthusiasm for his political future in part by making false claims about his 2020 loss. That enthusiasm, as ever, is measured in contributions.<\/p>\n
But as was the case in late 2020, he is not alone. Then, it was outside groups such as \u201cStop the Steal\u201d that were raising gobs of money by falsely claiming that the election results were suspect. Now, as CNN reported Wednesday, it\u2019s the Republican Party itself.<\/p>\n
This year, Ronna McDaniel stepped down as chair of the party, a position she\u2019d held since just before Trump took office. She was replaced by two people, including Trump\u2019s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump. The change was reported to have centered on Trump\u2019s ongoing insistence that Republicans agree with his assertions about the election. In short order, Chairman Michael Whatley and co-chair Lara Trump made clear that they would.<\/p>\n
So does the fundraising call obtained by CNN\u2019s Andrew Kaczynski and Em Steck. In it, a woman calling herself \u201cStephanie\u201d says she is calling on Lara Trump\u2019s behalf. She then points to 2020 as a reason for the recipient of the call to give money to the party once again.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe all know the problems\u201d that occurred that year, she says. \u201cNo photo IDs, unsecured ballot drop boxes, mass mailing of ballots, and voter rolls chock full of deceased people and noncitizens are just a few examples of the massive fraud that took place.\u201d<\/p>\n
None of these were \u201cproblems\u201d in any sense except that they, in some instances, made it easier for people to vote.<\/p>\n
In some states, you don\u2019t need to present ID to vote \u2014 but in no state was there any demonstrated fraud of any significance that was dependent on a lack of ID.<\/p>\n
There were \u201cunsecured ballot boxes\u201d in several states, but again no significant fraud resulted. There was a high-profile allegation of fraud using ballot drop boxes; that has since been robustly refuted.<\/p>\n
There was a mass mailing of ballots in some states as a response to the coronavirus pandemic. It did not result in any significant demonstrated fraud.<\/p>\n
There were a lot of dead people registered to vote, since many people who die are rude enough not to subsequently update the state with their new status. There is no indication that any significant number of ballots was cast using the identities of those dead people.<\/p>\n
All of these were things that Trump highlighted after and before the 2020 election as he sought to amplify the idea that his loss, should it occur, was necessarily a function of some nebulous illegality.<\/p>\n
One thing he didn\u2019t talk about much, though, was this claim that there were a lot of noncitizens on the voter rolls. It\u2019s mentioned here not because there\u2019s a lot of evidence that noncitizens are registered \u2014 there isn\u2019t \u2014 but because this idea of noncitizens voting is a current obsession on the right. The (non) issue of noncitizens voting, for example, is reported to be the focus of an event Friday featuring Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.). This \u201cgreat replacement theory\u201d idea that Democrats are bringing in immigrants intentionally so that they might vote has gone from the fringe to the mainstream to fundraising pitches.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf Democrats have their way, your vote could be canceled out by someone who isn\u2019t even an American citizen,\u201d \u201cStephanie\u201d says at another point in the call in CNN\u2019s report. \u201cPatriots like you, the people who actually pull the wagon in this country, deserve nothing less than free and fair elections.\u201d<\/p>\n
(The \u201cpull the wagon\u201d reference is to an allegory commonly used to suggest that certain groups \u2014 immigrants, people on public assistance \u2014 are freeloaders taking advantage of others.)<\/p>\n
With all of that said, it\u2019s the \u201ca few examples of the massive fraud that took place\u201d that is the most significant piece. Vague, unfounded hand-waving about improprieties is the bread-and-butter of the effort to parlay skepticism about 2020 into something more lucrative. But this goes further, stating flatly that \u201cmassive fraud\u201d occurred, which it didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
A Washington Post-Schor School poll released this week found that more than a third of Republicans think that millions of fraudulent votes were cast in 2020, which is not true. Other polls have found that a large majority of Republicans think the election that year wasn\u2019t legitimate, even if they don\u2019t have concrete evidence to reinforce it.<\/p>\n
The new, Lara Trump-led GOP is leaning into this false idea that 2020 was tainted by fraud. Prospective employees are being screened to determine their fealty to the claim. A division with the Orwellian name of \u201celection integrity\u201d has been created, with a prominent promoter of false claims about the election tapped to lead it. Now the message goes out to donors: give us money to stop all the fraud that occurs.<\/p>\n
Hey, it worked for a Trump four years ago.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Donald Trump managed to vacuum up hundreds of millions of dollars of donations as a lame-duck president. This was not money offered by supporters to advance his final policy wishes or in service to some future political bid. It was, instead, mostly money thrown at Trump in response to his incessant and dishonest claims that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":3037,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3036\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}