Trump's 14 fundraising emails-a-day are frustrating GOP members
5 Min Read
Not only are his fundraising strategies "unsustainable," they are also obstructing other Republican members from fundraising for their campaigns.
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Donald Trump, who is taking the cake in Republican donations (Carlo Allergi)
Trump has been spamming Republican donors with many daily emails and texts to keep donating to his election campaign. However, top GOP officials have been warning that this could obstruct the creation of a sustainable donation strategy for the future.
Four GOP fundraising strategists, in an interview with Axios, revealed that Trump's strategy is 'imperiling efforts to build a sustainable, grassroots base of financial support for anyone not named Trump.'
During the second half of last year, 2021, a website managed by Save America has raised $51 million, concluding the year with over $122 million, according to Federal Elect Commission reports.
What Trump has been able to do, in comparison with previous presidents, is unprecedented. One strategist said that it's "something we've never had in the history of digital fundraising."
However, despite Trump's undying efforts to get these enormous sums, Biden and other Democrats have been using the January 6 Capitol Riots investigation to obstruct his candidacy. Last week, the US National Archives requested a legal probe of Trump.
Read more: Biden orders release of Trump White House logs to Congress
For every dollar of donations, 22 cents processed through WinRed, a GOP payment processor, went to Trump committees instead of GOP midterm candidates. The committees were Save America and the Trump Make America Great Again Committee, according to an analysis of campaign finance records by Axios.
The two committees got more money than the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee combined.
There are 3 identifiable risks to Trump's strategy
The first one is 'donor burnout,' where the flooding of emails and texts simply no longer work simply because people will not want to donate anymore.
The second is Trump's "quadrupling-down" approach, which will make the process of raising money online for other Republicans more expensive and harder.
The third risk is that Trump's strategy is pushing other campaigns to orient themselves towards his brand in their fundraising strategies. That entails an overwhelming dependency on Trump to reinforce the Republican political brand, which he has cemented. That makes Trump essential for money-raising online.
Trump today is the most powerful man in Republican politics, and many do not speak out of fear of punishment or penalty.
"No one in the history of the Republican Party has done more to grow the donor pool at every level than President Donald J. Trump, something that pays untold dividends to Republican candidates and causes across the nation," Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich told Axios.
Dismissing criticism, Budowich said that the critics come from "the cowardly consultant-class" and that they are "frauds who just can't deliver for their clients."
The Defending Democracy Together Institute counted 10 fundraising emails a day since October 2021, with Christmas being an exception with only 2 emails. However, since the start of 2022, there have been 14 emails a day.
"It's a massive issue. ... The tactics and strategies they use are not sustainable," one strategist said. Trump's emails hold immense volumes and have a frantic tone, which makes it extremely difficult for other GOP candidates, that are after semi-dollar support, to fulfill their targets.
"Conservative donors are getting six, 12, maybe even two dozen fundraising emails or text messages every single day. And the chances of them opening yours, let alone reading, clicking and donating, is pretty small to begin with," one said.
"If you include Trump in that, ... your competition for the inboxes of donors just goes through the roof. It's just it makes it so much more difficult to convert any of these people."
Biden requests evidence
US President Joe Biden has ordered the release of Trump White House visitor logs to a House committee investigating the January 6, 2021 incident, defying former President Donald Trump's claims of executive privilege once again.
The Committee has asked the National Archives for a plethora of information, including presidential records that Trump has battled to keep private. The records being disclosed to Congress include visitor logs that detail who was allowed to enter the White House on the day of the insurgency and when they were authorized to do so.
White House counsel Dana Remus said in a letter to the National Archives on Monday that Biden had considered Trump's claim that the records should be kept private because he was President at the time of the attack on the US Capitol, and maintained that it was "not in the best interest of the United States" to do so.
She also pointed out that the Biden administration, like the Obama administration, "voluntarily distributes such visitor logs on a monthly basis," and that the majority of the entries over which Trump asserted the claim would be made public under current policy. A request for a response from a Trump official was not immediately returned.
