Trump raised $56 million online in first half of 2021
By Shane Goldmacher and Rachel Shorey
NEW YORK – Despite departing from office and being barred from the leading social media platforms, former President Donald Trump was the Republican Party’s most dominant fundraiser in the early months of 2021, as committees affiliated with him collected more than $56 million online, according to campaign filings made late Friday (July 30).
Trump raised far more money than any other Republican via WinRed, the party’s main processing site for online donations, federal records show, and more than each of the three main fundraising arms of the Republican Party itself.
The next strongest online fundraiser among Republican politicians was Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, who delivered the GOP response to President Joe Biden’s first address to Congress in the spring. Scott raised $7.8 million online.
All told, Trump collected $34.3 million through a shared account with the Republican National Committee, which is known as the Trump Make America Great Again Committee; Trump’s political action committee is set to receive 75% of what went into the shared account, and the party received 25%.
In addition, Trump raised more than $21 million directly into two new PACs that he controls.
The new online fundraising data comes from the federal filings of WinRed. The full federal reports for Trump’s accounts in the first six months of 2021 were due Saturday (July 31).
Trump raised by far the most online money among any Republican, even though he had paused much of his online solicitations starting Jan. 6, the day of the Capitol insurrection, through the end of February.
Trump made his first post-presidential speech, at the Conservative Political Action Conference, in late February and urged supporters to give to him instead of any other GOP entity, positioning himself as a potential rival to the existing Republican Party apparatus.
“There’s only one way to contribute to our efforts to elect ‘America First’ Republican conservatives and, in turn, to make America great again,” Trump said Feb. 28. “And that’s through Save America PAC and DonaldJTrump.com.”
Trump scored a bonanza of donations: nearly $3.5 million across his various PACs.
It was also WinRed’s single biggest day of 2021, records show.
Trump’s public events and pronouncements appear closely intertwined with his fundraising. For instance, Trump’s short-lived launch of what amounted to a blog page to share his thoughts and opinions on political developments, called ‘From the Desk of Donald J. Trump’, was widely ridiculed in early May as a poor substitute for a social media platform. The page was soon scrapped.
But the site still appears to have generated real cash for the Trump operation.
His Save America committee had raised an average of $108,000 in the five days leading up to the launch of the ‘desk’ page; the PAC raised roughly $421,000 per day on average in the five days after, including more than $900,000 on one day.
Much of the money raised by the Trump Make America Great Again Committee came through Trump’s recurring donation program, which guided countless supporters into unwittingly making repeat donations through the use of pre-checked boxes.
A New York Times investigation this year showed how the program spurred a wave of fraud complaints and demands for refunds, which continued into 2021.
Trump’s fundraising slowed over the course of the first six months of the year. In January, the month of the Capitol riot and his subsequent impeachment in the waning days of his presidency, Trump raised $13.8 million that went into the Trump Make America Great Again Committee.
By June, that sum had shrunk, though it was still a robust $2.6 million, almost entirely through recurring donations. As of July, party officials had stopped the withdrawals, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the party’s internal financial dealings.
-New York Times