Is impeachment backfiring for Democrats? Trump campaign and Republicans raise $13 million after Pelosi launches inquiry
While his political opponents have felt bolstered by launching an impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump over his alleged misuse of power to influence a foreign government to defeat an opponent in domestic politics, it seems the Republican leader is not facing too much of pressure in the public space. Instead, his constant attacks against the impeachment move have seen him raise campaign funds worth $13 million for his re-election bid next year.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the launch of the formal impeachment inquiry on Tuesday, September 24, after Trump’s controversial call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the administration’s refusal in turning over a whistleblower’s complaint against the Republican leader rocked American politics.
But Trump is making the most of it in his campaigns.
According to a report in the Associated Press, Trump's campaign is blasting out mails seeking donations to show the president still holds strong ground support. “Nancy (Pelosi) just called for Impeachment. WITCH HUNT!” the campaign said in a fundraising text message that was sent out on Tuesday. “I need you on my Impeachment Defense Team,” it added.
As Trump continued to play his victim card, the funds went on multiplying. In the 24 hours that followed Pelosi’s impeachment call, the president and the Republican National Committee (RNC) raised $5 million from online donations in all 50 states, according to the president’s campaign manager Brad Parscale. Besides, Trump was also expected to have raised another $5 million for his re-election from a Wednesday night fundraiser and $3 million from a morning breakfast on Thursday, a RNC official was cited as saying.
While Parscale tweeted on Wednesday saying: Huge groundswell of support leading to Trump landslide in 2020!", Trump’s son and executive vice president of Trump Organization Eric Trump thanked Pelosi and the Democrats in a tweet a day later saying they were helping Trump's cause. He said the Republicans raised $8.5 million dollars in small donations in the last two days and that Trump’s opponents were handing him a win in the 2020 elections. “People are sick of your nonsense but please keep it up,” he said.
The AP report added citing Federal Election Commission records that Trump’s campaign and the RNC have already raised more than $210 million since the beginning of 2019 and with the elections scheduled over a year from now, they are set to make a massive gain. The latest surge in donations comes just before the third-quarter fundraising reporting deadline scheduled next week. The Trump campaign’s haul so far in 2019 is more than what all his Democratic opponents have raised together in the same period, the report added.
How Joe Biden has benefitted
However, among Trump’s opponents, Joe Biden, the former vice president who has found himself at the center of the scandal, has also made gains. The 76-year-old has seen a rise in his donations last weekend after the news on the Trump-Zelensky conversation first surfaced. Trump told Zelensky in the phone call to investigate Biden and his son Hunter who worked for an energy company in the East European nation.
Biden is also running ads on social platforms like Facebook appealing to the supporters to “stand with Joe”. His campaign also said that he had his best week of fundraising since his second week as a candidate running for the White House.
"Donald Trump sat in the Oval Office asking a foreign leader to investigate Joe Biden's family because he knows Joe Biden will make sure he's a one-term president," one online ad supporting Biden said. "Don't let the president get away with this gross abuse of power."
The Democractic National Committee also reportedly claimed a rise in fundraising after urging the donors late on Tuesday to stand by Pelosi as the House moved ahead with the impeachment probe.
'Advantage Trump'
Meanwhile, Trump’s team strongly believes that the effort to impeach him will backfire and the president will go on to get a second term.
According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Trump came up with the strategy of declassifying and releasing the transcript of his telephonic talks with Zelensky, getting together his Republican friends to carry out the defense procedure and sending out fundraising mails seeking donations as a show of solidarity to turn the controversy into an advantage overnight.
Trump has even encouraged the media to cover the Ukraine issue and “build it up as big as possible” so that they can have a “bigger downfall”. Some top post-holders in the Trump administration supported this move saying this would show that the president did not break the law.
That Trump is not isolated despite the impeachment call has been backed by the results of two recent polls. While a WSJ/NBC News poll conducted this summer spoke about a considerable skepticism that prevailed among the independents over launching the impeachment proceedings, a Quinnipiac poll done between September 23-24 found that 57 percent of the voters rejecting the idea of Trump getting impeached as against 37 percent who felt he should be.