Trump is the Republican Party, says GOP pollster as POTUS raises millions apparently for Georgia Senate runoff
As per Republican pollster John McLaughlin, President Donald Trump is now effectively the Republican Party as the president continues to bring in campaign donations ahead of the Georgia Senate runoffs on January 5. “Right now, he is the Republican Party,” said McLaughlin on Friday, December 18. “The party knows that virtually every dollar they’ve raised in the last four years, it’s because of Donald Trump.”
His comments come as Trump's new leadership PAC, 'Save America', is making fundraising appeals and calling on the president's supporters to help Republican Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue win reelection. However, ABC News, citing ad placement data and campaign disclosures, pointed out that 'Save America' does not appear to be spending on the Georgia Senate elections. The fine print shows reportedly 75 percent of the donations to the Georgia Fund go to Save America, with 25 percent to the Republican National Committee.
“There’s no bully pulpit as large as the presidency, but nevertheless, President Trump is likely to play a significant role in the future of the Republican Party,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster. “It’s very difficult to imagine him following the same pattern as George W Bush, Barack Obama and other presidents have followed in keeping their mouths shut and letting the new president try to govern.”
As per The New York Times, Trump has raised roughly $250 million since Election Day along with the national party. During the election campaign, large expenditures like television and digital ad buys were reportedly routed through a secretive LLC called American Made Media Consultants. More than $700 million has gone through the LLC since the beginning of 2019, per an NYT report. Documents reviewed by the NYT allegedly show that Lara Trump, the president's daughter-in-law, and a senior campaign adviser, served on the board, and was named on drafts of the incorporation papers. So was John Pence, the nephew of Vice President Mike Pence and a senior Trump adviser.
Tim Murtaugh, a spokesman for Trump, said both Lara and John resigned from the board in October 2019. “There was never any ethical or legal reason why they could not serve on the board in the first place,’’ he said. He added that neither was paid for being on the board. While it is not clear how much money Save America has raised or spent thus far, campaign finance specialist Brian Fischer of the Campaign Legal Center told The Guardian that the figure could be significantly high. "We'd expect that there's well over $100M in the leadership PAC account by this point," Fischer said. "That is exceptional. That is a lot of money, far more than any other leadership PAC that I can think of has raised."
As per the NYT, campaign finance experts speculated that Trump might try to use the excess of cash in his new PAC, formally known as a leadership PAC, to pay for his own personal future legal problems — he faces investigations once he leaves office. “A leadership PAC is a slush fund,” said Meredith McGehee, executive director of Issue One, a group that supports increased political transparency. “There are very, very, very few limits on what he can’t spend money on.”