Jeff Danziger lives in New York City. He is represented by CWS Syndicate and the Washington Post Writers Group. He is the recipient of the Herblock Prize and the Thomas Nast (Landau) Prize. He served in the US Army in Vietnam and was awarded the Bronze Star and the Air Medal. He has published eleven books of cartoons and one novel. Visit him at DanzigerCartoons.com.
Reprinted with permission from Alternet.
For nearly two years the Trump re-election campaign has been running apparently fraudulent fundraising contests that promise breakfast, lunch, or even dinner with the President – reportedly at least sixteen separate contests over the course of nearly two years. There was just one winner announced and that person never dined with the president.
That’s called fraud. It’s illegal.
(Don’t expect anyone to prosecute Trump or the campaign for it.)
Veteran journalist and founder of both Popular Information and ThinkProgress, Judd Legum, has been chasing down this story for months, and publishing the results in his email newsletter and to Twitter.
6. We know this one contest was a fraud.
But there is still no evidence that anyone won the 14 other meals with Trump that were promised by the campaign
Here is what we know https://t.co/2de4xHOcCH pic.twitter.com/K1YxKXZk0k
— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) November 7, 2019
And some more which show some of the fraudulent ads the campaign has run:
On Monday I published a report raising questions about whether anyone actually won 15 Trump campaign contests promising meals with Trump
The campaign’s rebuttal is a story of a woman who won a breakfast w/Trump AND TRUMP DID NOT ATTEND
This is fraud.https://t.co/2de4xHOcCH pic.twitter.com/o0YqYLLMrd
— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) November 7, 2019
2. The promise of breakfast with Trump was used in hundreds of Facebook ads to entice supporters to donate money.
“I really want to discuss our Campaign Strategy for the rest of the year with you over breakfast,” Trump said in a Facebook ad in September https://t.co/2de4xHOcCH
— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) November 7, 2019
Those are just a few of the examples of the Trump campaign apparently breaking the law and committing fraud, according to at least one expert.
But on Friday President Trump tweeted about another “contest,” and this one, if it doesn’t violate the law, violates ethical norms respected by presidents for generations.
I will be announcing the winners of the #MAGACHALLENGE and inviting them to the @WhiteHouse to meet with me and perform. Good luck! https://t.co/3PYzOvYz17
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 8, 2019
It’s unclear what the #MAGACHALLENGE is, exactly. Some are calling it a pro-Trump campaign rap contest started by rapper Bryson Gray.
But it absolutely is a campaign-related political event, now that President Trump has declared he will be “announcing the winners of the #MAGACHALLENGE and inviting them to the @WhiteHouse to meet with me and perform.”
If that’s not illegal, it is definitely an abuse of the power of the Office of the President. All prior presidents have worked hard to separate political campaigning from the White House and from the Office of the President.
Until now.
IMAGE: Donald Trump gestures as he attends the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, February 2, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
By Ginger Gibson and Grant Smith
WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) – Republican Donald Trump could go down as the least well-funded presidential candidate in recent campaigns – entering the final month of the election still without the cash to match the level of staff and advertising that has helped power the campaign of his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.
With less than three weeks until the election, it is too late for Trump to amass the amount of cash he would need to unleash a spending assault that might turn his hobbled campaign around. Through the end of September, Trump raised a total of $163 million – a far cry from Clinton’s $449 million.
Trump, a New York real estate developer who has boasted about his wealth, pledged to use millions of his personal assets to fund his campaign. In addition to the $163 million raised, he put in $47.5 million during the primary and then added another $8.6 million.
Trump’s fundraising deficit has resulted from a series of campaign crises that made wealthy donors reluctant to contribute to his campaign and reflects that he does not enjoy working the fundraising circuit or calling large-dollar donors to ask them to write checks.
That’s a big disadvantage for Trump. And it shows in how he has been outspent trying to win the Nov. 8 election for the White House, particularly in the two largest spending categories: staff and television commercials.
When it comes to staff, Trump has spent $5 million, compared with Clinton’s spending of about $38 million.
Trump had 168 people on his payroll in September, more than doubling the 82 he had on staff in July. Additionally, Trump spent $5 million on field consultants, part-time workers who are not part of the main staff.
Clinton had 815 people on her staff in September.
On advertising, Trump has spent $48.7 million while Clinton has spent $204 million – allowing her to blanket the airwaves with a deluge of advertisements.
It has also allowed Clinton to inject more money into states that have become closer as Election Day nears. Earlier this week, Clinton’s campaign announced it was spending an additional $2 million in Arizona, a late-game decision to try to win a traditionally Republican state that now appears within her grasp.
Overall, Trump has spent about $190 million by the end of September, compared with Clinton’s $401 million.
Trump and Clinton can collect donations up to $5,400 from a single individual, but can also collect larger checks that are then divided between the campaign and joint fundraisers with the national and state parties.
The funds that candidates raise for the national and state political parties are still used for the common effort of hiring staff and getting voters to turn out to the polls. But those funds cannot be used in the most direct parts of running a campaign, like buying television ads or hiring staff that report to the campaign manager.
Trump’s campaign struggled to get organized and build out the infrastructure that is needed to be competitive in the key battleground states. Instead, Trump has been dependent on the infrastructure built by the Republican Party.
Trump has raised $244 million through joint fundraising committees with the national parties, of which he got $71 million.
By comparison, Clinton has raised $415 million through joint fundraisers, of which $117 million went to her campaign.
Since 2008, major party presidential candidates have stopped accepting public funding for their general election campaigns – which placed limits on the amount a candidate could raise and spend.
But even the last candidate to accept public funds, Senator John McCain in 2008, raised more that year than Trump did this election. McCain raised more than $300 million. That same year, Barack Obama, in his first presidential race, raised $607 million.
In 2012, Mitt Romney raised more than $337 million at this point in the campaign. And Obama had raised $564 million.
(Reporting by Ginger Gibson in Washington and Grant Smith in New York; Editing by Leslie Adler)
Photo: Donald Trump takes the stage. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
Hillary Clinton may have won two of the past three states on the Democratic nominating schedule (a third, South Carolina, is on its way), but reports indicate she has been struggling to raise the money necessary to keep up with her success. While her campaign started off the month with $18 million more than Sanders, according to the Los Angeles Times, she has not raised new campaign funds as quickly as her rival.
A cash flow issue might have been the last problem the Clinton camp expected: She had widespread support from numerous Democratic party donors. She appealed to women voters, who were expected to coalesce around what has been the best chance this country has ever had to elect a woman president. But Bernie Sanders’s candidacy has complicated her efforts to clinch the nomination early on.
Many of Clinton’s donors have reached the individual donations cap, which is set at $2,700 during the primary season. “There are only so many people in Hollywood with $2,700 to give. Eventually you burn through them,” a political insider who advised wealthy donors, told the Los Angeles Times.
In the 2016 election cycle, small donations — under $200, according to the FEC — have been key to powering the Sanders’s campaign. He has received well over a million small donations, while Clinton has received around 700,000. Those smaller donations could fund Sanders’s presidential ambitions all the way to Democratic convention. He recently told CBS News, “We’re going to be there fighting until the day of the convention.” Sanders has $14 million on hand, with nearly 75 percent coming from small contributions.
“The problem for Clinton is nobody thinks she needs their money,” said Nicco Mele to the LA Times. Mele had previously helped Vermont Governor Howard Dean fund his 2004 nomination run, which also relied on small donations made online. “Everyone in the world thinks Bernie can’t survive without their money.”
Meanwhile, Clinton campaign, has nearly $33 million on hand. According to OpenSecrets, a website that run by the Center for Responsive Politics that tracks political donations, over 75 percent of campaign donations came from large individual contributions, the sort that Clinton is running out of.
In the lead up to Super Tuesday — when 11 states will simultaneously hold their primaries and caucuses, and when Clinton hopes to cement an insurmountable lead over Sanders — Clinton will be holding 13 fundraising events. According to Politico, Bill and Chelsea Clinton are scheduled to attend a combined 20 events, not to mention the myriad events hosted by campaign aides and surrogates.
“They now know this is going to be a fight as prolonged as the Obama ’08 fight was,” said former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell to Politico. The former Democratic National Committee chairman and long time Clinton supporter, who has helped with Clinton’s campaign fundraising, repeated comments made by other Clinton operatives when he said, “it’s clear to me that this race will not be decided by who has the most money.”
Pro-Clinton Super-PACs have also avoided stepping into the fray. They fear that directing their money against Sanders could further split the Democratic Party at a time of heightened animosity between the two candidates and their supporters: outside organizations have only spent $786,000 attacking the Vermont senator, most of it coming from a Republican-aligned organization.
Clinton, on the other hand, has borne the brunt of Republican attacks against the Democrats. Over $4 million has been spent attacking her, probably because the Republicans believe they will have an easier time beating a Jewish Democratic Socialist than they would beating a prominent former First Lady, senator, and secretary of state.
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