Former President Donald Trump and the RNC raised more than $50 million within 24 hours after the left-wing, Soros-funded Manhattan district attorney used lawfare to secure a conviction against the former president. But the money means nothing if it’s not spent turning out voters.
The Trump campaign “together with the RNC” said they brought in $141 million in donations for the month of May. Of that total, more than $50 million was brought in within 24 hours of the conviction. An additional $150 million was raised by “organizations supporting” the former president in May, according to the Trump campaign.
The fundraising haul is impressive and surely indicates a surge of support for the former president, but Trump still isn’t a shoo-in for November. This election will require intense and targeted voter turnout — not just general enthusiasm — to offset Democrats’ massive ballot schemes.
Where Is the Money Going?
RNC co-chair Lara Trump told CNN that the donations would be used to “ensure that the right thing happens on November 5” when asked how much of the donations would go toward covering Trump’s legal fees. Trump is currently fending off several other lawfare cases, which are meant in part to financially bankrupt him and drain resources from Team Trump.
Axios reported Sunday that Trump’s team “is more focused so far on building a sprawling network of ‘election integrity’ lawyers and poll watchers than on rounding up organizers and door knockers to reach voters.” The corporate media outlet cited an unnamed “committee official” who indicated that the “RNC plans to hire more people for the operation than for any other department it has.”
Trump campaign spokeswoman Danielle Alvarez told The Federalist that Axios’ reporting should not be believed and pointed toward the RNC’s new joint “Trump Force 47” initiative which will work with grassroots organizations to “recruit, train, and organize volunteers who are assigned to turn out specifically targeted voters in their own precinct.”
In a press release, Political Director James Blair said the program “prioritizes many volunteers doing a few high-impact tasks each instead of old models which devolved to a few volunteers trying to do many low-impact tasks each.”
The “Trump Force 47” initiative prompts volunteers to choose from several activities like calling targeting voters and engaging in “targeted voter outreach” in their neighborhoods, as well as poll watching and delivering yard signs.
On Tuesday, Team Trump also announced the launch of “Swamp The Vote USA,” which is part of Trump Force 47, that seeks to “promote the use of absentee and mail ballots and early in-person voting.”
“The Trump Force 47 program incorporates Swamp The Vote USA into its organizing model by using personalized voter contacts to generate new absentee or mail ballot registrations and early in-person voting commitments,” the press release states.
When asked how much of the millions that Trump and the RNC fundraised after the show trial conviction would be invested in the “Trump Force 47” initiative, Alvarez told The Federalist “enough,” adding those numbers are never provided to the media.
Politico cited an anonymous “person familiar with the effort” to report that the effort will be headed by “paid staff” in battleground states who will organize “unpaid” grassroots activists.
“Trump Force 47” is in addition to the RNC’s efforts announced in April that focused on recruiting poll watchers and observers as well as lawyers. When previously asked about their ground game in key swing states, the RNC and Team Trump directed The Federalist to its poll watcher volunteer effort.
But what good are poll watchers and observers if the ballots aren’t there?
In Arizona for example, organizations like the Arizona Free Enterprise Club are working on get-out-the-vote efforts and voter outreach. But the RNC’s involvement has been apparently minimal. President of the Arizona Free Enterprise Club Scot Mussi told The Federalist in May that “it feels like here in Arizona, the Left is pouring in millions of dollars into … their own ground game and it doesn’t seem, at least what we’re seeing on the ground, that there’s the same emphasis from a lot of these national groups, and that includes the RNC.”
In battleground Pennsylvania, on-the-ground Republican leaders also expressed hope the RNC would soon increase its involvement. When pressed by The Federalist at the time, the RNC also did not provide details about what the organization is doing between now and November to increase voter registration, support mail-in ballot initiatives, and increase voter outreach.
Democrats Are Playing To Win
Meanwhile, Democrats have been cultivating on-the-ground efforts to drive voter turnout — on top of engaging with partisan hacks like Marc Elias to upend the judicial system in favor of lax election laws.
The Pennsylvania Democratic Party, for example, set up more than a dozen offices across the Keystone State in conjunction with the Biden campaign back in March, according to the Pennsylvania Capital Star. The offices are reportedly set to “host training sessions for volunteers, canvassing kickoffs and volunteer recruitment events,” according to the report.
But the Biden campaign and Democrats aren’t just using donations to turn out voters. In addition, Democrats are using your taxpayer dollars to boost their chances via “Bidenbucks.”
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Biden signed Executive Order 14019 in March of 2021 that, as my colleague Shawn Fleetwood has explained, “directed hundreds of federal agencies to interfere in state and local election administration by using U.S. taxpayer dollars to boost voter registration and get-out-the-vote activities.”
Democrat state-level officials are also spearheading taxpayer-funded efforts to turn out Democrat-favorable voter blocs such as young voters — including in key swing states. For example, Arizona partnered with the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge to increase voter turnout among students in accredited universities statewide, as Fleetwood reported. ALL IN is part of Civic Nation, a left-wing nonprofit headed by a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama.
Universities who partake in the initiative are eligible for “awards based on voter turnout and registration rates” for the Nov. 5 election. Federal law prohibits making or offering “expenditure to any person, either to vote or withhold his vote,” as Fleetwood notes.
Nevada and Michigan likewise launched task forces targeting youth voter participation.
Voters between the ages of 18-29 broke for Democrat House candidates during the 2022 midterms nearly 2-1 when compared to Republican candidates, according to estimates from the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University.
Meanwhile, the Department of Education, in compliance with the “Bidenbucks” order, issued a memo in February announcing Federal Work-Study funds could now be used to employ students at government agencies for work like “supporting broad-based get-out-the-vote activities, voter registration, providing voter assistance at a polling place or through a voter hotline, or serving as a poll worker.”
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist.
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