Trump campaign says it raised a record $50.5 million at Florida event
NEW YORK — Donald Trump's campaign said it raised $50.5 million on Saturday, a staggering reported haul as his campaign works to catch up to the fund-raising juggernaut of President Biden and the Democratic Party.
The reported haul from the event with major donors at the Palm Beach, Fla., home of billionaire investor John Paulson sets a new single-event fundraising record and is almost double the $26 million that Biden’s campaign said it raised recently at a gathering with former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama at Radio City Music Hall in New York.
“It’s clearer than ever that we have the message, the operation, and the money to propel President Trump to victory on November 5,” his campaign’s senior advisers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles said in a statement.
The event, billed as the “Inaugural Leadership Dinner," sends a signal of a resurgence of Trump and the Republican Party's fundraising, which has lagged behind Biden and the Democrats.
“This has been some incredible evening before it even starts because people — they wanted to contribute to a cause of making America great again, and that’s what’s happened,” Trump said to reporters as he arrived.
Trump and the GOP announced last week that they raised more than $65.6 million in March and closed out the month with $93.1 million.
Biden and the Democrats announced Saturday that they took in more than $90 million last month and had $192 millionplus on hand.
Campaign fund-raising reports filed with the Federal Election Commission detailing donations from Saturday’s event are not expected until a mid-July filing date.
Trump initially struggled to attract big donors in particular when he launched his campaign, as some lined up to support the other Republicans who challenged him in the presidential primary. But as Trump racked up easy wins, leveled the field, and became the party's presumptive nominee, the GOP has solidified behind him.
Saturday's high-dollar event hosted about 100 guests, including more than a few billionaires. Contributions to the event will go toward the Trump 47 Committee, according to the invitation, a joint fund-raising agreement with the Republican National Committee, state Republican parties, and Save America, a political action committee that pays the bulk of Trump's legal bills. In an unusual arrangement, the fund-raising agreement directs donations to first pay the maximum allowed under law to his campaign and Save America before the RNC or state parties get a cut.
The fund-raising arrangement doesn’t direct RNC funds to Trump’s legal bills. But when checks of any amount are written to the combined campaign, the campaign and Save America get paid first by default.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Menendez looks to keep spending details out of trial
Senator Robert Menendez and his wife don’t want jurors at their upcoming corruption trial to learn about the power couple’s luxurious lifestyle that included cigars, handbags, and jewelry.
Lawyers for Menendez and his wife, Nadine, objected Friday to prosecutors seeking to offer such evidence in New York federal court, where they’re accused of accepting bribes of cash, gold bars, and a car in exchange for political favors for three businessmen.
Jurors shouldn’t be told about their “preference for expensive luxury items” including his preference for Bombay Sapphire Gin, cigars, and upscales meals on a limited salary, and her handbags and jewelry while desiring a Mercedes-Benz, according to separate filings by the couple’s lawyers.
“There is no yacht or vacation home that was draining
Senator Menendez’s finances,” lawyers for the New Jersey Democrat wrote in the filing. “He lived well within his means as a federal government employee.”
Menendez’s lawyers ridiculed prosecutors for trying to brand run of the mill purchases as luxury items. Nothing about a bottle of Bombay Sapphire Gin, which sells for $23.99, “smells of excess,” they said.
But in the flurry of Friday filings, prosecutors also included new details about their investigation of Menendez’s relationship with a medical testing company that hired his wife. The judge had previously said the company’s owner was “an alleged beneficiary of the bribery scheme,” one filing said.
The new filings identified the company and its owner, neither of which has been charged with a crime and are not referred to in the indictment.
Robert Menendez is charged with crimes including bribery, fraud, extortion, obstruction, and acting as a foreign agent of Egypt. His wife has also been charged along with two businessmen. All pleaded not guilty. A third businessman pleaded guilty and is cooperating with prosecutors.
Menendez, 70, has seen his popularity plummet since he was first indicted in September and stepped down as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Defense lawyers responded to a letter by prosecutors saying the government wanted to introduce the evidence to show the couple’s motive or because it’s “inextricably intertwined” with the charges. But defense lawyers say it would prejudice the couple at a trial set, to begin May 6.
“Evidence of a criminal defendant’s specific purchases or possessions that the government touts as ‘lavish’ or ‘luxurious’ is particularly pernicious in arousing emotions of the jury,” the lawyers wrote in one of several late-night filings.
BLOOMBERG NEWS
With eye on 2nd term, Biden touts accomplishments
WASHINGTON — President Biden is discovering that passing one of the most ambitious legislative agendas in recent US history may have been the easy part; persuading Americans that he deserves a second term may be far more difficult.
Confronting low approval ratings and a neck-and-neck race against former president Donald Trump, Biden is now racing to tell voters about his accomplishments, in ways big and small.
Road signs that promote his legislation are going up at construction projects financed by his $1 trillion infrastructure bill and at factories where jobs are being created by his $280 billion CHIPS and Science Act. Biden has affixed his name to emails telling Americans with student debt that their loans were being forgiven. And he is traveling to battleground states to sit down with voters who have benefited from his policies.
Democrats traditionally have been “the party of the abstract, and we need to be the party that humanizes things,” said Governor Phil Murphy of New Jersey, a Biden ally who believes the president has the skill set to do just that. “He personally is so good at this, putting his arm — figuratively and literally — around the American people and saying, ‘Hey, listen, I feel your pain.’”
But Biden faces a host of challenges in reaping the credit as he seeks reelection.
Polling shows that a majority of Americans disapprove of his job performance. Many Americans say they benefited more from the policies of Trump.
Most concerning for Biden, his support remains underwhelming among key parts of the Democratic coalition, including
Black and Hispanic Americans and younger voters — the people many of his efforts were designed to help.
Some of that negativity can be attributed to the 81-year-old president’s age, lingering effects of the pandemic, and improved views of Trump, a phenomenon that is common after presidents leave office. The war in the Gaza Strip has depressed enthusiasm among Democrats, too.
Biden, however, may also be hampered by the very nature of his major legislation, which is meant to achieve transformational and long-term goals like rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure, combating climate change, and reinvigorating manufacturing. Problems of that magnitude cannot be solved instantly — or even before voters go to the polls in November. Without immediate results, ambitious legislation can be harder to market.
Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a former official in the Clinton White House, said Biden’s approach resembled that of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who enacted programs such as Social Security that fundamentally altered the fabric of American life.
“Biden is a different generation in that respect. For him, policy is about legacy, as opposed to ‘What will it do for me tomorrow?’” Kamarck said. “Now, it certainly does pose political issues because people don’t see the results. But I think most people understand that climate change, you don’t solve it overnight.”