President Donald J. Trump arrives on stage to address employees at the Army Tank Plant Wednesday, March 20, 2019, at the Joint Systems Manufacturing Center in Lima, Ohio. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)
After largely dismissing him in 2016, big GOP donors have come around to President Trump, reports Politico. Alex Isenstadt writes that “Deep-pocketed Republicans who snubbed Donald Trump in 2016 are going all in for him in 2020, throwing their weight behind a newly created fundraising drive that’s expected to dump tens of millions into his reelection coffers.”
This isn’t too surprising, the so-called “Never Trump” movement has fizzled as its champions have lost their powerful positions, or have changed their tunes. Trump is the only change Americans have of avoiding more progressive judges on the courts, a nationalized health care system, the loss of their second amendment rights, and crippling regulation. Democrats are building a platform of complete insanity for 2020, and the only hope America has to avoid the consequences is lining up to vote for Trump, whether they like his Tweets and bizarre behavior or not.
Now that many GOP heavyweights have come to understand that, they are lining up to fill the coffers of Trump’s 2020 campaign. Isenstadt explains their efforts:
The effort involves scores of high-powered businessmen, lobbyists and former ambassadors who raised big money for George W. Bush, John McCain and Mitt Romney — and who are now preparing to tap their expansive networks for Trump after rebuffing his first presidential bid.
The project, which is closely modeled after the famed Pioneers network that helped to fuel Bush’s 2000 campaign, is slated to be formally unveiled on May 7, when well-connected Republican fundraisers from around the country descend on Washington for a closed-door event with Trump 2020 aides. Under the plan, which was described by more than a half-dozen party officials, high-performing bundlers who collect at least $25,000 for Trump Victory, a joint Trump 2020-Republican National Committee fundraising vehicle, will earn rewards like invitations to campaign-sponsored retreats, briefings and dinners.
Party officials have been reaching out to top fundraisers in recent weeks and wooing them with the prospect of joining “raiser clubs,” with names like 45 Club, Trump Train and Builders Club.
The push illustrates how Trump, who once took a sledgehammer to rivals for their supposed fealty to big donors, has come to rely on a GOP establishment he once repudiated. And it’s a sign of just how closely the lean, ragtag operation that stunned the political world in 2016 now resembles a traditional presidential campaign. Yet it also underscores how the elite Republican money class, which waged an aggressive, but ultimately unsuccessful effort to stop Trump in the 2016 election, has come to accept and accommodate a president it once scorned.
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