During the Republican primary, Donald Trump claimed he couldn’t be bought. Well, it sure looks like he is now for sale. He’s even bragging about how much money is being donated to his campaign. And what’s worse, we have no idea who is buying him. Trump is refusing to name any of his fundraising bundlers.
The executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics says “The fact that he has not released his bundlers is very upsetting. This is a basic piece of information that the voters need: Who is bankrolling the campaign? And who are the bag men who are holding out the bags collecting the contributions?”
Indeed, Hillary Clinton has already voluntarily released the names of her bundlers who have raised at least $100,000, and the Clinton campaign discloses the name and location of all fundraisers that either she or Tim Kaine attend. And, of course, she has released decades of tax returns. Trump refuses to do any of this.
A spokesperson for “Every Voice”, a group working to reducing the influence of money in politics, said “Trump spent his entire primary campaign calling his opponents puppets of big donors and now some of those same big donors are raising money for his campaign. He’s been all talk and no action on money in politics.”
Trump has simultaneously flipped “from attacking donors to soliciting [money from] them, from bashing super PACS to embracing them, from promising to release his taxes to refusing.” Trump claimed that Sheldon Adelson was backing Marco Rubio during the primary “because he feels he can mold him into his perfect little puppet.” But now it is Trump who is taking money from Adelson.
And Trump is already paying his big donors back for their money. His newly named economic advisory council is filled with campaign contributors who have chipped in more than $2 million.
3 Comments
But is he paying the bills at the Convention Halls and Hotels? Is he still stiffing the little man.
I’m actually a little relieved that some of the big donor money is flowing to Trump. I was afraid that they would focus their money on down ticket races.
The Trump campaign does what it can to pay the bills at convention halls and hotels, and for airplane flights… in properties that Trump owns or has an interest in.
Were Clinton to do such things, Trump would immediately call, Corruption!!” And indeed has.