Former President Donald Trump’s campaign is running Facebook ads to boost money off his indictment by a Recent York grand jury, leveraging the platform it only regained access to in February after a two-year ban sparked by the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Trump’s campaign for president on Friday began running Facebook ads that criticize the indictment and urge his supporters to assist him by donating, based on the social media giant’s ad archive. The archive shows a minimum of three different Trump campaign fundraising ads that leverage the indictment.
“The Radical Left – the enemy of the hard-working men and girls of this country – have INDICTED me in a disgusting witch hunt,” one Facebook ad run Friday says. “Please make a contribution of $47 or more by 11:59 P.M. to assist DEFEND our movement from the never-ending witch hunts during these dark times – and we’ll send you your very own ‘I Stand with President Trump’ T-shirt for FREE.”
The 11:59 deadline marks the top of the first-quarter fundraising period for all campaigns. The Facebook ads, run through Trump’s page, say they were paid for by the Trump Save America Joint Fundraising Committee. The political motion committee raises money for the Trump campaign and Save America, the previous president’s leadership PAC. Trump’s 2020 campaign and the Save America PAC previously spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on legal fees.
The Facebook ad archive shows a majority of those that have seen that Friday fundraising ad alone are men and girls over the age of 65. States where the ad was shown include Florida, Texas, California and Pennsylvania, a few of the most populous and politically vital within the country.
The ads underscore the hassle Trump has made across email lists and social media platforms to leverage the increased attention the indictment has dropped at rake in money, which he can use each for his 2024 bid and legal expenses. In addition they show how critical the reach of Facebook is for the previous president — and what his campaign missed throughout the two-year suspension that Facebook implemented amid fears Trump could foment more violence through the platform.
The Trump campaign began ramping up fundraising ads on Facebook earlier in March, after Trump was reinstated to the platform in February, based on the ad archive. While the platform has at all times provided a key fundraising tool for Trump when he has had access, the indictment offered a singular window to rally small-dollar donors through his social media page.
“Although the platform is pivoting away from boosting political content, it stays a strong tool for Trump to boost money and spread his messaging,” Kyle Tharp, who tracks and writes on digital ads on the newsletter FWIW, told CNBC. Tharp said that because Trump has hundreds of thousands of followers desirous to hear what he has to say, the “campaign is sensible to have interaction them — even around his indictment.”
Trump has 34 million followers on Facebook.
Trump goals to leverage the keenness amongst his supporters as he tries to cement his status because the early frontrunner within the 2024 GOP presidential primary. The prospect of an indictment didn’t appear to dampen GOP support for him: the ex-president had over 50% of support within the Republican primary for president in a recent Fox News poll.
A Trump campaign spokesman didn’t reply to a request for comment when asked how much the previous president’s campaign has raised because the indictment. Asked for comment, a Facebook spokesman referred CNBC to the corporate’s January announcement on ending Trump’s suspension and the standards he faces now that he’s back on the platform.
The Facebook ads are available in addition to the fundraising emails Trump’s campaign has sent to supporters, pushing for contributions after the Recent York grand jury’s vote.
Democrats and Republicans alike have been sending out emails calling for donors to contribute and tying the requests back to the indictment.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Senate Majority PAC, two committees dedicated to electing Democrats to the Senate, put out fundraising pitches linked back to the costs against Trump.
Representatives for Democrats and Republicans who raised money off the indictment didn’t reply to requests for comment.
ActBlue, the digital fundraising platform often utilized by Democratic campaigns, shows that the web tool processed well over $3 million in contributions between the indictment and Friday afternoon, based on its live tracker. A spokesman for ActBlue declined to comment.
A spokeswoman for WinRed, the rival online fundraising platform for Republicans, didn’t provide details on how much the web platform helped raise for GOP lawmakers and candidates.
Trump’s rage on the indictment has provided a specific pull for his page, based on data provided to CNBC by FWIW. The info shows that Trump’s Facebook post together with his initial statement reacting to the indictment, which called the move by the Recent York grand jury “political persecution,” received over 275,000 engagements, including reactions, shares, and comments. It has been shared a minimum of 25,000 times by Facebook users, the group said.
Even before the indictment, Trump’s presence on Facebook since his reinstatement saw huge engagement.
Facebook’s Top 10, a Twitter bot that tracks the highest posts on the social media platform, said in a tweet last Friday that Trump’s page had one in all the “top-performing link posts by U.S. Facebook pages within the last 24 hours.”
One of the 2 Facebook posts inside those 24 hours showed Trump in a video calling on his supporters to donate to his campaign.
“Should you haven’t got the funds, you do not even should take into consideration doing it,” Trump said within the video. “But if you happen to could chip in, if you happen to’ve done well, if you happen to remember those great 4 years that we had where you made loads, we want your assist in posting massive numbers.”
That video alone has over 375,000 views.