Donald Trump’s relationship to the GOP donor class has all the time been fraught, but recently it’s getting less so due to Sleepy Joe Biden’s limitless idiocy on a spread of policy issues — from Israel, the border, to the economy and crime — and the way all this combined appears to be handing the 2024 election to the four-times indicted orange man.
Yes, Biden is feeble and highly unpopular for doing a horrific job over the past 4 years, but he does bring some benefits to the November race, aside from Trump’s manifold legal woes.
Much of it involves money and possibly until now Trump’s difficulty in raising it from GOP megadonors.
Consider what I first reported last week: Billionaire Citadel investment chief Ken Griffin, who had backed Nikki Haley in the course of the primaries, is probably going sitting out the presidential election because he’s not a fan of Trump’s 2020 election denialism and divisiveness, people near him tell me.
Griffin is alleged to be focusing his dough on Senate seats because the GOP has an honest likelihood of winning the upper chamber and a few House races.
One other billionaire GOP donor, Steve Schwarzman of the Blackstone group private equity firm, hasn’t decided what he might do within the presidential race and that’s telling because he was once near Trump and served on his business advisory council.
He, too, is worried by Trump’s style.
But polls do matter to the GOP money men (and ladies) — they work in big business and finance, in order that they have a vested interest in cozying as much as a Trump regulatory state.
Once you mix higher Trump polling with Biden’s political and policy faults, it’s just easier for the Republican donor class, once reluctant to embrace Trump, to make amends with him, several have recently told me.
I can’t let you know if Griffin will ever have a change of heart or Schwarzman will come back into Trumpland; they’re definitely no fans of the Biden establishment and Trump might be wooing them.
But increasingly, many other Trump-hating GOP money guys consider a second Biden term would mark a dangerous turning point for the country, not simply because he won’t make it and we may have a ninny like Kamala Harris running the show.
They consider Biden, if given 4 more years, will fully embrace his inner progressive.
No tax rate might be high enough; Israel might be forced to capitulate to terrorists because he’s so beholden to the left wing of his party.
“I see GOP donors who personally hated Trump saying they’re coming back into the fold,” said one high-rolling Republican donor who was courted to throw a pair hundred grand to the Donald’s Palm Beach fundraiser hosted by hedge funder John Paulson.
“Based on what I’m seeing when it comes to who’s giving money, the Palm Beach thing might be a blowout. If the trends proceed, money won’t be an issue for Trump, trust me on this.”
Saturday’s event is anticipated to usher in at the least $43 million.
That will be nearly twice the haul Biden had for his tone-deaf money grab two weeks ago at Radio City Music Hall, where Sleepy Joe & Co (Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Stephen Colbert emceeing) raised around $26 million, clogged up traffic in Midtown, and dissed Recent York’s Finest who were mourning the death of Jonathan Diller, the NYPD officer slain while making a routine traffic stop.
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Bad optics
The Biden-Radio City powwow was held the identical day as Diller’s wake.
Yes, horrible optics and limousine liberalism at its worst.
Nevertheless it did underscore the differences between the 2 major parties and the 2 men running them.
While Biden was whooping it up, Trump attended Diller’s wake, speaking forcefully concerning the need to regulate the crime that has ravaged major cities run by lefty-Dem prosecutors and public officials seeking to defund the police and empty the jails.
“That was good counterprogramming by Trump,” said one other Trump-skeptic GOP political adviser.
Knowing what I find out about Trump — the ugly side and the side that is superb — I feel counterprogramming wasn’t his real motivation for attending.
Biden, the moderate-turned-progressive, is the least authentic major politician in America; when he’s not raging over relatively little, he’s fumbling his lines.
When he’s not fumbling his lines, he’s reading them robotically.
Trump is authenticity on steroids and doesn’t need a shot of Adderall to make it through a State of the Union speech or attend a wake and speak from the guts.
You possibly can tell he meant it when he said that Officer Diller’s killing “was sad, horrible in so some ways,” paid tribute to Diller’s wife, family and scores of the NYPD’s Finest who attended the service — while vowing to sign laws that imposes the death penalty on anyone who murders a cop, and ending the lunacy of the defund movement, all of the soft-on-crime policies advocated by the party of Biden.
Sure, the GOP money guys have their misgivings concerning the orange man, but those words are going a protracted strategy to bringing them back because the choice is a lot worse — because the last 4 years have demonstrated.
