HuffPost: Self-Proclaimed Billionaire Trump Now Begging Small-Dollar Donors For Money

ORLANDO, Fla. ― After years of claiming he was so rich he didn’t need anyone else’s money for his political campaigns, Donald Trump is officially asking small-dollar donors ― many of them lower income and older ― to send him cash, potentially hurting the Republican Party’s small-dollar program.

The request was tucked in near the end of his first public appearance since leaving the presidency Jan. 20, a 90-minute speech Sunday that largely recycled his oft-repeated lies about the November election and his record in office.

“There’s only one way to contribute to our efforts, to elect ‘America first’ Republican conservatives. And in turn, to make America great again. And that’s through Save America PAC and Donald J Trump dot com,” he told his Conservative Political Action Conference audience.

One Trump adviser said that single request resulted in “millions of dollars” coming in to Trump’s new political committee and predicted it would eat into the Republican National Committee’s efforts to raise money from those donors.

“It’ll kill it,” the adviser said on condition of anonymity. “They’re not going to have a small-donor program anymore.” …

Trump is the first one-term president in modern times to nevertheless try to remain a force in national politics after losing reelection. He was able to raise $76 million for Save America in the weeks between the election and the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection by claiming, in hundreds of fundraising texts and emails, that the money would let him pursue challenges to the election results and help Republicans hold Georgia’s two Senate seats. In the end, though, he spent none of that money for those purposes.

“Republican dollars were probably much more needed in Georgia,” said Paul Ryan, a campaign law expert with the nonpartisan watchdog group Common Cause, adding that while Trump now claims he will help Republicans in the midterms, he is not required to. “He has shown a total and complete willingness to raise money for a stated reason and to spend it on something else. I have no doubt he will continue doing that.”