Major Republican donors help Trump shatter fundraising records
Fox News national correspondent Madison Scarpino reports on former President Trump’s first major fundraising event since becoming the presumptive Republican nominee.
Former President Donald Trump’s recent blockbuster presidential campaign fundraiser, which hauled in over $50 million in one night, begins to close the money gap between the GOP and the Democrat Party, but Republicans cannot afford to relax – not even for a moment. Trump supporters need to know that they are not just battling Democrats – they are up against the entire federal government.
So says Republican Claudia Tenney, who appeared on"Kudlow," Larry Kudlow’s FOX Business show in recent days, saying Democrats will do "anything and everything" to make sure Joe Biden is re-elected. The New York congresswoman cited the malicious prosecutions of Trump as indicative of Democrats’ dirty tricks, but also reminded the audience of Biden’s Executive Order 14019, issued March 7, 2021, that effectively weaponizes every federal agency – every single federal employee – to find and register voters who might help the cause.
Forget Zuckerbucks; that infusion of $419 million of private money into 2020 official election operations, which some researchers claim boosted Democrat outreach in swing states and handed the close election to Joe Biden, is small potatoes compared to accessing the entire federal bureaucracy.
Reports that Mark Zuckerberg, one of America’s wealthiest men, was able to "buy" the 2020 election have inspired 28 states to pass laws outlawing the use of private funds in managing elections. Just last week, over 54% of voters in Wisconsin voted to ban the practice. Why? Because the supposedly nonpartisan money apparently went to increase voting in Biden-heavy enclaves.
As the Wall Street Journal noted, "A 2021 report by the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) found that more than 86% of the $10 million from the Center for Tech and Civic Life went to the cities of Madison, Milwaukee, Racine, Kenosha and Green Bay. "The private money served to increase voter turnout for Joe Biden, but not Donald Trump," WILL found.""
Reports that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, one of America’s wealthiest men, was able to "buy" the 2020 election have inspired 28 states to pass laws outlawing the use of private funds in managing elections. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Because states like Wisconsin have made Zuckerbucks illegal, Democrats cannot use private funds to assist their "get out the vote" efforts, but thanks to Biden’s executive order, they now have instead the vast federal government and its 2.9 million employees. The EO demands that all "agency materials, websites, online forms, social media platforms, and other points of public access" be used – not to further the actual responsibilities of the Small Business Administration or Health and Human Services, for example – but to inform constituents of "how to register to vote, how to request a vote-by-mail ballot, and how to cast a ballot in upcoming elections".
DOJ 'STONEWALLING' REQUESTS FOR DETAILS ON IMPLEMENTATION OF BIDEN'S 'FEDERAL ELECTION SCHEME'
Further, the EO requires federal employees to assist "applicants in completing voter registration and vote-by-mail ballot application forms." In other words, federal workers – paid by taxpayer (your) dollars – are now directed to seek out and register voters; it is but a short hop to actually filling out and harvesting those ballots. As with the deployment of Zuckerbucks, where those efforts take place could vastly influence the outcome of the election.
Lest you think this is not significant, consider a report about the implementation of Biden’s EO from the "Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, ACLU, and Demos and a total of 53 [left-leaning] organizations representing a diverse set of communities". They complain that 10 federal agencies surveyed are falling short of their ambitions, writing: "We estimate that, if these agencies integrate a high-quality voter registration opportunity for the people they serve…they could collectively generate an additional 3.5 million voter registration applications per year."
More than 3 million new voters! Remember that Biden won the 2020 election by 42,000 votes.
The EO was not just a friendly request; it orders each agency to provide a report one year later with its plan for fulfilling Biden’s demands. Interestingly, not every agency appears to be on board with the assignment. The Equal Opportunity Employment Commission, in its report, sounds a distinctly wary voice. While it agrees to help make voting materials available and allow employees to work in non-partisan roles in the election, the report also states, "The EEOC takes its obligations under the Hatch Act seriously."
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According to the Office of the Special Counsel, the Hatch Act, passed in 1939, "limits certain political activities of federal employees" and is meant to "ensure that federal programs are administered in a nonpartisan fashion…"
But the law applies only to activities undertaken while on duty, in uniform or while an employee is at work. Otherwise, federal workers are free to help out a campaign however they like.
Joe Biden acted recently to guarantee that federal employees are enthusiastic about his reelection. This month, his Office of Personnel management adopted a rule that would make it harder to fire "non-partisan career civil servants," which would presumably prevent Donald Trump or any other future president from attacking the so-called "deep state."
The move was doubtless unnecessary. An analysis of campaign contributions by OpenSecrets found campaign contributions by members of the American Federation of Government Employees, the union that represents federal workers, go overwhelmingly to Democrats. In the 2022 midterms, for instance, less than 5% of donations went to the GOP, while 95% were directed to Democrats.
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Ironically, some Democrat activists are alarmed about widespread nonpartisan voter registration drives, because polls are showing increasing numbers of non-registered Americans favor Republicans. While Gallup surveys from 2016 show that slightly over half of people not registered to vote leaned Democratic, in 2023 and 2024, the Democratic percentage of non-registered population dropped to 42 percent. That change will make it all the more likely that the federal push to register voters will be targeted at seeking out Biden supporters.
Newly-appointed chair Michael Whatley says the Republican National Committee is going to be "in the room" to monitor votes cast and counted come November.
That’s encouraging, but can they monitor the entire federal government? We can only hope so.
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