No. of Recommendations: 20
Here’s an unusually detailed story of where the money in politics is going, presented in readable, logical fashion for you on a Monday morning. It is a gift article, and feel free to lift it and repost in other social media venues or to your crazy Uncle’s email as the spirit moves you.
Republican Donors: Do You Know Where Your Money Goes? We long ago blew past any meaningful controls on political giving in American elections. Now we should focus on the rules governing political spending, which are in equally terrible shape. For that we can blame the Trump campaign and the federal government’s feeble enforcement efforts.
Anyone who has spent time reviewing Donald Trump’s campaign spending reports would quickly conclude they’re a governance nightmare. There is so little disclosure about what happened to the billions raised in 2020 and 2024 that donors (and maybe even the former president himself) can’t possibly know how it was spent.
Federal Election Commission campaign disclosure reports from 2020 show that much of the money donated to the Trump campaign went into a legal and financial black hole reportedly controlled by Trump family members and close associates. This year’s campaign disclosures are shaping up to be the same. Donors big and small give their hard-earned dollars to candidates with the expectation they will be spent on direct efforts to win votes. They deserve better.
During the 2020 election, almost $516 million of the over $780 million spent by the Trump campaign was directed to American Made Media Consultants, a Delaware-based private company created in 2018 that masked the identities of who ultimately received donor dollars, according to a complaint filed with the F.E.C. by the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center. How A.M.M.C. spent the money was a mystery even to Mr. Trump’s campaign team, according to news reports shortly after the election. More:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/26/opinion/republi...The story is, by the way, written by a former advisor to several Republican candidates and officials.
Further in the article details how little of the money seems to be going … anywhere. Harris’ TV spending is way larger than Trump’s. Remote offices are being opened by Democrats in greater numbers and earlier than Republican. All of the things that cost money don’t seem to be happening on one side as much as the other.
Can you guess why?
