The Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson skewers the RNC’s continued downfall. The New York Times' Shane Goldmacher breaks down how Trump is paying his legal bills. Pollster Cornell Belcher examines how to analyze polls when giving to candidates.
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics, where we discussed the top political headlines with some of today's best minds.
And Donald Trump continues to attack Judge Merchant's daughter. We have such an interesting show today. The New York Times Shane Goldmocker breaks down all the strange ways Trump is paying his legal bills that we'll talk to polster Cornell Belcher about how to analyze polls when giving to candidates. But first we have the host of the Enemy's List, Lincoln Project's own Rick Wilson.
Rick, it's a Friday, and that means it's done for insanitday, Rick Wilson.
Sunday, Sunday Sunday. That kind of thrills, the spills you, the fountains well to see and here, Sorry, I've probably done that joke before, but it never gets old for me, as a child of the seventies raised in Florida.
Never ever ever gets old. So it's a Friday, It's two hundred and twenty one days to the election, two hundred and a mere two hundred and twenty one days. I feel like we've hit this moment in the news site go where things are a little bit quiet but also bubbling under the surface a little bit insane.
Yeah. I mean, look, I think the peak of this week's insanity, of course, was Donald Trump, a lifelong retrobate, adulter, cheater, liar, procureur. And I can think of a hundred different adjectives for Donald Trump's low moral character. But the idea of Donald Trump and Lee Greenwood, two men with seven wives between them, marketing a American flag themed Trump Bible, I think that in many ways it's like Trump's always challenging you to like be shocked by his shamelessness. This was a good one. This I gotta say. I gotta give the guy props. If you're looking to be a shameless, venal scumbag who is tempting the Lord to strike you down with lightning or turn you into a pillar of salt, Donald Trump is really really working the system this week. I'm impressed with how completely shameless, I mean, how utterly shameless this guy was about it.
Here's the thing about Trump Bibles. We knew, right this is what he had been doing, sneakers. I mean, this is a man even before he was a sort of fake Christian grifter, when he was still a fake liberal grifter. He was selling steaks and bombis, water models, vodka, mon and also you'll remember he had, you know, all sorts of weird real estate schemes that were like multi level marketing schemes. So this is not a huge shock, but if you look at the cover of it, it is really a thing of I was going to say beauty, but I was kidding.
It's a thing of audacity.
Holy Bible, God Bless the USA. And then there's a Bible. I mean, I don't know who this is for.
Again, I said this on my podcast yesterday. I'm like, no one is going to wake up in the morning and say that Rick Wilson, he's an exemplary Christian. He's the best of the best. But when you look at a guy like Donald Trump, the contrast here. I mean this, I feel sorry for the Christians who believe Donald Trump is one of them. I feel sorry for the Evangelicals who have decided, Okay, you know, we kind of know there's some issues with this guy, but he's our tribune, he is our leader. He's the one who's going to help us bring in the era of Christian nationalist government. I feel bad for these people because Trump hates them.
Trump loaths them.
He thinks they are dumb, slack, jawed, blah blah blah. All of that stuff is absolutely pathetic. It's absolutely fundamentally wrong. You know, I don't have a lot of mercy for Maugas, but I do feel like there are some of them who are who feel trapped like well, it's either a godless communist Joe Biden Satan worshiper, or Donald Trump flawed Christian. Yeah, I can tell you the fact that we've got Joe Biden, who is, regardless of his liberalism, people still a Catholic in the eyes of the Catholic Church, who goes to church regularly, who takes mass regularly, versus Donald Trump again, a reprobate, scumbag low life.
He takes omelet bars pretty regularly.
Right, He worships at the first Church of the golf course on Sunday. This is not a guy who should have the support of Christians because everything about him is anathema to actual Christian practice and behavior. But once again, call me crazy, because they frequently don't give a fuck.
So last week the presidents came three presidents.
By really lowered your voice the registered Last week.
Last switching time. I'm switching out of this tirade about Donald Trump being a real or faith Christian because you know, honestly, like organized religion is, I'm not so engaged in it, and neither are a lot of Americans, which is super interesting. But so we're talking about last week the presidents Biden, Obama and Clinton came and they did a huge fundraiser and they raised somewhere north of twenty five million dollars, probably a little bit more. That was an underestimate. And that same day, Megan Kelly wants you to know Donald Trump went to a wake of a slain policeman in I assume Long Island because that's where the Republicans are. I want to talk to you about that because it's like, now, look, Biden has to raise money, and Biden is out raising Trump at an enormous clip as well. He should be because he wants to continue American democracy, which is what we all want. But my question to you is the fact that Trump actually went to awake and not a golf club or to see an adult movie star makes me wonder if Chris la Sevitas, if he's actually getting a little bit better advice on the campaign trip.
You can't deny that he's getting better advice than he would have gotten from Corey Lewandowski, or Brad Parscal or Steve Bannon or a box car full of monkeys.
Okay, right, it doesn't take much to raise that I forgot Brad from last season.
Yes, don't forget Brad, Brad, I got Brad fired.
The last time we saw Brad, he was wearing no shirt and being coughed.
Yes, he was being knocked to the ground by the police. Then he had a brief flirtation with Ron de sanctimonious to use the name of Donald Trump. The reason he went to this funeral was not to honor the memory of a police officer who lost his life or was injured in the line of duty. You know what, we didn't give.
A shit about the Capitol policeman who died.
That's exactly the point. As many people said, did he go to the funeral of Brian Sicknick, who died after the Capital attack? No he did not. Did he go visit any of the injured cops in the hospital. Absolutely not. None of this is real. This is trolling.
Does he have better advisors? I think as a question.
He has better advisors, but again he has a deficit. No matter how good the advice is, Donald Trump remains this is a technical try we kind of use in Republican politics. Batshit, bug, fuck nuthouse crazy, and he's not going to be able to retain and maintain the idea that he currently is expressing that He's like, I care about these cops and I'm worried about crime. Are they trying to frame the election about being crime and immigration? Of course they are. Have they got some really big deficits in that regard. Well, yeah, what with him being a criminal in all, and what with Trump being the one who's keeping an immigration bill and border security from passing. They were trolling. They were looking for a way to troll Joe Biden, and I'm sure las Avita or Susie Wiles came up with this. And by the way, I'm just going to say this right now because this will be picked up by their algorithmic Google alerts. Chris Losovita is the smartest, most brilliant campaign consultant Trump has ever had, and he's smarter than Donald Trump by a long way. I'm literally doing that just so that I know, for a fact that they monitor every single mention of everybody around him, now, like the fucking stazzy Right, anytime I mention Chris Losovita in a way that praises him, Chris Losovida, the golden God of political wisdom, it drives Trump crazy, right.
All right, So let's get back to this question though, that Trump may be having better people advise him, which I think is something that is worth thinking about. But it is true that in Playbook this morning there was a whole thing about how Trump is also like a little bit freaked out that Biden's raising so much money, and so there was a whole thing about how they're going to raise thirty five million dollars at a fundraiser at Mara Lago where the high ticket donor is eight hundred and thirty eight one hundred thousand dollars, so almost a million dollars to get I guess, a picture and an omelet with Donald Trump.
Look what you are going to see in the coming weeks, the large dollar Republican donors go back to Trump. Okay, I've been saying it for a year. We've talked about it before. They're all going to go back to Trump in the end, and a couple of them have already sort of like written their their apology for it, like I want a true, a better country for my children and grandchildren, and Trump is not good. He's not good for this or that. Okay, fine, but make your whatever excuses you want. You guys are all chicken shits, and you want to fucking tax cut. We get it, Okay, we get it. As they go back to him, there's still a mathematical equation, like how do you get back to the point where you have that much cash when you're not burning the equivalent amount. Remember what Biden raised last night is basically Trump's legal bills for I don't know, January and February.
So the New York Times had a piece and we actually had one of the journalists on the podcast about how Trump has spent about one hundred million dollars on lawyers.
Yep, it's about right.
One of the things that I actually believe is proof that the guard Whils have not had is that Trump has managed to delay all of his trials, with the exception of the New York City election interference hush money trial. It turns out that delaying justice is quite expensive.
Look delaying justice is expensive. There's also something here that I find I don't know who else doesn't find that offensive, but I find it unbelievably offensive that you've got a guy who is able to not only threaten the judges, threaten their families, delay these trials over and over again, exercise every single legal loophole in the known universe, and the rule of law parties like fine with it. It's like, oh, it's all fake, nothing's there, It's all fake, it's all imaginary. What I think that is one of the things that I as an ex Republican and as a guy who still believes the rule of law is really important, which I think anybody should believe that it's important. Right.
Liz Cheney would agree, And in fact, Liz Cheney is filling these enormous stadiums with people talking about how and I thought this was a ballsy move. The Supreme Core is actually enabling trump Ism.
I will tell you very very clearly, there is a world where the critique of Donald Trump from the right gets its legs under it again, and it will never be a majority of the Manga Party Like at the Lincoln Project. We've gotten this joke for a long time. We're not trying to win over fifty percent of Republicans. I don't need to win over fifty percent of Republicans. I need to move about twenty percent tops in a couple of states. And the worse he gets with all this stuff. And as Liz Cheney is, she's letting Republican voters.
She's an off ramp right right.
They understand that she is an unquestioned conservative. There's no argument you can make in this universe or anywhere else that Liz Cheney is some kind of liberal rhino squish. You can't. It just doesn't work for anybody. The most painful thing about leaving the Republican Party is nobody wants to leave the warmth of the tribal campfire, right. They don't want to walk away from their friends, their associates, their lives. I know how hard it is. But when you start to see prominent people who you know are not secret liberals, who are not radical progressive Soros, you know, Bill Gates, whatever, it's hard and harder for them to say, well, the only option is Trump in this world, the only choice it will ever be is Trump or Trump is because it's not true, it's not the only option, and it doesn't have to be. And so she's showing people that if you believe as I do, that the country would function better with two actual center right party or two actual parties one center right one center left, then you know you'll never get there. With Donald Trump. He's only going to be an authoritarian lunatic for sure, and he's only going to be that as long as Republicans let him be that.
Let's talk about Donald Trump for another minute. He is threatening judges, he's threatening the daughter of the judge in the hush money case. The thing I'm struck by with him is like, obviously he's a bully, right, that's like eighty percent of his personality, But threatening judges and threatening these kind of threats to Republicans like it works, right, Like Mitch McConnell endoors right, Like there is no world in which Mitch McConnell is like, yes, Trump again, let's go oh you know, I mean yeah, like he's.
Like, yeah, I can speak with some authority on that matter.
That is correct, yeah, right, Like he endorsed I mean, you know all these people, Tom Emmers, you know Tom Emmers is not like yes, you know this guy who fucked me over and kept me from being speaker, even though I'd be much better speaker than Mike Johnson. He's my man. Like all of these people have gone and kissed the ring because they're scared of him and they don't want to spend what Mitt Romney did on private security. I mean, is that right or is there some other thing I'm missing.
As a guy who spends some money on private security. Yes. And look when I went up against Trump initially in fifteen and sixteen and they started to figure out, you know, who was against them, they didn't just go at me. They went at my children. And many many other people have had this problem. I know a member, a former member of Congress who was a rock ribbed conservative. Okay, not a liberal, not some left winger. He was a right wing dude. And he left Congress back in eighteen in part because he said one thing in a town meeting that wasn't like obedient to Trump. And his kids school got death threats the next day and bomb threats the next day, and his wife got people calling at her office saying, you know, you better get your husband do the right thing, or you'll be raising those girls on your own. I mean, these people love threatening people. They love trying to intimidate people. And I got to tell you something. Here's the thing about these judges, And I know they're all fearful, like, oh, if I you know, sanction him, it'll blowback. No, you have to sanction him. You have to punish him for saying these things. I swear to God, the judge should call his lawyers in and say one more goddamn word about my daughter trying to intimidate me in this case. And Donald Trump is going to be in fucking rikers with a ballgag in his mouth, and he's going to stay there until I decide he's calmed the fuck down. I mean, these people are intimidated by him, and they need to stop or he will kill them all. And by kill them, I mean literally kill them if he gets the chance.
You don't want to be the person who ends up putting Donald Trump in jail. That's going to be such a nightmare.
It's a nightmare. But here's the thing. Do we have one system of justice or two? Because if I was a mob boss in the courtroom saying, you know, your honor your daughter who ha ha, I'm gonna put her name out there for my friends to see. I hope she's okay. Hope nothing happens to your daughter. Judge. Guess what if that was a mob boss or a drug dealer, or frankly a twenty year old black marijuana dealer, that person would be in jail right this minute, write this minute. And the fact that Trump and his people rolled there, so he wasn't doing anything illegal, that's just his first Amendment rights to sick his mob on the judge's family. I am sorry. That is not how this ship works or should, but it does unfortunately right now. Sorry, I'm a little hot about this one.
Can you tell no?
I agree. I mean yesterday, by the way, one of Trump's sawyers said that it was Trump's first Amendment right to try to overturn the twenty twenty elections. So they're really push in that first Amendment for all it's worth. It's protected political speech, you guys. He can't try that for every criminal count. I mean, that's not a criminal because it's a federal count, I think. But yeah, I mean crazy.
I'm telling you, if one of these judges does not exercise some discipline on this Trump. Here's the thing Trump has been playing this game with every one of these judges and every one of these prosecutors, Okay, and not one of them has effectively sanctioned him, even in the Egen Carol case. I mean, she's probably got a third defamation case, so you don't have to poke it too hard to see a third defamation case there. But people who let him get away with this stuff and think, I don't want to be the one who pulls the trigger on this. I don't want to be the one who puts Trump in jail for contempt. If you give him a separate track, if you give him a separate set of privileges under the law, you diminish the entire judicial system. Look, he may be an ex president and he may have a powerful mob behind him, but if we don't uphold the law, he will exploit it and he will do things that in the end you will look at this part of the show and go, oh God, that was the easy part. Rick Wilson, Molly Jong Fast, I'm delighted to be with you as always and look forward to seeing you again the same time next week.
Shane Goldmacher is a national political correspondent at The New York Times.
Welcome to Fast Politics.
Shane, thank you for having me on.
So excited to have you. So let's talk about You've written like a number of really interesting reported pieces about Trump money, from legal bills to the RNC. So where do you want to start? Because it's all super interesting.
I mean, I think the most important place to start is that Donald Trump is facing multiple converging financial challenges all at once.
Yeah, and you know.
You can pick which one you want to talk about. But there is the question of political finances, which is how is he going to finance his campaign for the presidency, and he starts far behind Joe Biden. You have his legal financing, which is how is he going to continue to pay for the lawyers. We just reported this week that he has now spent more than one hundred million dollars on legal and investigation related bills since he left the White House, and the funds he's been using to pay for all those bills are nearly gone. And then the third one, almost the most urgent of the three, is posting a bond to meet the New York civil fraud case, which was reduced this week but is still a massive bond of more than one hundred and seventy million dollars and he only has a short period to do that. And so you have all three of these financial things converging at once, representing just a real challenge on a personal front, on a business front, and on a political front for Donald Trump.
I mean, the reason why he's had so much legal success, right, which is for trials, it seems very likely that at least two and maybe three of these cases will for sure not happen until after the election.
I mean, we know only one for sure is going to happen before the election exactly.
And one of the reasons why that's worked is because he has used really actually good lawyers to delay, delay, delay, and that has turned out to be quite expensive.
Yeah, I mean, he does have some top notch lawyers, and he has a huge team of lawyers, and there's just some structural advantages that defendants have, right. In general, the criminal system is designed for the defendants to get their say, and he's able to use the fact that there are different jurisdictions that aren't able to coordinate with one another to benefit himself. Right. You can make one argument in a New York case and then use that argument to push for delay in the Georgia case to push for delay in the document's case and that's all sort of within his rights. And yeah, this comes at a real cost again, more than one hundred million dollars for lawyers and legal related investigation call since he left office. And it hasn't been his own money that he spent on that, right.
Really, I'm shocked. So where has the money come from? Because you have a really good piece about this hundred million dollars, So explain where it came from and how it got to the lawyers.
It's one of the things that people often will ask me questions about, you know, Readers say, well, how is he paying for all of this? And the answer really dates back to twenty twenty, to the last election that he lost, when he said I didn't really lose. Give money to me, support my election defense fund, and Republican donors poured money into his campaign after the twenty twenty election at rates that basically surpassed anything he raised during the race, as he claimed fraud. I have to go look up a number specifically, but if something like one hundred million dollars came in online in the first ten days after the election and between the day after the election and Joe Biden's inauguration, he raised through his various committees, two hundred and fifty four million dollars in online contributions. Now, he spent some of that on reaccounts and lawyer's fighting for various cases, almost all which he lost to try to stop and overturn the twenty twenty election. But that money ended up being a huge pot that he exited office with and he used it in part to finance his political operation. But so much of that money he just sat on and the costs he started to accumulate in twenty twenty one as the House began its investigation into January sixth, and twenty twenty two, as he faced more investigations, including over whether he had taken classified documents, was lawyers and so this account, which basically had something one hundred and five million dollars at the end of twenty twenty one, he's been spending it down on legal stuff ever since. And at this point, that account, it's called Save America, it's his political action committee. That account has less than four million dollars if you included its unpaid bills as of the most recent month. And there's this complicated thing, and we can get into it if you won't want where his super pac has been giving the funds back to it. But even that account is running out of money that it can refund, so you're really looking at his ability to tap other people's money. The short version is his ability to tap other people's money to pay for his lawyers is running out, and he's unlikely to be able to do so as early as this summer, and that's going to be a quandary for him because he hasn't had to pay for these lawyers himself, and he's going to face the question of, well, how does he pay for them at that point.
It does strike me when you're talking about this a little bit earlier on, you mentioned that the sheer volume of fundraising he did after the Big lie, and I'm wondering it does sound from this that one of the most successful of Trump's fundraising tactics has been this line about the election.
It raised an enormous amount of money at the end of twenty twenty, and if you think about it, what it means is that the money he raised while denying the twenty twenty election result is paying for his legal defense in cridinal cases. Around his behavior from denying the twenty twenty election result in Georgia and in the January sixth case from the Special Council. And this is how he's paid for his attorneyees is from the money given by Republicans who supported him at the time and bought into his false claims that there was sufficient voter fraud to overturn the election.
The lawyer money is a real big issue. And then how does this fit in with what's happening at the RNC right now?
Yeah, I mean, so you know, he has taken over the Republican National Committee in a more fulsome way than I think his standard. Right, every new nominee kind of takes charge of the party. Joe Biden kind of took charge of the party in twenty twenty when he took over as the nominee, but you don't usually take over quite like the Trump team has a He pushed out Ronal McDaniel and put an new chair that was sort of more his person, even though she was once his person. He also put in his daughter in law, so there's literally a Trump family member at the table, the decision making table as co chair of the Republican National Committee and his team has gone in imposed mass layoffs inside the rn C. Now they have said pretty clearly we are not going to take rn C money and use it to pay for his lawyers.
Right, I mean, first she said she would, and then she said she wouldn't when she got some pushback Laura Trump. Yes, shockingly, there's been some flip.
Flop on that there has. His political advisors have been pretty consistent, but she absolutees like, well, why wouldn't the Republican nationally? And look, but what he has done is sort of found a way to help raise more money for this pack which has funded his lawyers, which is there's this thing called a joint fund raising agreement, and Joe Biden has someone with the Democrats and Trump will have one now with the Republicans. And what it means is if you get mega checks from big donors, the kind of people are going to give to Joe Biden doing an event with the two presidents, you know, with Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, or the ones that Trump does with these massive dinners. These are like nine hundred thousand dollars checks, eight hundred thousand dollars checks. There's a sort of order of which groups get the money, and Trump has put his pack, which is paying for his lawyers second in this sort of waterfall. Who gets the cash. His campaign is first, then his pack which just has been paying layers, and then the Republican National Committee. And so what that means is every major donor who gives to these events in the coming months is funding five thousand dollars per person his account that pays for his attorneys. And if you're giving an eight hundred thousand dollars check, it's a small fraction of it doesn't probably register, right, But if you're giving a twenty five thousand dollars check or fifty thousand dollars check, you're giving twenty percent ten percent of your donation is going to the fund that is paying for Trump flayers. And it's another way he may try to inject some money and not directly taking from the RNC, but he's putting his pack ahead of the party itself in terms of some of other fundraising proceeds.
Yeah, some of this stuff with the RNC, they had sort of more on the ground stuff. And isn't it right that they laid off like a huge number of employees and now are interviewing them to rehire them and have sort of litanus tests of whether or not they believed the big life.
Yeah, so when they came in on Friday, the new party chairman was selected on a recent Friday, and on Monday, the Trump team arrived at the RNC headquarters in Washington.
D C.
And they arrived with mass layoffs. They sent messages and emails and meetings to around sixty more than sixty people. And at the time I was told about the total pay roll was about two hundred, so you talking about a third of the r and C was told either you have lost your job or you have to apply for your job, and your job only lasts at the end of March, and you know, you have to re justify your existence for us. And you know the Washington Post, you know, broke a good story in which they said that among the questions people are getting as they reapply for their jobs, other people are applying for the jobs, as do you believe the twenty twenty election was stolen or rightfully decided? And yeah, that's a pretty loaded question, right, I mean, this is something that Trump has said repeatedly without evidence, that the election was stolen. And you know a lot of people around him have urged him to stop talking about that this is not a winning political issue, but you know, he has continued to talk about it. And the idea that people who want to get hired inside the party have to sort of tow that line is a pretty remarkable statement four years later.
Yeah. Man, it just is such a crazy place to be in American democracy right now. So can we talk a little bit about a sort of this idea that Trump is going after Biden's biggest advantage and what that is and a little bit about that.
Yeah, I mean, so, look, if you look at a lot of the polls, at the snapshot at the start of the general election, Joe Biden is behind. And he's not just behind in the polls, but he's trailing Trump on some of the most salient issues. If you take abortion, which has obviously been a powerful issue for Democrats off the table for a moment, and you look at the economy, you look at immigration, you look at job approval on some of the most important issues, Donald Trump is in Poland, and so, well, what does Joe Biden have going for him? Well, it turns out, in terms of the mechanics and the money and the infrastructure of running for a president. Joe Biden is really remarkably ahead of Donald Trump. Now, everyone who holds the White House typically has a little bit of an advantage on these fronts, but they're pretty big here. Financially between the party and the candidates. It's like one hundred million dollar gap at the beginning of this race, and that gap is only expected to grow because Democrats have been out raising Republicans in recent years. So the money gap is really substantial. And it's sort of like nuts and bolts and infrastructure. Where those R and C layoffs comes in is Joe Biden is opening like a hundred field offices in the states.
You know.
The data point that struck me recently was that he was in Wisconsin order to open up forty four offices across that state.
Isn't that like the whole state?
That's basically the whole stair, right, And Trump didn't have a single person devoted to Wisconsin yet now he will have people devoted to Wisconsin. But that's an important head start, right. These are states that were decided by like ten thousand votes, and you do the math on like, okay, well, how many votes can like an office win Like the person like working at that office. Well, they got you know, a couple hundred days, can they flip fifty one hundred people get them out to vote? That's that adds up Like that, that helps close the potential gap or expand the gap of the election. And so in a race that most people, the smartest people in both campaigns think will likely be closed, these are the kinds of things that can end up mattering. And the Biden people say, look, you know, yes, they don't disagree that they have some disadvantages on polling on some of these key issues. They think that can change in the coming ones, but that this infrastructure advantage won't necessarily change that they will stay ahead of the Trump team in terms of those edges.
One of the things I was struck by was that I read reporting that said that the RNC had these Latino outreach centers which they actually closed.
It sounds like there was conversations about doing that in those first days where they were implementing these mass labs. They've since said they're not in fact closing these community ors, but there had been plans under Ronald McDaniel to expand the number of them. Look, a lot of this is up in the air right, like they are trying to triage what to spend their money on and what to prioritize and what Donald Trump wants to prioritize. And when Trump talks about the Republican National Committee, you know, the person he selected as chairman was the former chair of the North Carolina Republican Party. And what was drawing him to him was the idea of you know, what they call election integrity, and that they would focus on, you know, stopping the steal and election frau and you know, putting lawyers in all of these places. And that's what Trump has really been focused on, wanting the party to do more than opening field offices and minority outreach. Like he thinks of the already as an instrument to do that, and so not everyone at the party thinks that. And so what will happen in the coming looks this is gonna be really interesting. What does the R ANDC prioritize? Do they do exactly what Trump thinks personally he wants to do, or do what some of the political professionals around him would like the party to do.
One of the things I was struck by was the reason that Trump was able to kick out Ronna Romney mcdanields was because she had this anemic fundraising right like dad, and very little cash on hand or a credit line, right. And I'm curious how he thinks that this team will be better at fundraising.
Yeah, I mean, by basically any measure, twenty twenty three was a bad year for the Republican National Committee in terms of its fundraising and the numbers during the election year. We're bad, you know, in conservative circles. You know, there was real pressure on her because of what that looked like, and it ticked up a little bit at the beginning of the year. But the issue is really a the RNC in twenty twenty three wasn't able to advertise itself as helping Trump, and its fundraising list, at least its online fundraising list, was built around the Trump presidency and so all of their supporters were wanting to swarre Trump, and then they were not asked about Donald Trump in twenty twenty three because the party stopped sending messages because he was in a competitive primary. So they're able to start sending messages about Trump now, and I would expect that that list, which again was built during the Trump presidency will begin netting more donations, and in fact it did right when Laura Trump became the co chair. That was their best weekend of fundraising, they said since twenty twenty. But the issue is a little bit broader, which is just like the Republican landscape for online fundraising has stunk in the last couple of years, and the Democratic landscape has has shrunk. Like there's been reduced enthusiasm compared to the sort of the heydays of twenty twenty, but nowhere near as much of a slowdown as Republicans civics sperience, and really across the party there's deep concern about what is going to happen with their online donor base and if they are just happed out or frustrated or disengaged. Even as there's a lot of polls showing Republican support and enthusiasm for Trump, and certainly he locked up the nomination fairly quickly, whether the people who have given money online will continue to give or will ever give back at the pace that they did in twenty twenty is an open question and a real concern across the party.
Yeah, because one of the things I saw in the Financial Times was that he had sort of like two hundred thousand lass unique donor small dollar donors.
I don't think I saw that story, but I've seen some comparisons that he raised less than twenty twenty three than twenty nineteen, and candidly like, I'm not that surprised by that. Right, he was the president then, he was attitive primary now. But look, I mean, at this point, the more important comparison isn't how does Trump do now to how did Trump do four years ago? It's how is he going to do compared to Joe Biden? And Biden campaign announced they raised million dollars around the State of the Union in a twenty four hour period, and that's about what Donald Trump raised online, give or take in the month of February. You're going to likely see this edge for the Democrats to expand it. Look, money doesn't matter in presidential politics quite the same way it does in like a house race, right where the voters don't know who the two candidates are and they only see the television ads. People know who Donald Trump and Joe Biden are. But when you talk about that infrastructure in offices and specific outreach to specific communities, if you have more money, you can expand the map you can decide to. If you're the Democrats and you saw that, you know the president went there, you know you can decide that North Carolina, where you lost, is somewhere you want to investor early on. And if you're Trump, right like, you're not going to run any advertising yet. In fact, they aren't running any advertisements. So there's a real early structural advance the Democrats have at this point, Shane, so interesting. Thank you so much for joining us, Thanks for having.
Ornelle Belcher is the president of Great Corners and a NBC MSNBC political analyst.
Welcome back to Vast Politics, Cornell.
Thanks for having me back. Is always a pleasure.
I'm so happy to have you, and I wanted to talk to you about the topic that I don't know if it's that we're not talking about it or we're not talking about it right. But let's talk about voters, and let's focus in on black voters, but also on the different voters and what you're seeing, because I think of you as really, really smart.
I appreciate that. Thank you.
So what are you seeing?
Well? We should first start by telling our listeners stop paying attention to all the pollard And one of the things I think you and I have talked about this a little bit on the side. One of the things that has origen over the last couple of cycles that there was not true you know, a decade or more ago, right, certainly wasn't true in OA and twelve is how people are now using polls to drive a political narrative, whatever political that they want. So there's too much polling.
This is polls as disinformation.
Really they are. They're polls for spin. And then you see it. I mean, look, and even it is even at the national level, even at the even at the campaigns or Senate level, even the congressional level. And I'm guilty of it as well. It's like they'll that will put out polls that basically make our candidate a good investment and say that you should invest in our our our and our candidate. It's not what polling was creating for. It is not its intent. And often we're looking for polls to be crystal balls and tell us what the future is. And I'm sorry, people, but that's not a job of polls, and folks can't do that. Poles are instructive, they're not predictive. From a campaign standpoint, what we're looking for in a poll is to instruct us on how to target and how to find the messaging that resonates both from a positive and a negative side, and how to target and move that right. It is not something where we use to say, oh, this is where the public canceled, this is what the future is going to be. And I think there's too much of that. And from the media standpoint, Look, you and I are in the media a lot, so we'll beat up on it every time we get questions and we spend five or ten minutes talking about a poll. I think it's a disservice to the voters.
I do it.
I'm a poster. It's to the voters because what we're doing is we're sensationalizing politics around a horse race in a way that's entertainment. Whether New York Times poll or Fox poll and is Biden down five or tied or what have you. It is becoming a conversation about where someone is in a horse race, which, by the way, is probably right or wrong depending on what universe they have that they're polling, and which is the art more in the science, but as opposed to having a five or ten minute conversation about where the candidates are in a poll. How about having five or ten minute conversation about where the editors are on issues that actually matter to voters so we can help voters make an informed decision, because we don't do that enough.
Right.
Where is Donald Trump on debt? Forgiveness? Right? So many parents? Look, and I'm in Ohio today, you know so many working class parents and students. You know they struggle with upper mobility because of large sums of debt. Where's Donald Trump on debt? I know where Biden is on debt? Where's Donald Trump on debt? How about a real conversation about where the candidates are? Look, I'm not been being artists in here, but a real conversation that lays out where the candidates are on issues that help these working Americans make an informed decision.
Yeah, I want to talk to you for another minute about this idea because I think so much about in the twenty twenty two cycle when you had all.
The red star where we had the red waves, this red tsunami.
Well, I was thinking about actually Mandela Barnes in Wisconsin, because that was a candidate where he pulled really badly. He lost the Democratic machine, the money, and he lost by one point, which means that had there not been polls, he would have probably kept getting Democratic money and would and we would not have Ron Johnson in the Senate today, which would have been humongous for American sanity, would have been humongous for right. And it would also be another black senator. We have very few black senators, like an embarrassment considering the makeup of this country. And so in my mind, I think so much about that candidate because everyone kept saying to me, you know, he's just a bad candidate, he's not right for Wisconsin. Keeping the lieutenant governor, I thought it was great. It's this idea that polls as you know, that they can sort of shape a campaign in a really insane way.
Yeah, they're being misused and that's my whole point, and we should push back and stop it. And whether the side you are, stop coming at us with poles and drive narratives, come at us with where a candidate is on the issues, right, especially on the media standpoint, isn't it the job and that's in the media to give to help make voters, help give voters the information they need to make informed decisions. I would think that that's part of the job of us in the media, and instead, you know, well, every day will spend you know, several minutes across the cable channel, actually hours talking about where candidate is in the poll, as opposed to where they are on voting rights or where they are on K through twelve education.
This is a moment where we have a lot of like, really important issues. We got the Supreme Court having these insane oral arguments about methapriss down and someone who listened to them. You know, Republicans are telling us what they want to do, and they involve you know, the eighteenth century Comstock Act to make it illegal to send things in the mail. I mean, how much do you think issues are driving voters? And what do you think that looks like?
You know, there's never one silver bullet, And I think too often we oversimplify, you know, the most famous political saying and the world, at least in American politics, has probably done a lot of a lot more harm than good. Right, it's the economy stupid because it makes it seem like Americans are one dimension and just awfully transaction and it's never just the economy. It is, there's always multiple variables at play and the decision making of voters. They're seldom a silver bullet, so it is usually a combination of Yes, both pocketbook issues, but also, look, we act like culture is not a real important front and central space where voters make decisions about who they like and who they don't like, and who's fighting for them. One of the things and that people know me for working for Obama, but for our for Obama, I work for our.
D Yeah, frequent guest on this podcast, by the.
Way, who was fantastic and does not get enough credit for the building of the Democratic Party that we did under this they say strategy things that Kairman Dean said that always stuck with me when we'd be in spaces where progressives would be arguing that, look, working class voter, particularly working class white voters, are voting against their economic interests because look, Democrats are well aligned with the economic issues of working class voters, but working class white voters continually break against Democrats, and so they would argue that they're voting against their economic interest And one of the things that I thought was just brilliant always stuck with me that Governor Dean said was no, they're voting for their higher interest And it's not that they're voting against their economic interests, but they have higher interests. And I from a data standpoint, and you're seeing that really with Donald Trump. Donald Trump is really brought this home. You cannot disconnect someone's tribal identity from their economic understanding and their economic concerns and their positioning. You just can't write. And this echoed in the conversations that you here. When Donald Trump stood before audiences in twenty sixteen, he said, I'm going to give you back your country. That was both an economic and a cultural and a tribal and a status conversation right to a group of people who and look I heard we started hearing the take we need to take back our country calls shortly after Barack Obama got elected and certainly going into twenty ten with the rise of the Tea Party, which again they said was about economic anks. In this bullshit, economic anks is a part of it, but it's connected to status. And so when Donald Trump stood up and said, you know, I'm going to give you back your country, and when he's stayed in front of his audiences, right now talking about you know, immigrants and brown people poisoning the blood of America. He is having a conversation about tribalism and about status, and we think that it's simply about oh, a pocketbook transaction. Well, I'm going to give you a higher minimum way, and so therefore you should vote for me, because that's more important than you were. His historic status, as you see it, in a racial zero sum game. They're playing chess ins like progressives are playing checkers.
Right, this was just this anti multi racial democracy I think of like that Susan Faludi Backlash book, like you come forward a little bit and then you know, I mean Donald Trump was willing to lie to people in a way that no politician had ever been willing to you know. He said like, I'm going to bring back your coal jobs.
But why did they fall for all this? This was the predicate of my book that I wrote in Going to twenty sixteen about after looking at data over the years about the rise of racial version. Donald Trump is not a figure we have not seen in American history before. And I'll argue that quite rightly, he's a lesser political version of Pat Buchanan. But in the past, those candidates did not get the runway or the momentum that they did. Look all the things that Donald Trump sort of leads into, Pat Pukennon lead into those earlier, and he couldn't win the Republican nomination. It's different after Barack Obama gets elected all of a sudden, and let's understand what Barack Obama's election means. It means, for the first time in America and our history, you had the vast majority of white voters break one way. And because people look at Barack Obama as its hate some sort of post racial breakthrough, the truth of the matter is it wasn't a post racial warder because if you look at the percentage of the white vote nationally that Barack Obama got, and look at while winning, and look at the percentage of the white vote that John Carry got while losing, there's no difference in between that number. What the difference is that is with John Kerry losing and Barack Obama winning is probably a little bit over ten million more people of color, brown people showing up and voting. And let's understand and are re electing in twenty twelve, on his way to winning his back to back majorities. Barack Obama garnered less than forty percent of the white vote, right, so this is what's happening. So this is the wolf at the door. There's no longer at the door, but it's in the living room, and all of a sudden is we are losing our country. And look, as a social scientist, you know, you don't beat up on people who have eggs. You had to try to understand that eggs. And I recognized that in two thousand and eight that there was a large swath of voters who were really anxious and concerned about the changes that were happening in America and the idea that they're losing out because of others and others are gaining at their expense, right, which is something that is old as human nature, but it's real. And what I argue is we have to speak to that. Now Trump is speaking to that in grievance politics. We've got to speak to that in a different way, or we're good areas country apart.
Yeah, but don't you think that Biden has done well being able to sort of relate to those voters in a way that is not racist and is also addresses them in a not patronizing but also sort of realistic way.
Well, let's go to the faction and look more manufacturing jobs coming back to this country and being in this country then we've seen in a long long time. And people thought manufacturer was dead. And part of the issue with the gutting out of some of the working class vote was about the loss of these jobs, like manufacturing jobs that were going overseas with.
Chips and stuff like that. You're bringing those manufacturing jobs back.
You bring those manufacturing jobs back and focused on it, by the way, in a real way, not that Donald Trump did, but but that Biden actually did bringing back manufactured jobs. This was a policy that he focused on and they're actually doing. Is Biden doing better? Amonge working glass white voters now that he was now?
Because why? Because he can't transmit that to them because of the siloed media ecosystem, or is there something else?
It goes back to the point, it's not just the economy, stupid, It's not just a pocketbook transaction. Voters are a lot more complicated than that. And if voters fear that their group is losing, how can they not feel also that they're losing. So you have to start addressing Look, you've got to do the policy stuff right, and again, if you look at what he's done for a policy standpoint, and let's even go further and talk about within the infrastructure bill. You know as well as I do, that's going to be brick and mortar and highway construction. Those are again working class jobs. Those are not white collar jobs that are being created by the infrastructure. Again, the jobs that most impacted pocketbooks and economics are working class white people. So if they were just simply making an economic decision, if it was simply an economic pocketbook decision, it would be hard to beat Biden.
Right, But that's not what this is.
But that's not what it is. At some point, again, you've got to be able to address add on this divisive conversation about losing America and somehow we've got to break the tribal fever that Donald Trump and Republicans are leaning into and flaming.
Do you have a quick song for that that takes like forty seconds?
Oh? Hell, if I had that, I would be Oh, I should just we should just saw that saw the American Originals then in forty sage. No, I didn't, but I think it's somewhere in this space. I think it's in this space. It is the enemy. Can't be other Americans, or we lose the future while we're fighting and dividing amongst each other being divisive here overseas. That there they are, they're they're they're they're winning the competition for the future. Right, Can we and this sounds terrible, but can we divert tribalism away from other fellow Americans and put it somewhere else where? Then we can rally all Americans to meet the future and for America to win. There may be some there there.
Yeah, Cornell, thank you so much for joining us.
Always a pleasure. Thanks for having.
No moment?
What is our moment of fuckery?
My moment of fuckery? Is? This? Un believable flock of assholes? Is a lesser known eighties knockoff banded flock of seagulls of who The Minute, a ship that lost control crashed into the Francis Scott Keybridge in Baltimore. The Minute, while bodies were still being pulled from the water, decided to blame it on DEI. Why Yes, the DEI Mayor and the DEI Port director and the DEI Okay, stop it. What these people are saying. Whenever you hear DEI or CRT, you should just understand that that is maga for the inWORD. That is what they're trying to say. That's what they want to say. I just think about that again, like put that word in your head because that's what they're saying. Unbelievable. And look, there was a period of time in America where where during moments of national tragedy there was at least a nod in a wink to bipartisanship. These people can't even bring themselves with that because they want to say the in.
Word, right, Well, they're just racist assholes.
Well there is that. You know.
My moment of rockery is My moment of vrockery is carried Lake pretending to be normal. This week we saw a number of profiles of Carrie Lake. Carrie Lake has decided that she actually occupies a purple state. This is the first time ever, right, and she's like, perhaps I shouldn't continue this thing that I'm governor of Arizona. Because you'll remember when she lost the governorship to Katie Hobbs, she was like, no, no, I'm governor. She was like, no, I'm the rightful governor. So it's like somebody has clearly she's raised up money, so somebody has said to her, maybe you should just try to win those votes as opposed to being insane. Now she's trying to look less in saying.
It's not gonna work. There's no filter for sanity that Carrie Lake can put up.
She should try, right, she is my moment of fuckery. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to hear the best minds in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.