Former President Donald Trump once declared California a “symbol of our nation’s decline” — but he sure likes its cash.
A week after he was convicted in a wide-ranging hush money trial, the former president is making a fundraising swing through the West Coast with stops in San Francisco — his first visit to the city in more than a decade — and Los Angeles. Trump is already raking in cash and trying to close the fundraising gap with President Joe Biden. His campaign and the Republican National Committee said they raised $141 million, while an associated super PAC took in $70 million, in May.
Trump’s visits to San Francisco, Beverly Hills and Newport Beach over the next three days for private events are expected to bring in millions. Top tickets for the Thursday fundraiser, hosted by Silicon Valley venture capitalists Chamath Palihapitiya and David Sacks and his wife, Jacqueline, at their palatial “Billionaires Row” home overlooking San Francisco Bay, went for $500,000 per couple. The event is expected to rake in at least $12 million, according to a person familiar with the fundraiser.
The fundraiser is for the former president’s Trump 47 Joint Fundraising Committee, which sends the first $6,600 from each donor to his campaign, with the rest of the money going to his Save America leadership PAC, the RNC and 42 state parties.
Trevor Traina, Trump’s former ambassador to Austria and a personal friend of Sacks, said tech donors in particular have been driven by recent policy decisions from the Biden administration over things like regulation and crypto policy. Just last week, Biden faced criticism from the crypto community when he vetoed legislation that would have rolled back an SEC guidance on crypto accounting.
“You look at the biggest companies here, every one of them is getting sued from Apple to you name it. It’s like the frog boiling in hot water,” he said. “People who normally are heads down focused on business have come to the conclusion that it’s time to get involved.”
Vice President Kamala Harris also paid her home state of California a visit this week to attend a fundraiser in downtown San Francisco and Oakland, and was met by pro-Palestinian protests. Trump is expected to face protesters as well, with a giant three-story-tall inflatable Trump chicken being launched in the Bay area, according to local reports.
Trump’s West Coast swing comes on the heels of the guilty verdict, but also at a time when presidential fundraising typically accelerates the most, with donors tuning in more as the general election campaign kicks off in earnest. In 2020, Trump’s campaign fundraising doubled from May to June and continued to grow as the summer went on.
The massive cash haul since the verdict should help Republicans continue to cut into what had been a significant fundraising advantage for Biden and the Democratic National Committee. April was the first month where Trump and the RNC outraised their Democratic counterparts, but Biden and the DNC still had a major advantage in terms of cash on hand — $146 million to $88 million as of the end of the month. Both sides also still have some money in joint fundraising committees.
Shaun Maguire from the Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm Sequoia Capital wrote on X that he donated $300,000 to Trump in the hours after the guilty verdict. “The timing isn’t a coincidence.”
Aides say the former president has been dialed in on fundraising — whether it is making personal appeals to donors over the phone or turning up the charm offensive at intimate, big-ticket dinners.
Just hours after his guilty verdict was handed down from the judge, Trump made his way uptown to a private dinner with a small group of some of the biggest donors in Republican politics to collect millions for his super PAC. The dinner was hosted by billionaire Pepe Fanjul and was attended by Blackstone Group CEO Steve Schwarzman and supermarket mogul John Catsimatidis.
Catsimatidis said Trump was in “high spirits” at the intimate fundraiser, also attended by Eric Trump, and the former president asked the attendees about current events and who should be his vice president.
Some of Trump’s top surrogates have been drumming up donations as well. On Wednesday, his son Donald Trump Jr. and Kimberly Guilfoyle appeared at a fundraiser with former Trump administration official Cliff Sims in Alabama, and they are expected to host another fundraiser for Trump in London later this month. John Ratcliffe, Trump’s former director of National Intelligence, hosted a fundraiser in Palm Beach, Florida, last week while Trump was tied up in court.
Read the full article here
