Donald Trump’s relationship to the GOP donor class has always been fraught, but lately it’s getting less so thanks to Sleepy Joe Biden’s endless idiocy on a range of policy issues — from Israel, the border, to the economy and crime — and how all this combined seems to be handing the 2024 election to the four-times indicted orange man.
Yes, Biden is feeble and highly unpopular for doing a horrific job over the past four years, but he does bring some advantages to the November race, apart from Trump’s manifold legal woes.
Much of it involves money and possibly until now Trump’s difficulty in raising it from GOP megadonors.
Consider what I first reported last week: Billionaire Citadel investment chief Ken Griffin, who had backed Nikki Haley during the primaries, is likely sitting out the presidential election because he’s not a fan of Trump’s 2020 election denialism and divisiveness, people close to him tell me.
Griffin is said to be focusing his dough on Senate seats since the GOP has a decent chance of winning the upper chamber and some House races.
Another billionaire GOP donor, Steve Schwarzman of the Blackstone group private equity firm, hasn’t decided what he might do in the presidential race and that’s telling because he was once close to Trump and served on his business advisory council.
He, too, is concerned by Trump’s style.
But polls do matter to the GOP money men (and women) — they work in big business and finance, so they have a vested interest in cozying up to a Trump regulatory state.
When you combine better Trump polling with Biden’s political and policy faults, it is just easier for the Republican donor class, once reluctant to embrace Trump, to make amends with him, several have recently told me.
I can’t tell you if Griffin will ever have a change of heart or Schwarzman will come back into Trumpland; they are certainly no fans of the Biden status quo and Trump will be wooing them.
But increasingly, many other Trump-hating GOP money guys believe a second Biden term would mark a dangerous turning point for the country, not just because he might not make it and we will have a ninny like Kamala Harris running the show.
They believe Biden, if given four more years, will fully embrace his inner progressive.
No tax rate will be high enough; Israel will be forced to capitulate to terrorists because he’s so beholden to the left wing of his party.
“I see GOP donors who personally hated Trump saying they’re coming back into the fold,” said one high-rolling Republican donor who was courted to throw a couple hundred grand to the Donald’s Palm Beach fundraiser hosted by hedge funder John Paulson.
“Based on what I’m seeing in terms of who’s giving money, the Palm Beach thing will be a blowout. If the trends continue, money won’t be a problem for Trump, trust me on this.”
Saturday’s event is expected to bring in at least $43 million.
That would be nearly twice the haul Biden had for his tone-deaf money grab two weeks ago at Radio City Music Hall, where Sleepy Joe & Co (Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Stephen Colbert emceeing) raised around $26 million, clogged up traffic in Midtown, and dissed New York’s Finest who were mourning the death of Jonathan Diller, the NYPD officer slain while making a routine traffic stop.
Bad optics
The Biden-Radio City powwow was held the same day as Diller’s wake.
Yes, horrible optics and limousine liberalism at its worst.
But it did underscore the differences between the two major parties and the two men running them.
While Biden was whooping it up, Trump attended Diller’s wake, speaking forcefully about the need to control the crime that has ravaged major cities run by lefty-Dem prosecutors and public officials looking to defund the police and empty the jails.
“That was brilliant counterprogramming by Trump,” said another Trump-skeptic GOP political adviser.
Knowing what I know about Trump — the ugly side and the side that is very good — I believe counterprogramming wasn’t his real motivation for attending.
Biden, the moderate-turned-progressive, is the least authentic major politician in America; when he’s not raging over relatively little, he’s fumbling his lines.
When he’s not fumbling his lines, he’s reading them robotically.
Trump is authenticity on steroids and doesn’t need a shot of Adderall to make it through a State of the Union speech or attend a wake and speak from the heart.
You can tell he meant it when he said that Officer Diller’s killing “was sad, horrible in so many ways,” paid tribute to Diller’s wife, family and scores of the NYPD’s Finest who attended the service — while vowing to sign legislation that imposes the death penalty on anyone who murders a cop, and ending the lunacy of the defund movement, all the soft-on-crime policies advocated by the party of Biden.
Sure, the GOP money guys have their misgivings about the orange man, but those words are going a long way to bringing them back because the alternative is so much worse — as the last four years have demonstrated.