Here’s a stunning but totally unsurprising story about how the Trump campaign- increasingly desperate for cash and humiliated by poor fund-raising numbers- resorted to increasingly dishonest tactics in order to fleece their not-very-smart small dollar donors.
Here’s the link, but it may be paywalled but it’s an exclusive - I’m going to summarize but it’s only April 3rd and it’s worth one of your free NYT views.
Now, most fund-raising platforms give you an option to make a recurring donation. It’s usually a checkbox that you select.
The Trump campaign made the checkbox that authorized a monthly donation the default. But this created a problem for them, because people were able to easily see it and some people, people of wavering patriotism that would rather eat and pay rent than fully commit to Making America Great Again, unchecked the box and just gave $50 or $100 instead of giving ALL their money to Donald Trump.
So they began to deliberately make it more obscure and they added a new feature
Under pre-checked box that said “Make this a recurring monthly donation”, they added another pre-checked box that said, in big bold letters
Help us break a fund-raising record for Trump’s birthday JOIN NOW!
and under that, in tiny print, it said “additional donation will process on 6/14”
And TrumpWorld got all thrilled because hardly anyone saw it and they got to run a bunch of people’s credit cards again! They raised a lot of money that day - so they started making the text above the checkboxes longer and Trumpier.
By October, this was the text on the pre-selected checkboxes - I’ve copied this directly from the article.
This is the FINAL month until Election Day and we need EVERY patriot stepping up if we’re going to WIN FOUR MORE YEARS for President Trump. He’s revitalizing our economy, restoring LAW & ORDER and returning us to American greatness, but he’s not done yet. This is your chance - stand with President Trump & MAXIMIZE YOUR IMPACT NOW
(Then, in small gray print)
Make this a weekly recurring donation until 11/3
President Trump: October 9th marks 25 days out from Election Day and we need your support. American Patriots like YOU inspired me to keep fighting this past week, and I’m not done yet. I’m asking you to join operation MAGA and help me assure VICTORY in November. Join the movement now.
(Then, in small gray print)
Donate an extra $100 automatically on 10/09.
You will notice that they are now taking the recurring donations weekly.
A LOT of Trump supporters were hard hit by this scammy technique. The ones that had scrimped and saved to make a large one time donation of $500 or $750 found they had been billed 5 or 6 times in October. Trump drained their bank accounts and their other checks bounced.
The Trump campaign ended up refunding over 12% of what they took in during the last 6 months of the campaign. The Biden campaign refunded a little less than 3 percent. Apparently 2-3% is normal and most of that is typically contributions that exceed legal limits.
Credit card companies like Amex and Bank of America estimated that 1-3% of their vendor complaints in that time frame involved the Trump campaign. That doesn’t sound like much until you stop to think about how small the Trump campaign is relative to the entirety of credit card commerce, then its huge.
The article has more details.
Trump supporters are marks, plain and simple.