“They want to put me in prison for 187 years”, “I need to know that you are by my side!”: since his conviction, Donald Trump has been filling his coffers for his duel against Joe Biden, by flooding his supporters with calls for donations with an incendiary tone.
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On Thursday, just after a jury found the Republican guilty in a case of payments to a pornographic film star, Donald Trump voters began receiving their first emails.
“I am a political prisoner!”, “Joe Biden must regret attacking us!” he said in a message accompanied by a photo of himself with his fist raised. Before inviting his “patriots” to make a donation of 20, 47, 100 or 3,300 dollars to his campaign for the White House.
A few hours later, first text messages.
“They want to send me to prison, they want me DEATH,” he says about the Democrats, accusing them, without proof, of having orchestrated his trials.
And to promise his voters: “I WILL NEVER SURRENDER!”
53 million in 24 hours
The result of these messages is dizzying.
According to Donald Trump’s campaign team, the Republican, candidate for a second term at the head of the United States, raised more than $53 million in online donations alone in the 24 hours after his verdict in New York.
The avalanche of text messages and emails has continued ever since. And the donations continue to pour in.
Donald Trump placed his legal troubles at the heart of his duel against the Democratic president from his first indictment last spring.
The strategy is paying off with his base, convinced that their champion is the victim of a witch hunt.
“If I could, I would have given more”
Betsy Showers, a truck driver from Iowa, says she sent “100 dollars” to the former president a few weeks ago.
“And if I could, I would have given more,” she told AFP.
Why is it so important for this fifty-year-old, who herself admits sometimes experiencing difficult ends of the month, to contribute to the New York billionaire’s campaign?
“I want him to have a war chest” in order to defeat the Democrats “and all their lies,” assures this Republican, convinced that Donald Trump’s legal troubles were “constructed from scratch.”
Barometer
In American electoral life, money, far from being a taboo, is a source of pride for the side that amasses the most. It is also an essential windfall: 2024 promises to be the most expensive electoral cycle in the country’s history.
Donald Trump and Joe Biden have therefore been engaged in this hunt for dollars for months, regularly sharing laudatory press releases on the state of their finances.
“The race for donations is a good barometer to measure the energy of a candidate’s most loyal supporters,” says Jeff Milyo, professor at the University of Missouri and expert in electoral financing.
“This is exactly why we are seeing an increase in fundraising among Trump supporters in reaction to the trial verdict: they are outraged and are expressing it by making donations,” he explains to AFP.
These crazy sums are used to finance candidates’ travel, to pay their teams, to commission surveys or, and perhaps above all, to pay for television advertisements.
But they will not be enough, according to Jeff Milyo, to fundamentally change the duel between the two men, which could be played out by a few tens of thousands of votes.
“The race is going to be very close,” says the economist. “And no amount spent on campaign expenses between now and November will change that.”
