The terms and conditions behind Trump’s election defense funds

Kristin Boyles, Growl Editor

As I’m sure we’re all aware, Joe Biden is the projected winner of the 2020 election – and President Donald Trump is unhappy about that. He tweets about it, talks about it on TV, hosts events at Four Seasons Total Landscaping to complain about it, and bombards his supporters with requests for donations for the legal fees associated with election disputes.

That last part is what interests me most. I don’t even have Twitter, but I’m used to his tweets. I’m used to his hectic press conferences or ranting phone calls into Fox News. As an outsider to the Trump cult, though, I’ve never received an email begging for donations.

Yet I happened to hear of a news story by Melissa Quinn for CBS News that suggested that Trump’s requests for money for his election defense funds aren’t really going to his election defense funds. Upon doing more research – and, unfortunately for me, perusing the Trump website – I’ve learned that the money donated truly does not go directly to his election defense fund.

Listen, I’m no legal expert. I read the jargon in the terms and conditions of these funds – yes, there are two separate ones – and the money does not go where the big banner says it will, despite the fact that the Trump campaign claims the money will help “save the election.”

If you click on pop-up that appears on Donald Trump’s website, you’ll find that 60% of your contribution will go to Save America. Save America is, as I learned through more research, the PAC (political action committee) Trump is trying to form. Then, some of your money might go to his recount account, but only if you’ve donated a large sum of money, as a Reuter article by Jarret Renshaw and Joseph Tanfani explains. The other remaining 40% of your contribution goes to the RNC.

But then, under the second election defense fund link, there’s another set of terms and conditions that say something a bit different. According to Melissa Quinn in the CBS News article, “For donations to the Trump campaign specifically, 50% of each will go toward paying off its debt and the remaining 50% will be deposited into the Recount account.”

Well, okay then.

So evidently, from all of this, we’ve learned that Trump and friends will do whatever it takes to get their supporters money, knowing that none of them are going to read the fine print and – if for some reason they do – they’d still be more than willing to donate to things other than the election recount/defense fund because, well, why not?

Personally, I think this is all just a bit strange. Why would anyone want to send their money to someone on the premise of “stopping the steal,” only to find out most of their donation isn’t even going to that cause?

This entire set-up is misleading, if not at least partly a scam. But the fact this his supporters do not care and will continue to donate, regardless of where their money is going, just proves that they are so lost in the depths of his cult-like fanbase that they will do anything for him, no questions asked.