- “Bandits!” said Victor Amelino, a 78-year-old Californian, who made a $990 online donation to Mr. Trump in early September via WinRed. It recurred seven more times — adding up to almost $8,000. “I’m retired. I can’t afford to pay all that damn money.”
The sheer magnitude of the money involved is staggering for politics. In the final two and a half months of 2020, the Trump campaign, the Republican National Committee and their shared accounts issued more than 530,000 refunds worth $64.3 million to online donors. All campaigns make refunds for various reasons, including to people who give more than the legal limit. But the sum the Trump operation refunded dwarfed that of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s campaign and his equivalent Democratic committees, which made 37,000 online refunds totaling $5.6 million in that time.
The recurring donations swelled Mr. Trump’s treasury in September and October, just as his finances were deteriorating. He was then able to use tens of millions of dollars he raised after the election, under the guise of fighting his unfounded fraud claims, to help cover the refunds he owed.
In effect, the money that Mr. Trump eventually had to refund amounted to an interest-free loan from unwitting supporters at the most important juncture of the 2020 race.
Can confirm. Was on Trump's mailing list. Looked like a Nigerian Prince scammer had just discovered the stylesheets from Microsoft Bob. "Emphasis Quotes", mid-sentence font shifts, bold-italic-underline-highlight-red. My favorite part is whenever they wanted to make numbers look impressive, they used capital Os in place of zeroes: "1,OOO,OOO.OO" instead of "1,000,000.00." The disclaimer on the bottom was not illegibly small but it was not designed to catch your attention, nor was the disclaimer about recurrent payments. But can we reflect for a minute? If you gave a self-professed billionaire? The one who caused your friends to die? MONEY? After all the SHIT we've been through? Fuck you. Fuck you from the bottom of my black heart. I hope you're broke, I hope you lost your house, I hope you never see that money again, I hope you're forced to live off dog food, and I hope to fuck it's Chinese.