Welcome to the lid from Meet the Press. I'm Kerry Dan. You might have thought that the topic of money in presidential politics, which of course you've heard us talk about so frequently on this here friendly neighborhood podcast, would be taking a bit of a hiatus these days since the election is over. But as it turns out, there is still a lot of money being given to the campaign of President Donald Trump.
For an understanding of maybe why, I'm just going to read to you from a list of the subject lines of emails that people on the Trump campaign mailing list have received in the last few days. Okay, ready? Just a list of subject lines. Let's make a statement unhinged.
TikTok, three hours to go. It's your patriotic duty. I'm standing with President Trump. We need to keep going.
We need your help. I know you're up for the challenge. Let's go. We need true patriots.
They hate our president. We must crush our goal. That's not even all of the fundraising emails that people on the campaign list have received, but it's a good smattering that people have sent out in the last three days. Seriously, if anybody in your life emailed you that often with that much urgency, you would either launch a rescue mission or get a restraining order.
Now, it is fair to say that most political campaigns do send out desperate sounding fundraising emails all the time, but it's unique that the president's campaign is doing this after the election is over. He's of course making the claim that these funds are desperately needed for the president's legal challenges to the election, which so far have gotten precisely nowhere. The fundraising part appears to be working. The New York Times reports that the Trump campaign has raised about $170 million since the election with these appeals, and I'm going to read to you something from one of the emails that I literally opened at random, so you can get a sense of the urgency once you open these fundraising appeals.
Okay, ready? You deserve a fair and transparent election. The future of the nation depends on you. So the president's ardent supporters who believe his claims, which are baseless, of election fraud, despite the fact that he's lost almost every court case to date has effectively been shut down by judges and lawmakers of his own party and actually lost votes during a $3 million recount he requested in Wisconsin.
Well, those folks still feel a lot of urgency to open up their wallets in response to these kind of appeals. But there's some fine prints in those appeals too. And what I'm going to do, I'm just going to read it directly to you from the donation page that I was directed to from that particular email that I just read out loud, you know, about democracy, depending on you. Okay, it says this in very, very small print, 75% of each contribution first to save America up to $5,000, then to Donald J.
Trump for president, reach out and count 25% of each contribution to the Republican national committee's operating account. There's also some maximum amounts in there that are based on FEC donation rules. So suffice to say though, if you got that email I read to you and you decided I'm going to donate $100, that fine print indicates that 75 of those books are going to something called Save America. And none are going specifically to a recount or election fraud effort.
Okay, what is Save America? Save America is Trump's new leadership pack. It's a fundraising vehicle. A leadership pack is generally used by both current and former politicians who want to curry favor by giving money to other politicians and or want to keep their political profile high by funding, let's say travel around the country, rallies, even payroll.
Now, could some of the funds in Save America be used to pay for travel for say Rudy Giuliani? Sure. Could they also be used to fly former president Trump around the country for political rallies well into the Biden presidency or to just kind of wind and dine his political allies? Absolutely.
And the first priority that I just read to you in that fine print is to put the first three quarters of all of those donations into the pot of money that has the least restrictions on how they can be used by the president and his allies. That's not to say that none of this money is going into the futile efforts to change the results of the election, some of it is. But when you read these stories about fundraising for the Trump recount effort, keep in mind, most of it isn't. That's all for us.
If you'd like to hear more of this free audio briefing, you can always download us on your favorite podcast app.