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“In more normal times, there would be nothing particularly noteworthy about this kind of expensive fundraising campaign, but Trump is nothing like a traditional Republican candidate,” Dean Obeidallah wrote.
Editor’s note: Dean Obeidallah, a former lawyer, is the host of the daily program “The Dean Obidala Show” on SiriusXM Radio.please follow him thread. The views expressed in this commentary are his own.read more opinions On CNN.
CNN
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About 100 wealthy people are on the guest list for a special fundraising event this weekend in billionaire investor John Paulson’s luxurious Palm Beach, Florida home.
The soiree reportedly raised more than $50 million for former President Donald Trump’s 2024 White House campaign. Wealthy Trump supporters paid $250,000 for each member of the “hosting committee” and $824,600 for each “chairman.” Those who contributed at the top level were allowed to sit at President Trump’s table during dinner.
In normal times, there would be nothing particularly noteworthy about this type of expensive fundraiser. But Trump is very different from his traditional Republican rivals. After all, he attempted a coup to stay in power despite losing the 2020 election, and is currently facing a number of felonies.
Mr. Trump’s deep-pocketed and trusted donors, including Mr. Paulson, are no doubt well aware of Mr. Trump’s history, but they still do not support the peaceful transfer of power that is at the heart of our democracy. They think it’s appropriate to donate huge sums of money to the person who tried to destroy it. .
Paulson and other wealthy donors who attended Saturday night’s event watched Trump idly watch the Jan. 6 attack unfold on television while demanding that his supporters cancel their attendance. I’m sure he realizes that he ignored her for over three hours, and even didn’t listen to her. to his entourage and one of his family members.
They also know that since President Trump left the White House, he has begun many of his campaign rallies celebrating the January 6th attacker by playing recordings sung by the J6 Prison Choir. Maybe. They may have heard that the president has vowed to pardon those convicted of crimes related to the Capitol siege. In some cases, this included assaulting police officers.
Efforts to overturn our democracy also involve violent groups like the right-wing extremist Proud Boys, whose leaders have vowed to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power on January 6th. He was convicted of seditious conspiracy in connection with his role in the crime.
None of that seems to be bothering these wealthy people, but at least not enough to keep them from making huge donations to President Trump’s campaign. Their fundraiser comes a little more than a week after Democrats, including former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, held a star-studded fundraising event for incumbent President Joe Biden, raising about $25 million. It was conducted.
If they were paying attention, the wealthy donors who attended Saturday night’s fundraiser for Trump (hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebecca, oil tycoon Harold Hamm) In December, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that President Trump “engaged in an insurrection.” And although the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately ruled that Trump could remain on Colorado’s 2024 ballot, it ruled that the state high court’s ruling on the issue of Trump’s participation in an “insurrection” There was no overturning it.
President Trump’s donors have praised Adolf Hitler for leading Adolf Hitler by declaring that immigrants “contaminate our blood,” pledging to become a “dictator” on his first day in office, and calling out dictators. You may have heard reports of people praising him repeatedly. Presumably, if they had found this alarming, they would not have donated at least $250,000 each to help President Trump retake the White House.
Frankly, I want to remind the sophisticated, ultra-wealthy people who attended this weekend’s campaign fundraisers that they have been fooled time and time again by President Trump’s repeated lies that the 2020 election was “rigged.” I wouldn’t put them in the same category as the average American. I suspect this group of elite supporters knows exactly what is going on with the former president.
It seems plausible that Mr. Paulson will have at least some second thoughts about Mr. Trump in 2024. In fact, even though Mr. Paulson made large donations to Mr. Trump in 2016 and 2020, he started raising money for Mr. Trump’s Republican primary opponent, Ron DeSantis, at the beginning of the 2024 campaign. was collecting.
However, the situation changed when it became clear that Trump would be the Republican presidential nominee. A few weeks ago, Paulson told CNN during a debate ahead of Saturday’s fundraiser that he was “happy to support President Trump’s reelection efforts.” He further said that his “policies on the economy, energy, immigration and foreign policy will be very beneficial to this country.”
Paulson made no mention of the Trump tax cuts passed in 2017, which greatly help the very wealthy, who Paulson and others were privileged to attend Saturday’s dinner. .
Is that why these billionaires are now turning a blind eye to the threat Trump poses to our country’s rule of law? Do they expect him to enact further policies that could fatten their wallets? Perhaps they are fully aware of the danger Trump poses to our country, but have decided to go along with him anyway.
Or perhaps they believe they can benefit from being wealthy friends of autocratic leaders. After all, in Hungary, led by President Trump ally Viktor Orbán, his inner circle has benefited from collecting contracts under his leadership. The same, of course, was true of Russia under Vladimir Putin, where the oligarchs who supported him became even richer, but who also clashed with him and were forced into “forced exile or forced into exile under suspicious circumstances.” Some people died.
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Shortly after the Jan. 6 attacks, Chuck Collins, director of the Institute for Policy Studies’ Project on Inequality and the Common Good, lavished criticism on President Trump’s ultra-wealthy supporters. “They enabled Donald Trump. They funded his campaign,” he told the progressive news site Common Dreams. “And they cheered when Trump packed the courts with judges who wanted to cut taxes, wipe out profit-squeezing regulations and turn a blind eye to their violations.”
Liz Cheney, a conservative former U.S. congresswoman from Wyoming and former Republican member of the House Republican leadership, recently said that with Trump’s second rise to power, we are “sleepwalking into a dictatorship.” warned Americans that they were heading into a crisis. If he does indeed return to power, we could blame, among other things, the short-sighted wealthy supporters who helped Trump’s campaign. They definitely know better, but they seem more concerned with helping their own bottom line than protecting democracy.
