Blog de Dunlap: Follow the money

Danielle,

Want a government job? Need the regulators off your back? Hoping an investigation into your company quietly goes away?

In Donald Trump's Washington, there's a way. Write a big check to MAGA Inc., the super PAC he calls:

"My money that I control."

Researchers at the Center for American Progress Action Fund just followed the money, and MAGA Inc. has raised $404.6 million from donors writing checks of $100,000 or more.

Of that $404.6 million, 79% came from just 108 donors who got a documented potential benefit from Trump or his administration

Simply put: The people bankrolling Trump's super PAC are the same people profiting from his presidency.

Here's what that looks like in reality:

Twenty donors tied to government appointments, for themselves or their relatives and business partners, gave $87.75 million.
Fifty-seven donors who benefited from regulatory rollbacks gave nearly $82 million.
Seven donors who saw enforcement actions against them dropped or reversed gave $78.6 million.
Six donors who've pulled in more than $11 billion in federal contracts, including private prison giant GEO Group, gave $41.7 million.
Two donors connected to presidential pardons gave $4.5 million.

The single biggest industry writing checks? Crypto, at $88.2 million.

Add it all up, and you get pay-to-play on a scale we've never seen.

Trump promised to drain the swamp. Instead, he handed it a menu. And while his donors cash in, working families are paying more just to get by.

With midterms less than a month away, MAGA Inc. and its spinoff super PACs have reserved $160 million in ads to elect Trump's handpicked candidates, paid for by the same people cashing in on his administration.

Trump's big-dollar donors want to believe elections belong to whoever writes the biggest check.

They're wrong. They have money. We have people.

When we take back control of Congress, we can put real checks on Trump, pass laws to crack down on this kind of self-dealing, and build an America that works for everyone, not just the people who can buy a seat at Trump's gold-plated table.

I won't stop fighting until we root out this corruption.

Thanks for being a part of this,

Elizabeth

Elizabeth Warren is fighting to get Big Money out of politics to make our government work for working families, not just the rich and powerful. And we're doing it with small-dollar, grassroots supporters — not by catering to billionaires or corporations.

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