What's new? How Trump Steered Supporters Into Unwitting Donations
Apr 4, 2021 14:28:34 #
Stacy Blatt was in hospice care last September listening to Rush Limbaugh’s dire warnings about how badly Donald Trump’s campaign needed money when he went online and chipped in everything he could: $500.
It was a big sum for a 63-year-old battling cancer and living in Kansas City on less than $1,000 per month. But that single contribution — federal records show it was his first ever — quickly multiplied. Another $500 was withdrawn the next day, then $500 the next week and every week through mid-October, without his knowledge — until Blatt’s bank account had been depleted and frozen. When his utility and rent payments bounced, he called his brother, Russell Blatt, for help.
What the Blatts soon discovered was $3,000 in withdrawals by the Trump campaign in less than 30 days. They called their bank and said they thought they were victims of fraud.
“It felt,” Russell Blatt said, “like it was a s**m.”
But what the Blatts believed was duplicity was actually an intentional scheme to boost revenues by the Trump campaign and the for-profit company that processed its online donations, WinRed. Facing a cash crunch and getting badly outspent by the Democrats, the campaign had begun last September to set up recurring donations by default for online donors for every week until the e******n.
Contributors had to wade through a fine-print disclaimer and manually uncheck a box to opt out.
As the e******n neared, the Trump team made that disclaimer increasingly opaque, an investigation by The New York Times showed. It introduced a second prechecked box, known internally as a “money bomb,” that doubled a person’s contribution. Eventually its solicitations featured lines of text in bold and capital letters that overwhelmed the opt-out language.
The tactic ensnared scores of unsuspecting Trump loyalists — retirees, military veterans, nurses and even experienced political operatives. Soon, banks and credit card companies were inundated with fraud complaints from the president’s own supporters about donations they had not intended to make, sometimes for thousands of dollars.
The sheer magnitude of the money involved is staggering for politics. In the final 2 1/2 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 Joe Biden’s campaign and his equivalent Democratic committees, which made 37,000 online refunds totaling $5.6 million in that time.
The recurring donations swelled 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 e******n, under the guise of fighting his unfounded fraud claims, to help cover the refunds he owed.
In effect, the money that Trump eventually had to refund amounted to an interest-free loan from unwitting supporters at the most important juncture of the 2020 race.
Political strategists, digital operatives and campaign finance experts said they could not recall ever seeing refunds at such a scale. Trump, the RNC and their shared accounts refunded far more money to online donors in the last e******n cycle than every federal Democratic candidate and committee in the country combined.
Donors typically said they intended to give once or twice and only later discovered on their bank statements and credit card bills that they were donating over and over again. Some, like Stacy Blatt, who died of cancer in February, sought an injunction from their banks and credit cards. Others pursued refunds directly from WinRed, which typically granted them to avoid more costly formal disputes.
Jason Miller, a spokesperson for Trump, downplayed the rash of fraud complaints and the $122.7 million in total refunds issued by the Trump operation. He said internal records showed that 0.87% of its WinRed t***sactions had been subject to formal credit card disputes. “The fact we had a dispute rate of less than 1% of total donations despite raising more grassroots money than any campaign in history is remarkable,” he said.
A Small Yellow Box and a Flood of Fraud Complaints
The small and bright yellow box popped up on Trump’s digital donation portal around March 2020. The text was boldface, simple and straightforward: “Make this a monthly recurring donation.”
The box came prefilled with a checkmark.
Even that was more aggressive than what the Biden campaign would do in 2020. Biden officials said they rarely used prechecked boxes to automatically have donations recur monthly or weekly; the exception was on landing pages where advertisements and emails had explicitly asked supporters to become repeat donors.
But for Trump, the prechecked monthly box was just the beginning.
By June, the campaign and the RNC were experimenting with a second prechecked box, to default donors into making an additional contribution — called the money bomb. An early test arrived in the run-up to Trump’s birthday, June 14. The results were tantalizing: That date, a seemingly random Sunday, became the biggest day for online donations in the campaign’s history.
The two prechecked yellow boxes would be a fixture for the rest of the campaign. And so would a much larger volume of refunds.
Until then, the Biden and Trump operations had nearly identical refund rates on WinRed and ActBlue in 2020: 2.18% for Trump and 2.17% for Biden.
But from the day after Trump’s birthday through the rest of the year, Biden’s refund rate remained nearly flat, at 2.24%, while Trump’s soared to 12.29%.
Around the same time, officials who fielded fraud claims at bank and credit card companies noticed a surge in complaints against the Trump campaign and WinRed.
“It started to go absolutely wild,” said one fraud investigator with Wells Fargo. “It just became a pattern,” said another at Capital One. A consumer representative for USAA, which primarily serves military families, recalled an older veteran who discovered repeated WinRed charges from donating to Trump only after calling to have his balance read to him by phone.
The Trump operation was not done modifying the yellow boxes. Soon, the fact that donations would be withdrawn weekly was taken out of boldface type, according to archived versions of the president’s website, and moved beneath other bold text.
As the campaign’s financial problems became increasingly acute, the yellow boxes became dizzyingly more complex.
By October there were sometimes nine lines of boldface text — with ALL-CAPS words sprinkled in — before the disclosure that there would be weekly withdrawals. As many as eight more lines of boldface text came before the second additional donation disclaimer.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-steered-supporters-unwitting-donations-142130038.html
It was a big sum for a 63-year-old battling cancer and living in Kansas City on less than $1,000 per month. But that single contribution — federal records show it was his first ever — quickly multiplied. Another $500 was withdrawn the next day, then $500 the next week and every week through mid-October, without his knowledge — until Blatt’s bank account had been depleted and frozen. When his utility and rent payments bounced, he called his brother, Russell Blatt, for help.
What the Blatts soon discovered was $3,000 in withdrawals by the Trump campaign in less than 30 days. They called their bank and said they thought they were victims of fraud.
“It felt,” Russell Blatt said, “like it was a s**m.”
But what the Blatts believed was duplicity was actually an intentional scheme to boost revenues by the Trump campaign and the for-profit company that processed its online donations, WinRed. Facing a cash crunch and getting badly outspent by the Democrats, the campaign had begun last September to set up recurring donations by default for online donors for every week until the e******n.
Contributors had to wade through a fine-print disclaimer and manually uncheck a box to opt out.
As the e******n neared, the Trump team made that disclaimer increasingly opaque, an investigation by The New York Times showed. It introduced a second prechecked box, known internally as a “money bomb,” that doubled a person’s contribution. Eventually its solicitations featured lines of text in bold and capital letters that overwhelmed the opt-out language.
The tactic ensnared scores of unsuspecting Trump loyalists — retirees, military veterans, nurses and even experienced political operatives. Soon, banks and credit card companies were inundated with fraud complaints from the president’s own supporters about donations they had not intended to make, sometimes for thousands of dollars.
The sheer magnitude of the money involved is staggering for politics. In the final 2 1/2 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 Joe Biden’s campaign and his equivalent Democratic committees, which made 37,000 online refunds totaling $5.6 million in that time.
The recurring donations swelled 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 e******n, under the guise of fighting his unfounded fraud claims, to help cover the refunds he owed.
In effect, the money that Trump eventually had to refund amounted to an interest-free loan from unwitting supporters at the most important juncture of the 2020 race.
Political strategists, digital operatives and campaign finance experts said they could not recall ever seeing refunds at such a scale. Trump, the RNC and their shared accounts refunded far more money to online donors in the last e******n cycle than every federal Democratic candidate and committee in the country combined.
Donors typically said they intended to give once or twice and only later discovered on their bank statements and credit card bills that they were donating over and over again. Some, like Stacy Blatt, who died of cancer in February, sought an injunction from their banks and credit cards. Others pursued refunds directly from WinRed, which typically granted them to avoid more costly formal disputes.
Jason Miller, a spokesperson for Trump, downplayed the rash of fraud complaints and the $122.7 million in total refunds issued by the Trump operation. He said internal records showed that 0.87% of its WinRed t***sactions had been subject to formal credit card disputes. “The fact we had a dispute rate of less than 1% of total donations despite raising more grassroots money than any campaign in history is remarkable,” he said.
A Small Yellow Box and a Flood of Fraud Complaints
The small and bright yellow box popped up on Trump’s digital donation portal around March 2020. The text was boldface, simple and straightforward: “Make this a monthly recurring donation.”
The box came prefilled with a checkmark.
Even that was more aggressive than what the Biden campaign would do in 2020. Biden officials said they rarely used prechecked boxes to automatically have donations recur monthly or weekly; the exception was on landing pages where advertisements and emails had explicitly asked supporters to become repeat donors.
But for Trump, the prechecked monthly box was just the beginning.
By June, the campaign and the RNC were experimenting with a second prechecked box, to default donors into making an additional contribution — called the money bomb. An early test arrived in the run-up to Trump’s birthday, June 14. The results were tantalizing: That date, a seemingly random Sunday, became the biggest day for online donations in the campaign’s history.
The two prechecked yellow boxes would be a fixture for the rest of the campaign. And so would a much larger volume of refunds.
Until then, the Biden and Trump operations had nearly identical refund rates on WinRed and ActBlue in 2020: 2.18% for Trump and 2.17% for Biden.
But from the day after Trump’s birthday through the rest of the year, Biden’s refund rate remained nearly flat, at 2.24%, while Trump’s soared to 12.29%.
Around the same time, officials who fielded fraud claims at bank and credit card companies noticed a surge in complaints against the Trump campaign and WinRed.
“It started to go absolutely wild,” said one fraud investigator with Wells Fargo. “It just became a pattern,” said another at Capital One. A consumer representative for USAA, which primarily serves military families, recalled an older veteran who discovered repeated WinRed charges from donating to Trump only after calling to have his balance read to him by phone.
The Trump operation was not done modifying the yellow boxes. Soon, the fact that donations would be withdrawn weekly was taken out of boldface type, according to archived versions of the president’s website, and moved beneath other bold text.
As the campaign’s financial problems became increasingly acute, the yellow boxes became dizzyingly more complex.
By October there were sometimes nine lines of boldface text — with ALL-CAPS words sprinkled in — before the disclosure that there would be weekly withdrawals. As many as eight more lines of boldface text came before the second additional donation disclaimer.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-steered-supporters-unwitting-donations-142130038.html
Apr 4, 2021 14:39:09 #
rumitoid wrote:
Stacy Blatt was in hospice care last September lis... (show quote)
You have to admire the pricks ability to grift his h**e and death cult members. He is like an unholy mix of carnival barker, used car salesman and tent revivalist. There is no snake oil he can’t sell to his i***t supporters, he sticks it to them over and over and they just come back for more.
Apr 4, 2021 15:29:36 #
rumitoid wrote:
Stacy Blatt was in hospice care last September lis... (show quote)
Lies I tell you. All lies. If it was true than why is Newsmax and other Trump propaganda sites covering the story and warning the cult. Oh yea, because Trump the billionaire would never stoop to fleecing his flock in such a despicable and dishonest way. If a company did this I think they could be charged
https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_60663f7fc5b6aa24bc60960a
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/03/us/politics/trump-donations.html?referringSource=articleShare
https://www.rawstory.com/donald-trump-grift/
https://www.rawstory.com/trump-online-fundraising-s**m/
Apr 4, 2021 21:53:25 #
RascalRiley wrote:
Lies I tell you. All lies. If it was true than why... (show quote)
They’re such sweet gullible ewes !
Apr 5, 2021 01:33:45 #
Milosia2 wrote:
They’re such sweet gullible ewes !
Trumps favourite kind of people, what did he say, oh yea, “especially the uneducated”.
Apr 5, 2021 01:35:52 #
RascalRiley wrote:
Lies I tell you. All lies. If it was true than why... (show quote)
Correction: If it was true then Newsmax and other Trump propaganda sites would be covering the story and warning the cult.
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