Donald Trump’s berating of Sheldon Adelson may cost GOP dear

Donald Trump has allegedly held a fractious call with one of his party’s most lavish supporters, Sheldon Adelson.

President Donald Trump has disheartened Republicans scrambling to match a tide of Democratic fundraising after he allegedly held a fractious call with one of his party’s most lavish supporters, in which he berated the billionaire for not doing enough to support his re-election.

Arguably no donor relationship is more important for Republicans than that with Sheldon Adelson, who has given hundreds of millions of dollars to the party over the past four years.

The casino mogul was an unstinting donor during the last presidential election. Steve Bannon, Mr Trump’s campaign manager in 2016, said after the election that when a tape emerged of Mr Trump saying that he liked to grab women by the crotch and many in his own party wrote off his chances “Sheldon Adelson had Donald Trump’s back”.

He donated $US20m to a political action committee backing the Trump campaign and a further $US63m to Republican election races. He also gave $US5m for Mr Trump’s inauguration. In 2018’s midterm elections, Mr Adelson and his wife Miriam donated $US123m to Republican campaigns and political action committees, according to Forbes, which estimated his worth at $US29.7bn last month.

In February they gave $US580,600 to the Trump Victory fundraising committee and electoral filings last month showed a donation of $US25m to a group supporting Republican Senate races.

Mr Trump’s castigation of Mr Adelson was reported by The New York Times, which said that it came after a difficult week in which the President was so volcanically cross that aides took to warning one another of outbursts.

In the telephone call it became apparent that Mr Trump was unaware of how much help he had received from Mr Adelson, a source told Politico, which said the billionaire decided not to respond to the criticisms. Party officials were said to have made efforts to mollify the tycoon afterwards.

Mr Adelson, 87, is the son of a taxi driver who grew up in a small home in Boston, where his parents and three siblings all slept in one bedroom. He began his business career at the age of 10, selling newspapers on a street corner, and then bought the spot with a $200 loan from his uncle.

By the 1990s, as a serial entrepreneur who had made, lost and remade his fortune, he entered the casino industry, where he was a rival to Mr Trump.

By 2015, when Mr Trump was running for president, he claimed that Mr Adelson and other donors wanted “total control of the candidate”. But Mr Adelson, who has said that his greatest issue is US support for Israel, is said to have been impressed with Mr Trump and delighted with his decision to move the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

The Times