Record funds after Donald Trump’s day at jail

Donald Trump’s presidential campaign cashes in on scowling jailhouse image, using mugshot merchandise to raise more than $10 million since his day in prison.

Donald Trump’s website is using his mugshot for merchandise in an appeal for funds after his indictment in Georgia. Picture: The Times

Donald Trump’s presidential campaign has raised more than $10 million since he was booked at a jail in Atlanta on Thursday, with his officials turning his mugshot into a lucrative earner.

The Trump 2024 website is selling mugs, T-shirts, beer glasses and bumper stickers all emblazoned with his scowling jailhouse image. The items, ranging in price from $19 to $53, bear slogans like “Never Surrender!”

Trump, 77, has been charged with 13 felonies related to his alleged attempts to overturn the result of the 2020 election in Georgia. He is the first ex-president to be charged with a criminal offence and the only one to have his mugshot taken.

He denies any wrongdoing and says that the indictment, along with the three other criminal cases he faces - involving 91 charges in all - is part of a conspiracy to keep him out of office.

His campaign has nonetheless inundated supporters with emails and social media posts using the mugshot as part of its appeal for funds, urging backers to “make a contribution to evict Crooked Joe Biden from the White House and SAVE AMERICA during this dark chapter in our nation’s history”.

The mugshot of the former US President is pictured next to the website Trump Save America JFC. T-shirts, mugs, stickers and beverage coolers bearing the mugshot were put out by his team within hours of the photo’s release. Picture: AFP

After leaving Atlanta on Thursday Trump aired his views on Twitter/X, for the first time since being banned in January 2021. He was reinstated after Elon Musk bought the platform last year.

He wrote: “I walked into the lion’s den with one simple message on behalf of our entire movement: I will never surrender our mission to save America.”

https://t.co/MlIKklPSJTpic.twitter.com/Mcbf2xozsY

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 25, 2023

In an email to supporters yesterday (Sunday) Trump said: “The Deep State has done everything in their power to try and paint me as a villain all while the REAL villains, nestled deep within the Washington, DC swamp, quietly get away with bleeding our country dry.”

He added: “Please make a contribution to DEFEND our movement from the never-ending witch-hunts.”

Staff say that in the three weeks since the former president was indicted in Georgia he has raised almost $31 million, including a record $8.2 million on Friday, the day after he surrendered at a police station.

Yet even as the money has flooded in his poll numbers have dipped. According to the FiveThirtyEight website, polls of Republicans across the nation give Trump a 52 per cent average rating; still 37 points ahead of his nearest rival, Ron DeSantis, but down slightly from an average 54.3 per cent a week ago.

There are indications that his appearance in Atlanta may not be solely responsible for the slip. Vivek Ramaswamy, 38, is widely considered to have delivered an impressive performance at the first debate of Republican candidates on Wednesday night in Milwaukee and has seen a bounce in the polls in recent days. Trump chose not to attend.

Donald Trump’s website is using his mugshot for merchandise after his indictment in Georgia

Ramaswamy, who has never held political office, has seen his support grow by almost three points to 10 per cent over the past two weeks. The biotech millionaire’s campaign is largely self-funded but he received $703,000 in donations in the hours after the debate.

Fani Willis, the district attorney in Fulton county, an area that covers most of Atlanta, faces her first courtroom battle in the 2020 election case today (Monday). Mark Meadows, Trump’s former White House chief of staff, one of the 18 defendants named alongside the former president, will attempt to have his case switched to a federal court.

The hearing technically only applies to Meadows’s case but others, including Trump, are also hoping to switch their cases to federal courts.

Trump’s tactic in each case is to delay the hearings for as long as possible and hope that he wins next year’s presidential election. As president he would be in a position to appoint an attorney general who could quash federal criminal charges. As the case is currently being tried under Georgia state law no federal officials, including the president, can affect the proceedings.

Meadows, who is also charged with offences linked to conspiring to overturn the election result in Georgia, is expected to argue that he acted as a federal officer and that the charges relate to an act taken “under colour of such office”. He has already applied to a federal court to have the charges dismissed.

Willis has called for the case to begin in October, something welcomed by some of the defendants. Trump has asked for the trial to start in April 2026.

Trump is the first former president to have been charged with a criminal offence

Analysis

Running for president is an expensive business and candidates will often spend more time speaking to highrolling donors than to voters.

Never Back Down, an independent expenditure-only political action committee, or “super-pac”, set up to support Ron DeSantis, is set to spend $39 million this week on television adverts in Iowa and New Hampshire. That may prove to be a waste of money, given how poorly DeSantis is doing in the polls, but even if he were to pull out of the race, the donors are unlikely to see their cash again.

There are strict rules on campaign financing and candidates cannot use any of the money for themselves - which is why Donald Trump’s use of donations for his spiralling legal fees has raised eyebrows.

The cash can be given to charity, or other candidates running for office. Political parties are sometimes the big winners, with donations being made to the Republican and Democratic national committees.

Occasionally super-pacs do repay donors: in 2016 one backing Jeb Bush, who lost out to Trump in the race for the Republican nomination, gave $19 million back, but it is not the norm.

Instead, the cash is usually rolled into a candidate’s next big idea, with super-pacs using leftover campaign cash to support the same candidate in other elections; something that Trump and the likes of Bernie Sanders have done in several elections.

The Times