Trump is sucking up all the campaign donations — leaving vital GOP Senate candidates out to dry: Claire McCaskill
On Wednesday's edition of MSNBC's "All In," during a discussion that touched on the Democratic overperformances in New York special elections on Tuesday night, former Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) highlighted how former President Donald Trump is exacerbating the Republican Party's mounting fundraising troubles.
By diverting all the enthusiasm in his base toward funding his likely 2024 run, McCaskill noted, he is making it harder for Senate Republicans to raise money for the midterm that is facing them now.
"You know, you look at the rural numbers last night in some of these districts that had sort of more dense populated places, more rural places, you didn't see the kind of turnout, you didn't get the turnout numbers in those rural districts would kind of need, right?" said anchor Chris Hayes. "To hit those, like, 2016 margins or to hit the, you know, a big Trump victory, a big red wave. What do you understand that as? You just mentioned that maybe those folks don't turn out if Trump isn't actually there."
"There's a whole lot of people that became active in my state for the first time around Donald Trump," said McCaskill. "They remain slavishly loyal to him ... one of the reasons the Republicans are struggling in campaign donations, candidate donations, is the grassroots money is all going to Trump. Not to Marco Rubio or Dr. Oz or J.D. Vance. When they are putting $20 million of dark money into help, you know, in Ohio, you know they are very worried."
"That's a great point," said Hayes. "And we should note, thanks to the Supreme Court's conservative jurisprudence following Citizens United and the wonders of modern technology, that [Senate campaign chair] Rick Scott, who's tasked with winning Senate seats for Republicans, can probably coordinate some of those donations and that dark money from his yacht in the Adriatic Sea, where he is right now, on a vacation, which has earned him, I think, some fairly justified ire from folks in Republican politics, who feel like the multimillionaire, billionaire on the Italian yacht vacation tweeting about Joe Biden and maybe not doing the best job, is not the guy you want right now in the trenches. What do you think?"
"Yeah, I think that's right and there is a fight brewing, a fairly big fight brewing between Rick Scott and [Senate Minority Leader] Mitch McConnell," said McCaskill. "Mitch McConnell thinks that it was Rick Scott's job to get some of these fringe candidates out. He didn't. Trump is supporting Rick Scott and not Mitch McConnell. So there is really some — I've never seen this kind of, quote-unquote 'trouble in paradise' in the Republican caucus. But there's trouble there, there's real disunity over who is in charge."
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