(VF): Major Donors aren't stepping up. "There's Trump fatigue," says longtime Republican donor.

[hlthe2b]

“The 2020 Bumper Sticker Should Be: ‘Same Policies, but We Promise Less Crazy’”: Trump Fund-Raising Is in Crisis, and Even Don Jr. Is Sounding the Alarm

With a dysfunctional fund-raising organization and disappointing battleground polling numbers, major donors aren’t stepping up. “There’s Trump fatigue,” says a longtime Republican donor

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/05/trump-2020-fund-raising-don-jr

On Tuesday night, several hundred Republican donors gathered in the Presidential Ballroom at the Trump International Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue for a fund-raiser to unofficially kick off Trump’s 2020 re-election. Trumpworld eminences including Vice President Mike Pence, campaign manager Brad Parscale, and counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway were on hand to pitch donors to sign on as “bundlers” that would leverage their networks to help the Trump campaign raise Parscale’s stated goal of $1 billion by Election Day. The event was the brainchild of longtime Bush family supporter Jack Oliver, who pioneered the bundler model for George W. Bush’s 2004 re-election and has been tapped by Parscale to win over establishment donors that shunned Trump in 2016. Donors that raise $100,000 will qualify to join the “Builders Club” and earn perks such as campaign dinners, briefings and “commemorative Trump Victory gifts.”

It’s going to be a hard sell. According to sources, Trump campaign officials are sounding the alarm over the president’s early fund-raising hauls. Trump’s son Don Jr. has privately warned donors that Trump only raised around $30 million in the last quarter, and pointed out that the number fell far short of the roughly $45 million Barack Obama raised in the second quarter of 2011 for his 2012 re-election bid, according to a source briefed on the conversations (A source close to Don Jr. disputed this). “They need more money, and there’s no enthusiasm. They need to amp it up,” a Trump donor told me. “Wall Street never liked Trump from the beginning. Goldman is filled with people who were Obama fund-raisers,” another Trump donor told me. In 2016, Trump raised only about $351 million. Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign took in $483 million.

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