Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

Everyone is in a bubble, but some bubbles model reality far better than others!

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

Spilling the end game before they can coat it in frankl luntz-approved dogwhistles.

He really is that stupid.

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Thanks for reminding me that Van Jones needs to be slapped.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

No Justins, No Peace

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

DeSantis transforms Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

We still have time to mess this up!

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Everybody saw this coming.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Late Night GOP Venality Open Thread: Grifters Gonna Grift

Late Night GOP Venality Open Thread: Grifters Gonna Grift

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A reassuring indicator that The Former Guy is truly Former — The NYTimes is now willing to tell us that he (and his party) would happily steal the pennies off a corpse’s eyes:

… 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 election.

Contributors had to wade through a fine-print disclaimer and manually uncheck a box to opt out.

As the election 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 two and a half 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 Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s campaign and his equivalent Democratic committees, which made 37,000 online refunds totaling $5.6 million in that time.

The recurring donations swelled Mr. 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 election, under the guise of fighting his unfounded fraud claims, to help cover the refunds he owed…

Unlike ActBlue, which is a nonprofit, WinRed is a for-profit company. It makes its money by taking 30 cents of every donation, plus 3.8 percent of the amount given. WinRed was paid more than $118 million from federal committees the last election cycle; even after paying credit card fees and expenses like payroll and rent, the profits are believed to be significant.

WinRed even made money off donations that were refunded by keeping the fees it charged on each transaction, a practice it said was standard in the industry, citing PayPal; ActBlue said it does not keep fees for refunded donations. WinRed’s cut of the Trump operation’s refunds would amount to roughly $5 million before expenses. (Archived versions of WinRed’s website show it added a disclaimer saying it would keep its fees around when refunds surged.)…

Republicans widely hailed WinRed as one of the standout successes of the 2020 cycle, and in a memo last October the company declared itself the “trusted, recognizable platform” for Republican giving. “Scam PACs, shady operators and outright fraud is unfortunately a common occurrence in the online political donation world — particularly on the right,” the memo stated. “WinRed helps civilize the Wild West of the G.O.P. donation ecosystem.”…

Now WinRed is exporting the tools it pioneered during the Trump re-election across the Republican Party, presaging a new normal for G.O.P. campaigns.

Today, the websites of various Republican Party committees and top congressional Republicans, including Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, and Senator Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, include prechecked yellow boxes for multiple or recurring donations…

I do remember Democrats, at the time, pointing out that this was ethically questionable, if not actually illegal. But it’s certainly a useful tool for a party that’s committed itself to fewer, but dumber ‘more loyal’ members. (And that’s even before they sell their mailing lists to a bunch of non-political scammers!)

Reader Interactions

36Comments

  1. 1.

    Comrade Colette

    Coinkidinkally, the soup kitchen (OK, food bank) is exactly where Monsieur Colette and I sent the only document we’ve ever voluntarily handled that had TFG’s name on it.

    I know how privileged we are to have been able to afford to do that. Still, fuck that guy, and ALL of his idiot donors, willing or not.

    ETA: I’ve now seen the word ‘ouroboros’ more times in the last month of political commentary than in the previous several decades’ worth of medieval studies and/or vampire romance novels. What’s up with that?

  4. 4.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    The recurring donations swelled Mr. 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 election, under the guise of fighting his unfounded fraud claims, to help cover the refunds he owed…

    I shouldn’t have been drinking and reading this… my god, the stupid.

  6. 6.

    Redshift

    @rikyrah:

    Everything about Dolt45 left this as no surprise 

    Everything about the GOP for the past several decades left this as no surprise. They’ve been scamming seniors out of their social security checks since I was a teenager, though back then they had enough class that it was mostly outside organizations doing it.

    And of course WinRed is a for-profit company. Conservative dogma says the profit motive will always produce the best result.

  8. 8.

    Beautifulplumage

    I love the fact that Act Blue is non-profit & win red is such a scam. I have always added the extra to my Act Blue donations so the org can keep going. They seem to make their platform easy to use & transparent on the candidate’s end.

  9. 9.

    Kent

    @Redshift:Everything about the GOP for the past several decades left this as no surprise. They’ve been scamming seniors out of their social security checks since I was a teenager, though back then they had enough class that it was mostly outside organizations doing it.

    The reason it is such an easy scam is because the same seniors have been getting scammed by their churches for decades.  They are accustomed to it.

  11. 11.

    Mary G

    I accidentally left the decimal point out of my $5.00 contribution to Steve Bullock’s Senate campaign and had a cow. I contacted Act Blue and the $500 was refunded the same day, plus the 50 cents to them. Trump donors had to complain to banks and credit card companies and WinRed kept their cut.  The difference between Republicans and Democrats in a nutshell.

  14. 14.

    sab

    @Mary G: I had an issue with ActBlue and Jaime Harrison campaign. Didn’t clear out the little box that makes it monthly. I was trying to do early money is like yeast. All I could afford. Could not afford that monthly. I gave as a guest so couldn’t trace it. Couldn’t effectively communicate with them because my giving date ( unknown, forgotten)  wasn’t same date as left my bank account.

    Anyway, whined on line here. Some jackal (Ozark or JR) contacted them and emailed an address to me. And when I got my next  bank bank statement they had fixed it. I repaid the refund in tiny increments over the next few months, since they had expected that money.

    So overall my interactions with ActBlue have been amazingly positive. Just watch for that little donation monthly box.

  15. 15.

    sab

    @Morzer: Weird bunch of books those were. I loved them

    E. R. R. not Eric, for those googling or remembering the books. Gods at a dinner, watching a world they had built, somebody’s mistress popped it like a bubble with a hatpin because she was bored.

    Made me wonder a lot about Eddison’s politics.

  18. 18.

    sab

    @HumboldtBlue: Dogs running competitively outside sure as hell beats my cats competitively peeing inside.

    I told Mouf today that when Werebear’s Maine coon couldn’t get along she re-homed him, not everyone else.

  20. 20.

    Morzer

    @sab:

    E. R. Eddison (Eric Rücker Eddison). Strange books they are indeed. Not the sort of thing you imagine a career civil servant writing. Apparently he was not on opium, laudanum, cocaine or anything else of a pharmaceutical nature. At his best, he’s got a weird and wonderful power to his writing. Of course, he also has the most overdone description of a hero’s dining room in all of literature..

    Noting for the record the existence of:

    https://www.ereddison.com/

  21. 21.

    JWR

    This piece about why corporations are becoming more politically active sort of misses the mark in that corporations have always been politically active, just never on the Left side of the equation, always the Right, where their natural allies reside.

    NBC: Historian Michael Beschloss said the week’s political groundswell fit right into the nation’s civil rights history and pointed to Martin Luther King Jr.’s final speech, delivered on April 3, 53 years ago.

    In it, King vowed to use boycotts and corporate power to fight for justice, listing companies like Coca-Cola and Wonder Bread as targets and arguing that these companies needed to get involved in an ongoing union strike.

    “I don’t see how anyone can say this is radical or out of keeping with American tradition,” Beschloss said of the corporations answering calls to come off the sidelines on the issue of voting. “This tool is an old tool in American history.”

    Works for me.

  22. 22.

    Jinchi

    the money that Mr. Trump eventually had to refund amounted to an interest-free loan

    And the money from those who never realized they were scammed was pure profit!

  31. 31.

    Geminid

    Last night many Israelis celebrated Mimouni.  A Moroccan tradition ending the Passover holiday, Mimouni has caught on with the wider Jewish Israeli public.

    This may be a consequential week in Israeli politics. Monday, Israeli President Reuben Rivlin will interview party leaders offering their recommendations as to whom will be given a mandate to form a government, based on last month’s inconclusive election. Thirteen party lists cleared the 3.25% electoral threshold to win at least four Knesset seats, so Reuvlin will have a long day. The meetings will be livestreamed.

    The Israeli President is supposed to be neutral, but Reuvlin may not neccessarily give the mandate to the leader with the most initial support, which would be current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The PM can count on 51 votes from his Likud and three other parties. Reuvlin may instead choose a leader among left, center, and anti-Netanyahu right wing parties for the mandate.

    A goverment must win the support of 61 of 120 Knesset members. If one leader cannot form a government in five weeks, a second will have a chance. If that fails, Israel will hold it’s fifth election in two years.

    Also, the evidentiary phase of Netanyahu’s corruption trial begins Tuesday.

    These stories will be well reported by the Jerusalem Post and the Times of Israel. The liberal newspaper Haaretz has better in-depth coverage, but new readers will find it paywalled after a few articles.

  32. 32.

    trnc

    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.

    That’s a weird sentence. The intentional scheme was carried out through duplicity. At any rate, I do appreciate another story from the MSM making it extremely clear that DT has no problem lying to his supporters and outright stealing from them, even though we all know it won’t make a dent in their support of him.

  35. 35.

    trnc

    @Beautifulplumage: ​
     

    I have always added the extra to my Act Blue donations so the org can keep going.

    I had a recurring donation going for most of last year to ActBlue (intentional, of course), but I stopped it at the end of the year. I just made one again to the general fund that let AB decide how best to use it, but I couldn’t figure out how to make it recurring again (polar opposite of winred, LOL). Is there a way to do that, or do I have to pick a specific candidate or cause now to make it recurring?

  36. 36.

    J R in WV

    @trnc:
    In my experience, there is a “make this monthly” button-style checkbox at one or two points in making a donation.

    So watch closely when you make a subsequent donation, or perhaps go to their CONTACT US site and ask for help…

Comments are closed.