Trump Super PAC Says It Took In Nearly $70 Million in May

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The original super PAC supporting Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign plans to report that it raised nearly $70 million in May, and that it will spend a further $100 million through Labor Day, according to a memo written for the group’s donors.

The super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc., is preparing an advertising blitz focused on a handful of key states in the Rust Belt and the Sun Belt, where several polls show Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, leading President Biden.

The memo, a copy of which was provided to The New York Times by someone who received it, was written by the group’s chief executive, Taylor Budowich. The burst of fund-raising it describes is on track with the surge that the Trump campaign has said it experienced after Mr. Trump was convicted last week in a Manhattan courtroom on 34 counts of falsifying business records intended to conceal a hush-money payment to a porn star in 2016.

The Trump campaign has said that it raised $141 million in the days after the verdict on May 30. That, along with the MAGA Inc. figure, cannot be independently verified until campaign finance reports are made public. But by all accounts, Mr. Trump and his allied groups are moving to chip away at what has been an enormous cash advantage held by Democrats.

Mr. Budowich argued that the conviction in the Manhattan case had not changed the fundamentals of a race in which Mr. Biden is running as an incumbent with dangerously low approval ratings.

In the memo, Mr. Budowich said the money would be used to continue to try to peel off Black and Latino voters, from whom Mr. Trump is currently attracting more support than he has in the past. The money will also be spent in the Rust Belt, where Mr. Trump’s longtime base of white working-class voters dominates.

The memo provides insight into how Mr. Trump’s extended orbit views his paths to the 270 electoral votes necessary to win the presidency, and how pivotal one state in particular — Pennsylvania — is to their plans.

Democrats “need to both solidify the blue wall states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, while keeping President Trump defensive in the Sun Belt states of Georgia, Arizona, North Carolina and Nevada,” Mr. Budowich wrote.

He noted that Mr. Trump had been faring better in the Sun Belt states, adding: “That doesn’t mean it’s a certainty — but we are well positioned. That’s why MAGA Inc.’s summer investments will prioritize providing Team Trump with the most electoral paths to victory, while narrowing the battlefield geographically come fall.”

He wrote that Pennsylvania is “the ballgame,” but also said Georgia’s 16 electoral votes presented, through the south, “the best gateway to the White House for President Trump — delivering the targeted 270 electoral votes.”

The super PAC has focused heavily on Pennsylvania, where Mr. Biden’s support is stronger than in other Rust Belt states.

Mr. Budowich noted that Mr. Biden’s campaign had spent aggressively on advertising, but that the outlays had not yet materialized into a more expansive block of support for the president. Repeatedly, he pointed out that Mr. Trump was being outspent even as he maintained a solid position in polls.

And he said that MAGA Inc. would work off a targeted voter model with its spending in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania.

“We may not be able to outspend Democrats, but we can ensure the messages that are being distributed are done so using the targeting that each individual voter requires,” he wrote.

While MAGA Inc. was the first blessed super PAC supporting Mr. Trump, another group, Right for America, is being led by a Trump ally, Sergio Gor. In addition, Miriam Adelson, the megadonor and widow of the casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, plans to fund a separate entity supporting Mr. Trump, called Preserve America. That group was initially formed in 2020, when Mr. Trump was running for re-election.

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