Donald Trump announced his federal indictment via his social media platform last week, and according to the time stamp, the former president published the news at 7:21 p.m. ET. His followers then received a fundraising appeal — the email’s subject line read, “BREAKING: INDICTED” — and according to my inbox, it arrived at 7:38 p.m. ET.
As we discussed soon after, this almost certainly wasn’t an accident: Trump’s political operation had already made clear that they would use the charges to fill campaign coffers, so the coordination surprised no one. The question was whether it would work.
NBC News reported that the Trump campaign indicated that we wouldn’t have to wait too long to find out: The Republican operation intended to release indictment fundraising numbers on Saturday. That would’ve made sense: By Saturday, Team Trump would have the financial data from the first 48 hours after the news reached the public.
But on Saturday, there was no such announcement. Were the tallies underwhelming, or were they great and Trump’s operation didn’t want to see them buried in a Saturday night news cycle?
I think we now have an answer. NBC News reported:
Former President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign said Wednesday that it has raised $6.6 million since news of his federal indictment broke, including more than $4.5 million online. … Trump’s campaign has sent out numerous fundraising emails asking for donations since he revealed that he had been indicted again.
The former president’s political operation did its best to frame this as great news. In an all-caps message posted on his social media platform, the Republican boasted about “really big fundraising” in the wake of the indictment from “misfits, mutants, Marxists, & communists.” (I’m not sure who the “mutants” are.) Around the same time, his campaign issued a written statement, bragging about having brought in “more than $6.6 million in just a few short days.”
But the word “few” stood out. Trump’s donors learned of the indictment early Thursday evening. His campaign then announced its fundraising haul on Wednesday in the late afternoon — which is a total of six days, and several days after its initial plan to release the preliminary data.
NBC News’ report added that the $6.6 million tally is “a bit more than half of the $12 million Trump’s campaign previously announced raising in the six days following the news in late March that he had been indicted in New York City.”
In other words, Team Trump’s boasts come with some fine print: The Republican operation raised millions in the wake of the former president’s second indictment, but it fared far better after his first indictment. As notable as the statistics are, it’s worth pausing to appreciate the absurdity of the circumstances. Revisiting our coverage from Trump’s first indictment, the very idea that a scandal-plagued politician would try to turn criminal indictments into a grift is bewildering. Under normal political conditions, no one would even try to effectively say, “Prosecutors and grand jurors saw evidence that I committed a variety of felonies, so you should definitely reward me with cash.” But we’re routinely reminded that the relationship between Trump and his followers is anything but normal. Postscript: In case this isn’t obvious, none of the aforementioned fundraising figures has been independently confirmed, and it’ll be a while before Trump’s operation files financial records that substantiate the claims.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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