Late in the campaign, when Trump's was being out spent by Biden, and in dire need of funds, he resorted to tricking (yes, tricking) his donors into recurring, higher, and more frequent donations. When the donors demanded refunds in record numbers, Trump
"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."
Not sure if this was his plan, but this amounted to getting more than a hundred million dollars in interest free loans while costing his supporters at a minimum, overdraft and bank fees . At a maximum, the full cost of the unintended donations.
How he essentially scammed them...
In March 2020 Trump offered donors the chance to make their on-line donation recurring. The text was boldface, simple and straightforward: “Make this a monthly recurring donation.”
Take a look
Months later, during the run up to Trump's birthday his campaign added an additional and pre-checked box to make an extra donation on 6/14.
This led to a record high donation amount, and a record high number of refund requests too.In September, Trump learned that they had been out-raised by Biden by more than $150 million in August. So his campaign made a subtle tweak to the language in the first box to make it a recurring
weekly, not monthly donation. both boxes pre-checked of course.
Understandably, fraud claims started to pour in around this time with credit card companies. But that did not stop the campaign's efforts to squeeze out even more money. Their next experiment was to remove the boldface font and de-emphasize the fact that the donation would recur weekly. The disclaimer moved beneath other bold face. Again, both boxes pre-checked.
"As the campaign’s financial problems became increasingly acute, the yellow boxes became dizzyingly more complex.
By October there were sometimes nine lines of boldface text — with ALL-CAPS words sprinkled in — before the disclosure that there would be weekly withdrawals. As many as eight more lines of boldface text came before the second additional donation disclaimer."
The disclaimer still in smaller non-bold.
As a rule, all campaigns issue refunds for things such as donations over the legal limit, mistaken amounts, and duplicates. The Trump campaign was forced to issue $122 million in on line refunds for 2020. For comparison, The Biden campaign issued $21 million in refunds.
Attachment 36613
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/03/u...donations.html
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