Photo of Trump under arrest attracts record $7.1 million in campaign donations

Former U.S. President Donald Trump has raised a record $7.1 million in campaign donations in the three days since formally arrested on August 24 in Georgia in connection with election interference in 2020. On August 25, more funds were raised than on any other day of Trump’s election campaigns – $ 4.18 million. In just three weeks of active prosecution, the ex-president raised about $ 20 million. This was announced by Trump’s spokesman Stephen Chung on the X social network (formerly known as Twitter).

As Politico and Bloomberg explain, citing sources, most of these funds were raised by selling merchandise with a photo of a politician at the time of his arrest. The picture is printed on T-shirts, posters, stickers, car bumpers with the slogan “Never give up.” The price of goods is from $12 to $34. The interlocutor of Bloomberg notes that one of the decisive factors was the publication of the photo in the social network X reformatted by businessman Elon Musk.

Trump became the first among former US presidents to be accused and formally arrested in criminal cases, and the photo published on August 24 became the first official prison photo of the former head of state in the history of the country. Trump’s campaign headquarters, in addition to social networks, published his image on the site to raise funds for the campaign. At the same time, the “arrest” was purely procedural: Trump was released half an hour later on a $200,000 bail.

One of the allegations made by the Georgia prosecutor was that during the 2020 election, Trump called Republican Secretary of State Brad Ruffensberger and offered to help “find 11,780 votes” to defeat Joe Biden in the state. The ex-president denies the allegations. 18 people were involved in this case, including former chief of staff Mark Meadows and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. All of them were also photographed during the formal arrest.

The Georgia election meddling charge is the fourth in a string of criminal trials against Trump. On August 2, a third charge was filed against him related to the storming of the Capitol by his supporters in January 2021, which killed five people. This charge includes four counts: “conspiracy to deceive the United States”, “conspiracy to falsify witness statements”, “conspiracy against the rights of American citizens”, “obstruction and attempted obstruction of proceedings”. Trump has appeared in court twice before. In April, he was charged with falsifying business documents in payments for silence to pornographic actress Stormy Daniels, and in June with possession of classified documents in a residence in Florida.

But the criminal cases did not have a serious impact on Trump’s popularity: according to polls from August 15-21 of the RealClearPolitics project, the ex-president’s rating among Republicans is 55.4%. For his rival, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, only 14.3% are ready to vote.

According to political scientist and president of the Minchenko Consulting communications holding Yevgeny Minchenko, the combined “judicial” attack on Trump consolidates his nuclear electorate within the Republican Party. The “arrest” photo, which was intended to humiliate him, on the contrary, became, judging by its monetization, a successful image of Trump’s readiness to fight, Minchenko believes. The political scientist is sure that Trump is right, arguing on August 23 in an interview with former Fox News TV presenter Tucker Carlson that he has no worthy competitors from his party members and therefore he refuses to debate with them. “He alone has a clear image, unlike even the closest competitor in the potential DeSantis primaries. The rest are extremely blurred for the voter,” says Minchenko.

In the short term, the “arrest” in Georgia is a Democratic miscalculation, it will mobilize both ordinary Trumpists and Republican congressmen, said the director of the Center for the Study of the United States. Franklin Roosevelt Yuri Rogulev. But in the medium term, Trump’s opponents can disrupt his participation in the primaries and elections by setting the most inconvenient dates for hearings – in the spring or in October 2024, Rogulev believes. So the outcome of the struggle is not yet a foregone conclusion and it is escalating, he concludes.