Report: The Trump Campaign’s Email Sweepstakes Are Possibly Illegal, Definitely Cringe
Anyone living in America with an email account and a cell phone number in 2024 knows full well the tyranny of landing on the mailing list of a political candidate and being buried under what feels like 30 million messages a day asking for money. But according to a new report, Donald Trump’s presidential campaign not only far exceeds the competition when it comes to the volume of harassing, unhinged correspondence, but may be scamming the people who actually answer its requests for cash too.
The New York Times reports that whereas Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have sent out just over 1,600 campaign emails combined since the president launched his reelection bid in April 2023, Team Trump has sent at least 7,400 since the GOP candidate entered the race, which breaks down to an average of 75 per week. Not surprisingly, many of them take on an apocalyptic, all-caps-outraged tone—as seen in one sent last May, which spoke of “the ILLEGAL RAID on my beautiful Mar-a-Lago,” “the RIGGED BIDEN TRIALS forcing me off the campaign trail,” and “the RUTHLESS ATTEMPTS TO SILENCE MAGA & DESTROY AMERICA.” While others email lines sound like…they’re from letters sent to a lover during the Revolutionary War. Those include:
“You are the reason I wake up every morning. I love you to the moon and back, and I really mean that.”
“I need you to know one thing: I love you!”
“YOU NEVER LEFT MY SIDE – I WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU FOR THAT!”
Setting aside the weirdness of Trump sending emails to supporters using language it’s hard to imagine him ever using with his wife, the Times’ investigation also revealed that despite frequently promising people something in exchange for their donation, the campaign does not appear to have followed through for the most part.
Since former president Donald J. Trump announced his 2024 candidacy, his campaign has promoted dozens of contests for supporters to win signed merchandise or “V.I.P.” trips to meet Mr. Trump. It has offered adherents myriad “exclusive” opportunities to join clubs to give counsel to Mr. Trump, and it has repeatedly claimed that Mr. Trump is personally reviewing lists of small donors. But most of the contests seem to have no winners, and the campaign did not confirm or provide evidence that the club members have had any opportunity to advise the former president or that Mr. Trump is paying any attention to small-donor rosters.
In all, the combined approximate retail value of the contest prizes offered by the Trump campaign since Mr. Trump announced his candidacy totals more than $180,000. The Times could not verify that a vast majority of that value has made its way to Mr. Trump’s supporters. Similar questions have arisen about contests Mr. Trump’s campaign and political action committee have run in years past.
According to the Times, it sent the campaign “a detailed list of every contest it had promoted in fundraising emails from Nov. 15, 2022, to Sept. 16, 2024, and asked the campaign to confirm that each contest had a winner and to provide the names of the winners.” The outlet also “asked the campaign to provide photos of the winners with Mr. Trump in cases in which a photo was part of the prize, and a link to a ‘personalized‘ Christmas message from Mr. Trump offered as a prize in December 2022.” The campaign did not confirm that every contest had a winner and failed to provide “winners’ names, photos, or a link to the Christmas video.” Team Trump sent the outlet two statements, one by a man named Willam McGuffin, whom it identified as a contest winner in late August, and another from a campaign adviser. The adviser wrote to the Times: “President Trump and our campaign have a strong and effective fund-raising operation that includes digital platforms. President Trump’s movement to save our nation inspires hardworking men and women from all over America to play a financial role in our campaign and MAGA movement.”
Which is all well and good, but according to at least one expert, running a sweepstakes without awarding a winner may not actually be legal:
Contests like the ones both campaigns have run are legally considered sweepstakes, which are a regulated category. Federal Election Commission regulations allow political committees to run sweepstakes, but do not specify the rules under which they are run. In the absence of such rules, sweepstakes regulations from federal and state regulators should apply, according to campaign legal experts.
“Sweepstakes rules should be crystal clear about whether a sponsor will award all prizes or whether a sponsor will choose alternate winners if the original potential winners are disqualified,” Kyle-Beth Hilfer, an advertising and marketing law attorney in New York, said in an email. “Any ambiguity could lead to a legal challenge from an entrant or even a regulator.”
Vanity Fair has reached out to the Trump campaign for comment.
Anyway, none of this should come as a surprise considering that (1) Trump is an actual convicted felon, and (2) he’s ripped off his supporters before. In 2021 the Times reported that the 2020 Trump campaign raised tens of millions of dollars by making the default option on its donation pages one that would deduct money from people’s bank accounts not once but every single week. Later, the campaign introduced a second prechecked box that doubled a person’s contribution and was known internally as a “money bomb.” At least one of the people ensnared in the scheme was living in hospice care and surviving on less than $1,000 a month, but after donating $500 intended as a single contribution, he learned that the Trump campaign had withdrawn $3,000 from his account in less than 30 days, leading his utility and rent payments to bounce. For his part, Trump naturally insisted he did nothing wrong, saying in a statement that “many people were so enthusiastic that they gave over and over, and in certain cases where they gave too much, we would promptly refund their contributions.”
Just completely normal stuff from the GOP nominee for president
In fairness, it’s possible he doesn’t know what city he’s in
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