A pro-Donald Trump super PAC says it will spend $100 million over the summer on advertising in some key states that it says will expand the former president’s path to victory.
The plan was outlined in a five-page memo sent Tuesday to donors to MAGA Inc., a Trump-backed super PAC that has spent $130 million since the start of the election cycle, including millions of dollars for its legal bills.
“We are under no illusions that it will be easy or fair – but fortunately, President Trump is well-positioned to win as long as we all continue to do our part,” the group’s CEO, Taylor Budowich, wrote in the memo, which was first reported by The New York Times. “We have saved resources for this moment and MAGA Inc. will continue to invest every dollar we raise directly into ensuring President Trump’s victory.”
The group, which says it will raise $70 million in May alone, is focusing its summer investment strategy largely on four states: Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada.
“Democrats realize that their monetary advantage only matters if the electoral map is broad. They need to solidify the Blue Wall states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, while keeping President Trump on the defensive in the Sun Belt states of Georgia, Arizona, North Carolina and Nevada,” Budowich wrote.
Biden’s campaign and aligned committees are the result of his own six-week, $30 million television campaign. Two pro-Biden super PACs are also planning their own $50 million ad campaign, according to the Washington Post. The ads will focus on Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
The Biden campaign did not return a request for comment.
Trump and Republicans have long acknowledged they will be at a financial disadvantage during the 2024 election cycle, but they received a wave of cash shortly after Trump was found guilty last week of 34 counts of falsifying business records related to a $. 130,000 made to an adult film star during the 2016 election campaign.
Trump’s campaign says it will report $141 million in fundraising in May, by far its biggest single month, including $53 million in the 24 hours after the verdict. These numbers cannot yet be independently verified due to delays in campaign finance reporting.
Budowich, however, said his group’s announcements will not necessarily focus on Trump’s legal battles.
“Joe Biden and the Democrats wanted a conviction and they got it, for now,” he wrote. “Yet the fundamental political realities that drive voter motivation remain unchanged: voters are pessimistic about America’s future, the vast majority believe the country has gotten worse on a number of critical issues, and favorability and approval of the work of the President Trump increased this year, while those same measures worsened for Joe Biden.”
A wave of post-verdict polls generally showed that a majority agreed with the verdict against Trump, but overall the political landscape remained generally unchanged by the historic decision.
In its memo, MAGA Inc. said it views victory in Pennsylvania as “the ballgame.” The group has already spent nearly $11 million in the state, and most public polls have seen a very close race. During the April primary in Pennsylvania, protest votes received attention, with 163,000 Republican voters choosing former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, who had already dropped out of the race. That was 37,000 more protest votes than Democrats gave President Joe Biden.
Georgia is historically a state that has not been kind to Trump.
In 2016, he won the state by smaller margins than other recent GOP nominees, John McCain and Mitt Romney, and in 2020, he lost the state. But Trump has been consistently up 4 to 5 points in the state heading into 2024, according to most public polls — numbers that MAGA, Inc. says reflect its own internal polling.
“Georgia’s 16 electoral votes represent the best gateway to the White House for President Trump,” the memo said.
The group also has an “Out West” portion of its spending plan that will focus primarily on Arizona and Nevada, focusing on “harder-to-reach voters.”
Among MAGA, Inc.’s biggest expenses to date is $60 million paid in 14 installments to Save America, another Trump-aligned super PAC that has been used to cover many of its mounting legal bills.
By comparison, he spent about $3 million on canvassing and $1.9 million on fundraising expenses, according to campaign finance reports.
This story originally appeared on NBCNews.com read the full story
