The billionaire industrialist Koch brothers, meanwhile, are being urged to reconsider their opposition to Trump by some of the donors in their network who are supporting the Manhattan tycoon, including Minnesota media mogul Stanley S. Hubbard and Dallas investor Ray Washburne, according to the two Republicans familiar with the outreach.
.. But the Republicans familiar with the push said top Koch aides rejected the idea of a meeting.
.. The Minnesota media billionaire Hubbard, a longtime member of the Koch donor network, initially opposed Trump, but has come around, and said he’ll urge the Kochs to do the same when he sees them this weekend in Colorado Springs.
.. “I think it is time that we get behind Trump because of all the important things such as Supreme Court appointments, which are crucial,” he said, adding that he was aware of the efforts to get the Kochs to meet with Trump.
.. Pence’s deep ties to the Kochs and other major conservative benefactors were considered among his strengths as a vice presidential candidate.
Military-Industrial Election
Among all the 2016 hopefuls, Ted Cruz was the recipient of the most defense-industry dollars, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Cruz received a total of $343,000, followed—perhaps surprisingly—by Bernie Sanders with $323,000, and then Hillary Clinton with more than $273,000.
Sanders’s place at the top of the Democratic heap in terms of defense-sector support may seem odd for a man who attacked Clinton’s support for overseas military interventions. But it’s not so strange at all when one considers that the controversial F-35 Joint Strike Fighter—the most expensive aircraft in U.S. history, and more than a decade overdue—underwent development in Sanders’s home state of Vermont.
.. Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman have PACs that rank among the wealthiest in the industry. Lockheed’s PAC, which spread around over $1.6 million for federal candidates this spring, had given $10,000 to Cruz by the end of March. Northrop Grumman’s PAC, on the other hand, gave all of its $1.5 million as of March to House and Senate candidates—mostly Republicans.
.. Clinton has a candidate profile that seems like an especially good fit for military industries.
.. ABC’s Martha Raddatz, former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said of Clinton, with classic understatement, “I think that she probably would be somewhat more hawkish than President Obama.”
.. As Landler’s story makes clear, Clinton has had an unusually accommodating relationship with generals and top civilian brass. She has always been portrayed as a sympathetic partner, an enabler-in-waiting. To the wider national-security establishment, she is clearly “of the body.”
.. The defense industry is in fact a relatively marginal player in the presidential contest, at least from what the visible paper trail shows. Hillary Clinton is far more reliant on resources from the securities and investment industry. The war machine doesn’t even crack her top-20 list of contributors, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
.. That’s because the defense sector spends its money elsewhere. By putting their cash into Congress, defense industries can elect and influence legislators who will remain in Washington far longer than any president. Congress is where the action is ..
.. “Defense contractors have enormous influence in shaping the secretary of defense’s decisions, but if the secretary happens to do something that displeases the industry, they will get Congress to undo that too, taking advantage of the broad leverage the companies have bought by spreading subcontracts across 48 states, by contributing generously to key committee congressmen, and by unleashing armies of lobbyists and paid-for think-tank pundits.”
.. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, comes in third on the list, with $265,450 as of this writing. The next Republican after him is a top F-35 proponent, Rep. Randy Forbes (R-Va.), chairman of the HASC Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee, who raked in $181,950. He’s followed by Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), chair of the Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, with $166,700.
.. but critics warn of tricky accounting: the House Appropriations plan uses wartime contingency funds to get around funding caps for baseline budgeting.
.. the big fight in 2017 will be getting rid of those spending caps, which were put into place under the Budget Control Act (BCA), the “sequester” of 2011.
.. “The F-35 is in 46 different states and 350 districts,” Smithburger says. “That is a lot of political support for one program.”
.. Even when the Department of Defense asks for something else, lawmakers in the pocket of contractors make sure the companies’ pet projects are funded anyway. And the corruption is getting worse.
.. Because of this entrenchment, little will change next year no matter who wins the White House, says Dan Grazier.
Trump fundraising emails overseas prompt complaints here and abroad
The emails to Gale were among a wave of fundraising pleas inexplicably sent by the Trump campaign in recent days to lawmakers in the United Kingdom, Iceland, Australia and elsewhere. The solicitations prompted watchdog groups in Washington to file two separate complaints Wednesday with the Federal Election Commission alleging that the Trump campaign was violating federal law by soliciting funds from foreign nationals.
.. His campaign said it raised $2 million in less than 12 hours after blasting out its first email.
.. Gale, a Conservative who has served in the House of Commons for more than three decades, said the hostile tone of the Trump emails he received was off-putting.
.. “I don’t know if someone at Team Trump was stupid enough to think that all Conservative Party MPs would consider themselves Republicans,” Gale said. “But I asked around, and it seems that most others did get these emails, too.”
.. In Iceland, Katrin Jakobsdottir, the chairwoman of the Left-Green Movement, a democratic socialist party that focuses on feminist and environmental issues, said she unexpectedly received a Trump campaign email and has “no idea” how she got on his list.
.. Renting email lists from former candidates is common practice in politics, and there is evidence suggesting Trump is doing that now. A Trump fundraising email sent out Wednesday afternoon came from “info@chrischristie.com.”
.. “First of all, I don’t even know why I need so much money,” he said. “You know, I go around, I make speeches. I talk to reporters. I don’t even need commercials, if you want to know the truth. Why do I need these commercials?”
The Trump Campaign Gets a $50 Million Donation
Donald Trump converted around $50 million in loans to his campaign to a gift—but did he have any choice?
.. Although he has claimed he was paying for his own campaign all along, Trump had in fact spent very little of his own money, since the rest was structured as loans. Meanwhile, sizable chunks were flowing back into his own pocket in the form of campaign expenses paid out to venders like the Mar-a-Lago Club or Tag Air—both companies Trump owns.
.. For a time, it seemed Trump might be able to follow through on a 2000 claim that he could make money running for president.