Donald Trump, hungry for power, tries to wrestle away GOP fundraising

It was a familiar play by Donald Trump: lashing out at his enemies and trying to raise money from it.

The former president this week escalated a standoff over the Republican Party’s financial future, blasting party leaders and urging his backers to send donations to his new political action committee — not to the institutional groups that traditionally control the GOP’s coffers.

“No more money for RINOS,” he said in a statement released Monday by his bare-bones post-presidential office, referring to Republicans In Name Only. He directed donors to his own website instead.

The aggressive move against his own party is the latest sign that Trump is trying to wrest control of the low-dollar online fundraising juggernaut he helped create, diverting it from Republican fundraising groups toward his own committee, which has virtually no restrictions on how the money can be spent.

Last week, Trump sent cease-and-desist letters — which appear to have little legal standing — to the Republican National Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, warning them not to appeal to donors using his name and image.

The jockeying comes as the party struggles to chart its path forward after losing the House, the Senate and the White House during Trump’s tenure, with moderate party leaders pushing the party to move beyond the divisive former president while much of the GOP base remains firmly behind him. Who controls a majority of donors’ cash is set to be a fiercely contested dispute as Republicans try to regroup and take back power in the 2022 midterm elections.

What’s more, Trump’s advisers believe the future of party fundraising is in low-dollar contributions, not the major donors who have mostly signaled that they want distance from him after his monthslong push falsely claiming that the Nov. 3 election had been stolen, which led to the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.

Republican fundraising groups have pushed back against the former president. And on Tuesday night, Trump released a second statement walking back his earlier attacks.