December 29, 2015

Donald Trump Is About to Open His War Chest

The GOP front-runner pledges to start spending big on ads in early primary states.

Steven Senne/AP

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Donald Trump is just getting started. At an overcrowded rally Monday night in Nashua, New Hampshire, that left hundreds of fans stranded outside in the cold—along with a Mother Jones reporter who was denied entry—Trump announced he would soon begin spending millions of dollars to win the early primaries, a shift for a campaign that has so far achieved great success in the polls while spending hardly any money on ads.

The rally was a clear message to the conservative establishment that has long predicted, or at least hoped, that the billionaire’s quixotic run for the Republican presidential nomination would finally begin to falter. In recent days, Trump’s campaign has faced a slew of new attacks from rivals and questions from the media about his viability. Jeb Bush’s campaign has been running regular anti-Trump ads in the Granite State, featuring Bush sternly scolding Trump at the most recent GOP debate, while Trump makes exaggerated and silly faces. Last week, a New York Times article questioned how many Trump supporters would actually vote. Hours before Trump arrived in New Hampshire, Joe McQuaid, the publisher of the conservative New Hampshire Union-Leader (where I used to work), published a front-page editorial calling Trump an insult to the intelligence of New Hampshire voters and comparing the real estate tycoon to Biff, the buffoonish villain in Back to the Future.

None of that seemed to faze Trump, or his supporters. An hour before Trump was set to take the stage at a middle school in Nashua, the school’s gym was already at capacity, which one campaign security staffer said was between 1,400 and 1,600 people. Even at that point, an estimated 800 more hopefuls stood in the freezing cold in a line that snaked around the building, and more Trump fans continued to trickle in from surrounding neighborhoods, where the streets were lined with cars that had quickly overfilled the school’s lots.

The scene was chaotic. A large man, who identified himself as a Trump fan tired of seeing people cut the line, stationed himself near the doors, shooing away anyone trying to wander in without waiting. A string of vendors did brisk business in Trump paraphernalia, but neither the self-appointed line watchdog nor the vendors said they had seen or spoken to any actual Trump campaign staff.

In the media area, volunteers ushered in members of the press, but entrance was not necessarily any easier. Campaign staff requested that I wait while Trump’s spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, was asked whether I could join other reporters in the media area. A few moments later, a campaign staffer summoned a Nashua police officer over, pointed at me, and said, “He’s got to go.”

It’s not the first time the Trump campaign has denied entry to professional journalists. (An unaffiliated blogger was also ejected from last night’s rally, but other noncredentialed media were seen entering.) In November, the campaign refused to allow a BuzzFeed reporter to come into an Iowa rally, and it denied media credentials to reporters from the Des Moines Register and Univision. Hicks did not respond to an email about why Mother Jones was denied entry.

The bouncing of reporters fit in with the event’s theme, which was heavily focused on Trump’s disdain for the media. In response to the Union-Leader editorial, Trump spent 10 minutes disparaging the publisher as a “lowlife” and mocking the newspaper’s appearance and endorsement of Chris Christie for the GOP presidential nomination. Trump called the newspaper a “pile of garbage.”

But the biggest news of the night came when Trump said he would vastly increase his spending on television commercials. To date, Trump appears to have spent only $217,000 on advertising—compared with $41 million spent by Bush and his allied super-PAC. But Trump told the crowd that’s about to change.

“Starting around January 4, we’re spending a lot of money!” Trump said, claiming the campaign would spend about $2 million a week on ads. “We just don’t want to take any chances. We’re too close.”

Trump reiterated that pledge Tuesday morning in a tweet:

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

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