MAGA memo maps Trump strategy
A not-so-secret memo from one of the dark-money, cash-happy political action committees supporting Donald Trump confirms the central role Pennsylvania is expected to play in the election for president this November.
Make America Great Again Inc., which by law is prohibited from coordinating with the Trump campaign for president, has millions of dollars to spend on the election. It evidently intends to spend a considerable portion of its loot on Pennsylvania voters in an attempt to reverse the 2020 state election results.
Four years ago, Joe Biden carried the state with an 80,000 margin.
“MAGA Inc. decided early this year to invest heavily in Pennsylvania,” the memo states, “with the belief that winning Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral votes is the ballgame.”
MAGA Inc. chief Taylor Budowich notes that while “Team Trump is being outspent” elsewhere, Pennsylvania presents a different picture.
“MAGA has gone nearly dollar for dollar in [Pennsylvania] at $11.2 million to Team Biden’s $12.4 million over the same period,” Budowich states.
The memo mentions three themes the organization has been highlighting in television ads airing around the state – the economy, inflation and immigration. The ads are designed to showcase the differences between Trump and Biden on these issues “while undermining the perception of Biden’s honesty and mental acuity,” the memo states.
MAGA Inc. pledged in the memo to “stay in the fight on television through election day” in Pennsylvania, and to “supplement” its TV ads with mailed literature and telephone messaging to state voters.
Budowich claimed the 501(c)(4) tax-exempt organization has identified “persuadable voters” in the battleground states of Nevada and Arizona and is now “engineering an approach to reach these voters.”
Budowich added, “These audiences are built into our Pennsylvania and Georgia media plans” as well.
The memo, the existence of which was first made public by The New York Times, contains none of the hysterics normally associated with Trump and the generic MAGA movement. One likely reason is that the memo was designed to convey to Trump the array of MAGA Inc.’s plans and strategies without violating the federal law barring collaboration between itself and the Trump campaign.
The full memo quickly surfaced on the internet.
Under Internal Revenue Service rules, MAGA Inc. is classified as a “social welfare” organization.
Ballotpedia says, “A key provision of ‘social welfare’ is that the organization’s purposes must be intended to benefit a community or the public at large, not a private group,” aka, the Trump campaign.
The fact is, MAGA Inc. exists to benefit Trump’s attempts to regain the White House.
Established in 2022, its founding was orchestrated by top Trump aides, including Budowich. Last year around this time, Budowich appeared before a federal grand jury taking testimony about Trump’s retention of classified federal documents despite having left the White House.
MAGA Inc. is expected to spend $100 million on the campaign through Labor Day, according to Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan of The New York Times.
While Pennsylvania is the “ballgame,” according to the memo, Georgia is “the best gateway to the White House” for Trump, who was recently found criminally guilty by a New York jury of falsifying business records related to the 2016 campaign.
Budowich states that Trump, a convicted felon, is “well-positioned in the Sun Belt,” though that “doesn’t mean” victory there is “a certainty.”
MAGA Inc.’s advertising strategy includes “peeling off” Black and Hispanic voters from Biden while retaining white, working class voters, a key Trump constituency that Biden made moves to capture in 2020 and throughout his presidency.
Biden wants to “force multi-front battles in the fall that would be challenging for us to sustain,” according to the memo. “That’s why we find it critical to not only reinforce our gains, but to attack those states offensively and grow President Trump’s support among hard-to-reach voters.”
The memo faults Democrats for what it sees as timidity. “They are playing not to lose,” it says.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.