Donald Trump to visit New Orleans on Monday to raise cash for his presidential campaign – NOLA.com
Former President Donald Trump visits Café du Monde in New Orleans, Tuesday, July 25, 2023. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert) ORG XMIT: LAGH325
Former President Donald Trump visits Café du Monde in New Orleans, Tuesday, July 25, 2023. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert) ORG XMIT: LAGH325
Former President Donald Trump is scheduled to visit New Orleans on Monday for a fundraiser, less than a month after he was convicted on 34 felony charges in a New York courtroom.
The first criminal conviction of a U.S. president seems to have only cleaved supporters to him even closer.
Business owner Boysie Bollinger, who is hosting Trump at his Uptown New Orleans home, said organizers were originally hoping to raise $2 million but now believe they’ll collect $5 million.
“The obvious abuse by the (legal) system has got people upset,” Bollinger said. “It’s empowered people and made them feel stronger about him having a viable chance to run a good race.”
U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise, whose district includes the slice around Tulane University that includes Bollinger’s home, will be the special guest at the event.
“The stakes have never been higher,” said Scalise, the number two Republican in the U.S. House. “The Democratic Party has moved so far to the left under Biden that Barack Obama looks like a moderate.”
Trump’s visit takes place only three days before he and President Joe Biden engage in the first televised debate of the 2024 campaign. Tens of millions of people are expected to watch the 90-minute telecast on CNN.
Trump’s visit also takes place several days after porn star Stormy Daniels, a Baton Rouge native, appeared on consecutive nights at a downtown New Orleans club.
Telling stories and cracking jokes, Daniels recounted how she testified in New York that she had a one-night stand with Trump in 2006 while he was married. (Trump has denied that they had a sexual encounter.) Her testimony helped cause a jury to convict Trump of falsifying business records to hide $130,000 payments to her in the closing days of the 2016 presidential election.
Trump is facing another 54 additional criminal charges in three additional trials, although those cases have been delayed until next year and likely won’t happen if Trump wins his rematch against President Biden. A portion of the money he is raising goes to legal fees for him and his political allies that have totaled $80 million over the past two years.
The legal problems would have sunk any other Republican candidate, history shows, but Trump appears to hold a narrow lead in the battleground states that will decide the winner in the Electoral College.
Donors have given so much money to Trump and the Republican National Committee since his May 30 conviction that Trump has erased Biden’s fundraising lead, according to the latest Federal Election Commission reports, in what will be the most expensive presidential race in history.
The court ruling “is one of the greatest things they’ve done to promote the Republican Party and a Donald Trump victory on Nov. 5,” said Derek Babcock, chair of the Louisiana Republican Party. “People aren’t stupid. They know it was a kangaroo court, rigged from the beginning. They’ve never been more galvanized.”
One thing Trump is not doing in Louisiana is stumping for votes. He carried Louisiana with nearly 60% of the vote in 2016 and 2020 and is expected to receive about the same vote this year. Democrats are mounting no visible campaign for Biden in the state.
Trump continues to claim that he won the 2020 presidential election despite the mountain of evidence that Biden defeated him.
Trump has been attacking Biden for the surge of immigration into the United States and has promised to renew tax cuts passed in 2017 and due to expire next year that favor wealthy people and corporations.
Trump has also been attacking Biden for the jump in inflation that has now mostly subsided.
On Saturday, Trump spoke to the Faith & Freedom Coalition, billed as the largest public policy gathering of Christian activists. Trump has attained hero status among the religious right for appointing three conservative Supreme Court justices – including Amy Coney Barrett from Metairie – who helped ban abortion except in states where it is legal.
The Biden campaign is aggressively painting Trump as a threat to democracy, more self-obsessed, more volatile and more extreme than before.
Trump last visited New Orleans in July for a fundraiser at the Metairie home of Joe Canizaro, a developer and banker.
Canizaro and Bollinger have headed Trump’s money-raising efforts in 2016, 2020 and in the current campaign.
Bollinger is a former shipbuilder who owns a marijuana growing and distribution company. He’s also a major philanthropist.
If scenes from last year’s event are repeated, Gov. Jeff Landry will meet Trump at the airport along with a boisterous group of supporters, and a noisy crowd of demonstrators will protest nearby Bollinger’s home. Trump also made a quick stop at Cafe du Monde where he ordered a bag of beignets but then almost left them behind.
According to this year’s invitation, donors who give $3,300 will get to attend the reception with Trump in Bollinger’s backyard.
For $25,000, they also get to have a photo taken with the 45th president. For $100,000, they get to also attend a roundtable with Trump.
Asked whether events like these give undue influence for large donors, Bollinger said Trump is only doing what Biden does.
“Biden raised $35 million last week in Hollywood,” Bollinger said. “The political game is about money. It takes a lot of money to run elections.”
Email Tyler Bridges at tbridges@theadvocate.com.
Former president Donald Trump is set to hold a campaign fundraiser at the home of a prominent Republican donor Monday evening, which means the…
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