“You’re on my mind.”
“Do you need a hug?”
“I love you.”
“They want to sentence me to death!”
No, these aren’t increasingly desperate attempts at romance (albeit with a terrifying swerve at the end) from someone you met on a dating app.
They are fundraising emails from Donald Trump.
“It’s like a reading multiple-personality battery test. I’m not sure exactly what they’re aiming for,” said Democratic strategist Tim Lim.
But for the Trump campaign, the answer is clear: “a personal feel.”
“The Trump campaign cares about supporters and every single American. President Trump’s supporters appreciate messages that have a personal feel, in addition to messages highlighting Crooked Joe Biden’s record of failure and weakness,” said Caroline Sunshine, the Trump campaign’s deputy communications director.
Politicians (and scammers) have long leaned on emotional appeals to get people to part with their money. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee became the scourge of donors’ inboxes with frequent, dire fundraising emails like, “URGENT” and “We’re on the verge of the Dem-pocalypse,” beseeching loyal Democrats to give money before it was too late.
Then-President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign helped bring the country to this point when it realized the effectiveness of casual subject lines that sounded like they were coming from a friend. Things like “Hey” and “I don’t usually email” raked in big bucks.
But if Obama was your laid-back pal up for grabbing a cup of coffee, Trump’s vibe veers from intimacy to fear and back again.
“You are the reason I wake up every morning. I love you to the moon and back, and I really mean that,” read a Trump email on May 3.
“PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE tell me you love me too!” read another from April 26.
And for people who want some legal drama, there was this one from May 3: “I’m in court right now. I only have a few minutes left for my lunch break and I’m using it to speak with you.”
President Joe Biden’s campaign is a little more business in its fundraising appeals. The flirtiest it gets is: “Join President Biden, President Obama, and me — from home!” and “I have a lot of respect for you,” although one titled “I need you with me” started to veer into Trump territory.
This is a desperate moment for online political fundraising, which both parties have come to rely on in recent years. Post-pandemic, online fundraising returns are no longer growing at the same exponential pace. In fact, they are shrinking for many candidates and groups: The news outlet NOTUS reported that small-dollar donations to both parties’ House and Senate campaign committees were lower in the first three months of 2024 than in the same period in 2022 or 2020, illustrating a shift other groups are experiencing as well.
Lim said that such “rapid change in tone and delivery from one email to the next” doesn’t seem like it would be “tremendously effective” at raising money.
“My guess is that most of his online fundraising is dictated by events that are happening outside of the campaign,” he added.
Not all Trump fundraising emails are so light. There are darker ones on his legal troubles — “Where should I ship my mugshot?” — and his grievances with Democrats — “Put Biden on trial” — that often reflect some of his more extreme campaign rhetoric.
In recent days, they have become even darker.
Trump’s trials have been a huge driver of his 2024 fundraising, spiking around his 2023 indictments and arraignments and then driving tens of millions of dollars into his campaign after he was found guilty in his New York hush money trial last month.
Since that New York jury found him guilty on all 34 felony counts, Trump has continued with emails along those lines:
“I am a Political Prisoner.”
“I was just convicted in a rigged trial!”
“Darkest day in American history!”
This week, the Trump campaign sent an email with the subject line “Haul out the guillotine!” The email revived a grievance from six years ago against comedian Kathy Griffin, who faced widespread blowback after she posted a video clip showing her holding a fake decapitated head made to look like Trump’s. The email also claimed that the clip by Griffin was “the Sick Dream of every Trump-Deranged lunatic out there.”
The return to an old grievance mirrors what’s happening in Trump’s public appearances, where he has been increasingly focused on retribution since the verdict.
In another recent fundraising email, Trump used the subject line: “1 month until all hell breaks loose,” referring to his upcoming sentencing on July 11.
But even as he awaits that key date, he has occasionally slipped back into his old fundraising form. On June 4, his campaign sent an email with the subject line “Want to take a trip together?”
“Just the two of us,” read the email. “We’ll talk about my rigged conviction, we’ll have an amazing dinner, and at the end of it all we’ll take a picture so we can remember this day FOREVER!”
