Senior officials for President Trump’s reelection campaign say an impeachment push is backfiring on Democrats, pointing to a surge of new donors and anecdotal observations about rally size.
“These rallies seem to have gotten bigger,” a senior Trump campaign official told reporters Tuesday. “With this second witch hunt, this ridiculous talk of impeachment … I think it’s getting more people off the sidelines. It’s not something people outside D.C. want.”
“In the last couple weeks we picked up 50,000 new donors. Fifty thousand — I mean, that’s unheard of. And a lot of these people are not people who have given to campaigns in the past, a lot of these people are not people who have volunteered for campaigns in the past,” the official said. “If I was on the other side, I would think that would be a loud message coming from people outside D.C., everyday Americans who are tired of these witch hunts.”
A second senior Trump campaign official pointed to the Republican National Committee’s ongoing $2.3 million ad buy targeting freshman House Democrats in districts won by Trump, saying it’s a reflection of confidence in public opposition to impeachment.
Trump will speak this week at a rally in Dallas. Last week, he spoke at rallies in Louisiana, where he supported GOP governor candidates, and in Minnesota, which Hillary Clinton narrowly won in 2016. Campaign officials, speaking on a conference call, highlighted efforts to hold states Trump won in 2016 while flipping Minnesota, New Hampshire, and New Mexico.
Although the Trump campaign cited intensifying support, polls show an uptick in support for impeachment — now around 50% — after a whistleblower revealed that Trump asked Ukraine’s president to investigate Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter. The campaign did not provide statistics to support the claim about rally size, which is determined by factors such as venue size.
The Trump campaign argued Tuesday the Ukraine controversy is a continuation of Democrats unfairly persecuting Trump.
“The Democrats since the very beginning, since actually before the time where he took the oath of office, began plotting how to get rid of him,” one official said. “At first, they had the Russia hoax. Of course, that fell apart … and now they’ve moved on to this next wave of ideas for how they are going to impeach and remove the president.”
“What the Democrats are trying to do with this very partisan approach to removing a duly elected president of the United States makes a lot of people angry in the country,” the official said. “A lot of what we’re seeing in the states is organic. I think that just goes to show you how upset voters are.”
