'Pushing politics to the extreme right': Billionaire Mercer family considers backing Trump — again

22 November 2023

The Lincoln Project's Rick Wilson, a former GOP strategist and Never Trump conservative who is supporting Democratic President Joe Biden in the 2024 election, is extremely skeptical over talk of Republicans "moving on from Donald Trump." The Republican Party, Wilson has predicted, will ultimately "bend the knee" to Trump.

To be sure, Trump remains the clear frontrunner in the 2024 GOP presidential primary and leads the second-place candidate, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, by 53 percent in a Morning Consult poll released on November 21. And Trump has a 51 percent lead over DeSantis in a Messenger/HarrisX poll that came out a day earlier.

Billionaire Republican donor Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah Mercer donated millions to Trump in 2016 and later distanced themselves from him. According to CNBC reporter Brian Schwartz, they are considering supporting Trump's 2024 campaign but haven't made a commitment yet.

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"As they weigh their options on whether to get involved with helping Trump again," Schwartz reports in an article published on November 21, the Mercer family has a practically unparalleled private war chest ready to be deployed. The Mercers came into the pivotal 2024 presidential election cycle with just more than $88 million stashed away in their private nonprofit, the Mercer Family Foundation."

Shanna Ports, senior legal counsel for the Campaign Legal Center, told CNBC that "the Mercer Family Foundation, with over $88 million at its disposal, could have an outsized impact on the 2024 election."

Similarly, Brendan Fischer of the political watchdog group Documented, told CNBC, "The Mercer Family Foundation is sitting on a huge endowment that can — and likely will — be directed towards pushing politics and policy to the extreme right."

Read CNBC's full report at this link.

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