A top Washington lobbyist who previously called Donald Trump “a joke,” now plans to host a series of fundraisers for the Republican presidential front-runner.
Jack Burkman of J.M. Burkman and Associates will host government relations professionals and other lobbyists in the D.C. suburb of Arlington, Va. on June 10 to discuss his plan to raise $200 million over the next six months for the leading GOP candidate to use should he make it to the general election.
“We’re not soliciting money yet,” Burkman told the Washington Examiner on Monday. The talk radio host noted, however, that he and several individuals will soon begin planning “a variety of fundraisers” for the New York billionaire.
Asked whether he could name others who plan to attend the June 10 meeting, Burkman said “there will be many,” but he would “have to check on names and things.”
Burkman’s effort to fundraise for the New York billionaire comes seven months after the D.C. lobbyist took out a full-page ad in the Los Angeles Daily News criticizing Trump and the other Republican presidential hopefuls at the time for not taking a firm stance against same-sex marriage.
“Donald Trump: You have no moral compass. You’ve been pro-choice, pro-life, pro-choice and now pro-life again,” Burkman wrote in the ad. “You’d believe anything that would get you elected. You’re a joke.”
“I was a Jeb Bush guy when this started,” he explained. “But then I really saw the way [Trump] performed and he seemed like the only leader on the stage.”
“I became very convinced after his first GOP debate with [Fox News’] Megyn Kelly that he is really the only person capable of leading the GOP,” Burkman said.
Burkman’s decision to assemble a group of lobbyists, who Trump frequently rails against on the campaign trail, comes as the billionaire inches closer to becoming the Republican nominee. In a recent memo, the Trump campaign revealed its plan to get Trump to 1,400 delegates on the first ballot of the national convention – well over the 1,237 needed to secure the nomination.
If the Trump campaign pulls it off, and the businessman finds himself competing against likely Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, he will need “billions of dollars,” Burkman said.
He added, “Trump has either got to spend his own or raise it. So regardless of what he’s said [about lobbyists], he’s going to need it.”
Burkman told the Examiner he’s spoken directly to Trump about his plan to form a coalition of pro-Trump lobbyists and defense contractors, but a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign called that “categorically false.”
“We don’t know this person, we were not aware of the event and have no association whatsoever,” Hope Hicks wrote in an email to the Examiner, prompting Burkman to respond that his efforts are “not something probably that [Trump] would promote.”
“But it’s something that’s happening,” he said.
