Joe Biden appears to have pulled a fast one on the Trump reelection campaign with his fundraising event Tuesday evening with former President Barack Obama.
The Trump team quickly took to mocking Biden after the vice president said he raised a “remarkable” $7.6 million in the virtual fundraiser, noting that the Republican cause hauled in $10 million over the weekend of President Trump’s rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
“The fact that he touted this fundraising event so grandly, and then hid it from view, is just more proof that Joe Biden can’t withstand the scrutiny of the American people as he runs for president,” Tim Murtaugh, Trump 2020 communications director, said in a triumphant press release, referring to reports of limited press access.
But Biden’s campaign later revised that figure, saying the fundraiser pulled in $11 million in total.
“By far the most lucrative fundraising event for Biden this cycle (by more than $5 million),” tweeted John Verhovek, a political reporter for ABC News.
Andrew Clark, a spokesman for the Trump campaign, insisted the Biden camp was outraised.
“The Biden campaign added a $4 million amendment to their initial number after the number the Trump campaign released was higher than theirs. Sad!” he said in a tweet. “Biden campaign was out-raised, and unless they’re going to magically invent another 11,880,000 people, they were out-watched.”
Still, the Biden team’s maneuver was not lost on the press corp.
“Updated fundraising total: Obama and Biden’s reunion tonight raised more than $11 million, including $7.6m from 175,000 grassroots donors. Trump campaign had tried to dunk on Biden camp, touting the $10m it raised over the weekend around the Tulsa rally,” tweeted Bloomberg News’s Jennifer Epstein.
“Well this is awkward,” said ABC News’s Will Steakin.
well this is awkward https://t.co/gQGr0LE2H3 pic.twitter.com/bWepR6MJgP
— Will Steakin (@wsteaks) June 23, 2020
“The Biden campaign appears to have gamed the Trump campaign by releasing an early fundraising number for the Obama event today, getting the Trump campaign to claim Trump ‘eclipsed’ Obama on recent fundraising, and then releasing a full and bigger number for Obama’s,” said the Atlantic‘s Edward-Isaac Dovere. “It’s a very common trick in all kinds of fundraising not to release the final numbers before the very end, and to say they’re low, in the hopes of goading people to give more. The psychology usually works on donors, but in a campaign, it can be deployed for political purposes.”
Biden campaign officials seized on these tweets.
“Welcome to the NFL, @parscale,” tweeted national press secretary TJ Ducklo, tagging Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale.
Welcome to the NFL, @parscale. https://t.co/hYQnz5c9Oh
— TJ Ducklo (@TDucklo) June 24, 2020
https://t.co/ycYpK854XY pic.twitter.com/3c3V5MtFW7
— Kate Bedingfield (@KBeds) June 24, 2020
It was yet another spot of bad press for the Trump campaign, which this past weekend vastly overestimated the number of people who would attend the president’s first in-person campaign event since the coronavirus pandemic led to widespread shutdowns across the country.
The Tulsa Fire Department said there were approximately 6,200 people Saturday evening in the BOK Center in Tulsa, which is about one-third of the arena’s capacity. That was a far cry from the more than 1 million people Trump and his campaign boasted had signed up to attend. The campaign even canceled events that were planned outside for an overflow crowd that never materialized.
“We expect to have a record-setting crowd. We’ve never had an empty seat, and we certainly won’t in Oklahoma,” Trump said before the event.
TikTok users and fans of K-pop music groups claimed they pulled a prank on the campaign by making hundreds of thousands of fake requests, but the Trump campaign blamed the coronavirus, the media, and protesters as the driving forces behind the lower-than-expected attendance.
“The fact is that a week’s worth of the fake news media warning people away from the rally because of COVID and protesters, coupled with recent images of American cities on fire, had a real impact on people bringing their families and children to the rally,” Parscale said in a statement on Sunday.
Instead, the Trump team has focused on touting virtual viewership, claiming nearly 20 million people tuned into the rally.
Biden’s first appearance, albeit a virtual one, with his former boss attracted 175,000 small donors. Of those, 65,000 were new, and 10,000 signed up to volunteer for the campaign, according to NBC News’s Marianna Sotomayor. During the event, Obama implored Democrats not to be “smug” about Trump.
Biden leads Trump in national polling, and poling guru Nate Silver even predicted that there could be a “landslide” victory for the former vice president come November.
