Judd Legum Profile picture
Apr 17 8 tweets 3 min read Read on X
1. Who chooses to spend $800,000+ to help Trump become the next president?

We got a peak this week when a new joint fundraising committee, Trump 47, filed its first FEC report

The filing revealed 20 people have donated $800,000 or more

Follow along for the gory details

🧵
2. Jose "Pepe" Fanjul ($814,600)

✅ Controls sugar empire, an industry that receives billions in annual subsidies from the US gov't

✅ In 2022, Dominican Republic subsidiary banned from importing goods to the US after CBP found evidence of "the use of forced labor"

✅ Employed white nationalist as an "executive assistant"Image
3. Steve Wynn ($806,300)

✅ Billionaire casino mogul

✅ Forced to resign following @WSJ report that, for decades, he pressured employees into performing sex acts

✅ Sued by Justice Dept in 2022 for lobbying Trump on behalf of the Chinese gov't without registering as a foreign agentImage
4. Geoffrey Palmer ($814,600)

✅ Real estate tycoon

✅ Calls efforts to increase affordable housing "immoral" and "not American.”

✅ Sued LA to stop eviction moratorium at height of pandemic

✅ Accused in class-action lawsuit of illegally withholding security deposits (settled for 12.5 million)Image
@WSJ 5. More profiles to come in this thread.

But if you appreciate this info, please subscribe to my newsletter Popular Information.

Engaging on Twitter helps Elon Musk. But the newsletter enables me to do this work.

And it's free to sign up.

popular.info/subscribe
6. Woody and Suzanne Johnson: $1,612,600

✅Heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune

✅ Engaged in $300 million tax avoidance scheme

✅ As Trump's ambassador to the UK, pressured the gov't to move the British Open to a Trump golf course

✅ According to Inspector General made "inappropriate comments on race, religion or gender" to embassy staffImage
7. Robert Bigelow ($824,600)

✅ Owner of Budget Suites of America

✅ Believes that there are aliens on earth right now

✅ During the pandemic, filed 144 evictions, ignoring the eviction moratorium

✅ In April 2023 called the prospect of Trump winning the nomination a "travesty"Image
8. More profiles of Trump's biggest donors in today's newsletter:

popular.info/p/meet-the-peo…

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More from @JuddLegum

Aug 1
1. A central argument of Trump's campaign is that there is a violent crime wave fueled by undocumented immigrants

The DATA shows the opposite is true. Violent crime is plummeting.

So Trump fills his stump speech with anecdotes of crimes committed by migrants, pinning the blame on Biden and Harris.

Trump claims if he wins in November, those crimes will stop.

But there were similar crimes committed during Trump's presidency.

Trump blamed Democrats.

🧵
2. "Our crime rate is going up while crime statistics all over the world are plunging," Trump told the crowd at the Turning Point Action Conference last week in West Palm Beach, Florida. "We have a new form of crime. It's called migrant crime."

popular.info/p/the-truth-ab…
3. The crime rate in the United States is not "going up" — it is sharply declining. Violent crime has declined or remained flat every year of the Biden administration. The last time violent crime increased on an annual basis was 2020, when homicides spiked during the last year of Trump's presidency.
Read 6 tweets
Jul 31
1. Robby Starbuck has convinced major corporations to cancel programs supporting LGBTQ employees & customers

He is also a CONSPIRACY THEORIST and ANTI-LGTBQ EXTREMIST

Starbuck has suggested, for example, that CHEMICALS IN TAP WATER ARE TURNING KIDS "GAY"

Follow along for details

🧵
2. Starbuck first targeted @TractorSupply, complaining that the company displayed “Pride month decorations in the office,” funds Pride events, and engages in “DEI hiring practices.”

popular.info/p/meet-the-con…
3. Starbuck claims that “[e]vents built around the kind of sex people like to have should not have kids at them and should not be funded with the money we spend at Tractor Supply."

The idea that, in 2024, a Pride parade is a subversive event that requires discussing the “kind of sex you like” is a fringe belief.

But Starbuck has a history of embracing fringe conspiracy theories.
Read 15 tweets
Jul 30
1. The cypto industry is spending an absolutely INSANE amount of money on the 2024 election

Its main Super PAC, Fairshake, has raised $202 MILLION this cycle

That's more than the primary Super PACs supporting Trump or Harris

The strategy appears to be working

🧵 Image
2. At the Bitcoin Conference on Friday, Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) said is introducing legislation to create "a strategic Bitcoin reserve."

It would require the federal government to purchase 1 million Bitcoin for $68 billion

popular.info/p/how-the-cryp…
3. According to Lummis, her plan to purchase Bitcoin would "cut our debt in half by 2045."

Even if the federal debt did not grow at all in the next 20 years, the price of Bitcoin would need to increase by 250 times to halve the current debt of $34 trillion.

In other words, the price of one Bitcoin would have to increase from $68,000 to $17,000,000.
Read 11 tweets
Jul 29
1. Are J.D. Vance's views on women and children "weird"

Follow this thread for an overview

Then decide

🧵
2. Yes, Vance said Harris and other leaders who don't have children are "childless cat ladies" who "don't really have a direct stake" in the country. (Harris has two step-children)

A few months later, Vance said that Harris and others who don't have kids "want to take our kids and brainwash them so that their ideas continue to exist in the next generation."Image
3. In a 2021 speech, Vance suggested that anyone without children should be excluded from leadership positions.

“Why is this just a normal fact of …  life, for the leaders of our country to be people who don’t have a personal and direct stake in it via their own offspring?”
Read 16 tweets
Jul 24
1. Arkansas has the LOWEST voter registration rate in the country, just 63%

Now, Republicans in the state are pushing a new rule to make it MORE DIFFICULT TO REGISTER TO VOTE

The move would thwart the efforts of a grassroots group that has successfully registered hundred of young voters

🧵Image
2. @GetLoudArkansas successfully registered hundreds of people -- most young and Black -- using an online form with an electronic signature.

They were told by Secretary of State John Thurston, a Republican, that electronic signatures were acceptable

popular.info/p/arkansas-has…
3. Then, on February 26, the Arkansas Times-Democrat reported that Get Loud had successfully registered 358 people to vote across the state.

Following the publication of the article, Thurston flipped on his decision to accept electronic signatures and advised county clerks like the one in Camden County to refuse to accept any registrations that didn’t come with a physical, “wet” signature.

Thurston did not inform @GetLoudArkansasImage
Read 8 tweets
Jul 23
1. Eugene Ramirez, the lead anchor of @WeAreSinclair's national evening news broadcast, resigned this year over concerns about the accuracy and right-wing bias of the content he was required to present on air, three sources told Popular Information.

Follow along for details

🧵 Image
2. The sources, one current and two former Sinclair employees, said one of the primary issues that prompted Ramirez's resignation was the mandate to include 3 stories produced by Sinclair's Rapid Response Team each night.

One current Sinclair employee described the RRT as "the right-wing propaganda arm of the national digital operation."
3. Through July 4, 2024, the RRT has produced 147 stories this year that portray Democrats in a negative light and just 7 stories that portray Democrats positively.

Over the same time period, the RRT has produced 57 stories that portray Republicans positively and 22 that portray Republicans negatively.Image
Read 13 tweets

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