President Trump has embraced the big-money donor world he once shunned

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Even as President Donald Trump holds court in large arenas filled with thousands of cheering supporters, he also has been giving rich financiers and business executives up-close access, helping cultivate the kind of big-money outfit he once derided. The effort is intended to boost his favored candidates in 2018’s midterms — and to bolster his own reelection prospects. The money is flowing to America First, an independent operation stocked with former Trump aides that aims to scoop up $100 million through two entities, with the bulk of the funds so far flowing to a nonprofit arm that is not required to disclose the names of its donors. “He understands the nature of the political landscape today,” Sean Spicer, former White House spokesman and senior adviser to America First Action, the super PAC, said of President Trump. “You can’t unilaterally disarm if the other side is going to utilize super PACs.” 

America First is drawing a fan club of supporters in the orbits of cable news punditry, social media and former Trump aides and surrogates — united by their adoration of the president and affinity for expressing it on Instagram. “We don’t have a political director or a policy director. We don’t need one. We’re for everything the president is for, and we’re against everything the president is not,” said Roy W. Bailey, finance chairman of the super PAC.


President Trump has embraced the big-money donor world he once shunned