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Robert and Rebekah Mercer bail on Trump campaign — they spent $49 million in 2016
Father-and-daughter team who funded Steve Bannon and Breitbart are reportedly unhappy with Trump, scaling back
President Trump’s biggest backers have “drastically” cut their political contributions and are not expected to play a big role in the 2020 election, Vanity Fair reports.
Billionaire hedge fund manager Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah, who previously funded Steve Bannon, Breitbart News and Cambridge Analytica, spent $15.5 million in 2016 to help Trump win but have soured on his administration since, according to Vanity Fair’s Gabe Sherman.
Six sources told Sherman that the Mercers have already slashed their political donations in “recent months” and are not expected to play a “significant role” in 2020.
“They think that the administration could do so much more. They’ve been very vocal about that to the president,” one of the sources explained.
A former White House official told the outlet that it feels “like they’ve disappeared.”
“Crickets. They’re gone,” a prominent Republican strategist told Sherman.
The Mercers’ disappearance could spell trouble for Trump and Republican candidates on the ballot in the next election. The Mercers spent $49 million on political activities in 2016, according to the Washington Post. Along with donating $15.5 million to various groups to help Trump’s campaign, the family donated another $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund, provided $10 million in funding to alt-right-adjacent Breitbart News and spent millions more on Cambridge Analytica, the controversial data firm that harvested data on tens of millions of Facebook users without their consent or knowledge.
Publicly available data shows that the Mercers have already pulled back.
https://www.salon.com/2019/06/18/robert-and-rebekah-mercer-bail-on-trump-campaign-they-spent-49-million-in-2016/