Former President Donald Trump’s first return to Washington, D.C., since leaving office last January has revived factions behind the MAGA faithful — rival groups that have spent time since his departure plotting a way back to power and who are determined to keep the others. outside
The former president will be in town Tuesday to address the America First Policy Institute, a relatively new Trump-aligned nonprofit group that this week convened countless policy lovers and MAGA loyalists for a conference of two days in the basement of a hotel. away from the Capitol building. The agenda, AFPI says, is heavy on legislative goals designed ahead of what they hope will be a Republican return to power in Washington after the midterm elections and beyond.
A source close to Trump told The Daily Beast that despite the cloud of investigations over his boss, the former commander-in-chief has been “excited” about his return to the swamp.
The conference will provide “an opportunity to present a binary contrast between America under Trump and America under Biden,” according to the source, who speaks regularly with the former president.
“People are thirsty for solutions,” this person said.
But just because the group successfully wooed Trump doesn’t mean Trumpworld has larger plans to cede authority to them.
Instead, ardent pro-Trump sources told The Daily Beast that AFPI, a nonprofit created shortly after Trump left the White House, has become an enemy of MAGAland. Those critics point to what they see as an ineffective and lackluster organization that has failed to achieve tangible victories on behalf of the former president as he tries to stake his claim as the gatekeeper to a possible second Trump administration.
And raking in tens of millions of dollars in the process.
“It’s a mile wide and an inch deep, all glitz and no substance,” a current Trump adviser, who remains in the former president’s good graces, told The Daily Beast. “They’re burning through donor money and doing nothing meaningful to advance a coherent political agenda, and everyone who’s paying attention knows it.”
“They threw out a bunch of ‘centers’ and over-hyped how little talent the organization has,” continued the Trump adviser, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “Trump’s stamp of approval is all they really have going for them.”
Similarly, former Trump administration official Peter Navarro told The Daily Beast that the Washington, D.C.-based pro-Trump group is nothing more than a “Trojan horse” that will put ” RINO” (Republicans In Name Only) employed in a second Trump administration. and encourage the “same mistake[s]” when it comes to staffing a potential second Trump term.
“People are using Trump’s good name to defeat him,” Navarro further said of the “incompetent” group of “swindlers.” “Trumpism without a Trump coup”.
That remark didn’t sit well with AFPI communications chief Marc Lotter, who fired back at Navarro when The Daily Beast caught up with him.
“It’s unfortunate to see Mr. Navarro, a former Hillary Clinton supporter, become the DC swamp creature he once loathed,” he said. In addition, Lotter told Navarro to visit AFPI’s website “for a wealth of research that builds on the accomplishments of the Trump administration, including tough stances on China and continued tariffs of President Trump in China.”
AFPI was created last spring and, with a board loaded with top Trump White House alumni, has billed itself as a sort of “White House in waiting.”
The nonprofit’s president, former Small Business Administration Director Linda McMahon, is joined by a number of former officials, including former acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf, the former acting director of the Domestic Policy Council Brooke Rollins and former economic adviser Larry Kudlow. According to Axios, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump serve as informal advisers.
Former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi and White House Special Counsel Kellyanne Conway contribute to the organization’s fundraising firepower, and there’s a lot of it.
AFPI launched with a first-year budget of $20 million, according to Axios. (Unlike other AFPI bigwigs at the conference, Conway was followed by supporters and news cameras.)
While some in Trump’s orbit are targeting the group, McMahon told guests at the private event Monday that the group’s “more than 20 political centers” portion is filled with “the patriots” and “the people in charge” who they will mark the beginning of the “America First Agenda”.
That assessment disagreed with a former White House aide.
“I don’t see much from AFPI other than cable news interviews and press releases about people they’ve hired,” the aide told The Daily Beast. “I know they’ve raised a ton of money from President Trump’s supporters, but most of it will go toward staff salaries and operating costs.”
A Trump spokesman did not return The Daily Beast’s request for comment Monday afternoon.
If the group is primarily a flashy donor trap, the first clue came early.
AFPI made its first public splash in the political arena a year ago, when it was behind Trump’s botched First Amendment lawsuit against social media companies. The organization’s leaders even spoke alongside the former president at the televised announcement event, directing supporters to a website where they could supposedly sign on as co-plaintiffs in the class action.
“We’re really looking at tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of Americans,” AFPI President Brooke Rollins said at the time.
But the site didn’t actually allow anyone to sign up for the lawsuit. Instead, he sent people to a separate fundraising page for an entity within AFPI, called the Constitutional Leadership Partnership.
And whatever contributions AFPI made to the legal effort over the next 10 months, they were not enough. A federal judge dismissed the suit in May.
Fundraising, on the other hand, is going gangbusters.
Although the public does not know who all of AFPI’s donors are, it is clear that the group has raised a lot of money. On Monday, Politico reported that it has a current operating budget of $25 million.
But thanks to Federal Election Commission documents, one source of those millions is clear: Trump himself. In June 2021, his leadership PAC gave the group $1 million, at the time the only outside gift the PAC had ever made. A few weeks later, the AFPI got behind his lawsuit on social media.
AFPI also shows a fair amount of overlap with other groups in Trump’s dark and byzantine money machine, with a focus on fundraising.
The Daily Beast reported that three AFPI officials — Bondi, former Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker and former Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell — are also on the payroll of a super PAC endorsed by Trump. Bondi alone has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for this effort.
Those same officials are also on board another nonprofit, called Make America Great Again Policies, along with Donald Trump Jr.’s fiancee, Kimberly Guilfoyle. This group, however, does not appear to be involved in any publicly known activities.
Trump’s own adviser observed that the patina of Trump’s affection for the group obscured a deep, long-standing rift.
“Trump’s stamp of approval is all they really have going for them. But in reality, with very few exceptions, the people involved are much more aligned with Jared Kushner’s vision for the country than Trump’s,” he said. say the person “That’s why Navarro has been criticizing them so openly.”
Trumpworld has long been divided by discord between two factions: the Kushner wing, more corporate and polished, and the populist camp, embodied by aides like Navarro and Steve Bannon.
The AFPI emerged as this conflict was at its height, in the months following Trump’s ignominious exit from the White House after the January 6 attack, an event that further deepened the rift between the two factions
“They’re making a play to be the epicenter of Trumpworld in D.C., so having Trump back in the capital for the first time since he left and bringing all these lawmakers together is going to be a great way to do that,” said one Trump adviser said “DC isn’t necessarily the place someone wants to vacation, but it’s a smart move to host this event there.”
Lotter dismissed other criticisms of Trumpworld, telling The Daily Beast, “President Trump shutting down this event shows his support for AFPI’s work to continue policies that put America first!”