Jacob Ogles
U.S. Rep.-elect Byron Donalds issued a call to Republicans to donate to the Donald Trump reelection campaign as court challenges mount.
That comes as President Trump tweets calls to “STOP THE FRAUD!” and Rep. Matt Gaetz stokes conspiracy theories on social media.
“It is critical that we have the resources to fight back against the Left’s attempt to overthrow election integrity,” Donalds tweeted on Thursday. “Please contribute to Donald Trump’s legal fund to protect our election safeguards.”
The post linked to a fundraising page for Donald J. Trump For President.
The fundraising effort came days after Donalds officially won election to Congress. He defeated Democrat Cindy Banyai months after winning a pricey Republican primary in Florida’s 19th Congressional District. The Naples Republican will succeed retiring Rep. Francis Rooney and be sworn into the House in January.
His effort to raise money for Trump’s campaign comes as the President files court challenges regarding close races in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia. If Democrat Joe Biden wins those states he will win the Presidential election and deny Trump a second term. Michigan has already been projected for Biden while Trump’s lead has been consistently narrowing in Georgia and Pennsylvania as more votes are counted, a trend Democrats think will lead to a victory, if not in both then at least in the overall path to the White House.
Donalds’ message focused on safeguarding the Democratic process in a measured tone. That echoed fundraising emails from Pence, who called for supporters to “remain vigilant.”
“President Trump has activated the Official Election Defense Fund and we are asking our strongest supporters, like YOU, to step up and give us the resources we need to defend the Election results,” Pence wrote in a fundraising email.
But those comments notably read very different than rhetoric from the President and another Republican Congressman from Florida taking to Twitter to defend the President.
Gaetz, a Panhandle Republican, shared numerous tweets leveling insinuations of voter fraud. He shared a tweet from Trump seeming to show a Black vote tabulator tossing some votes away.
In a quote tweet of a Democratic organizer encouraging Georgia voters to cure signatures on vote-by-mail, Gaetz tweeted, “this is not what democracy looks like.”
He also shared a tweet from failed Congressional candidate Anna Paulina Luna who alleged dead people were voting in Michigan.
