GOP fundraisers say Trump's tweets make big bucks

(Image credit: SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)

President Trump has long lauded his own tweeting habits as an important way to spread his views directly to the public. "When somebody says something about me, I am able to go 'bing, bing, bing' and I take care of it," he said of Twitter in an October interview, suggesting that those who don't want him tweeting "are the enemies," and that he would not be in the Oval Office were it not for his Twitter account.

Republican fundraisers like the tweets, too, Andrew Malcolm at McClatchy reports, finding them a lucrative outreach tool for the GOP base:

Surprisingly, President Trump's often argumentative, abrasive tweets that bother so many, especially in the GOP establishment, have actually proven to be quite effective fundraising tools. Recited by fundraisers, the tweets are well-received by supporters as candid insights into the unorthodox president's thinking. And they've fueled an historic flow of donations into the Republican National Committee. [McClatchy]

How effective are the tweets? Well, since Trump took office, the GOP has raised $113.2 million, the bulk of it from small-dollar donors giving $200 or less per donation, and much of it from first-time contributors. The Republican National Committee closed the third quarter of 2017 with $44 million on hand to the Democratic National Committee's $7 million.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.