GOP frontrunner Donald Trump says he could have raised $500 million if he chose to condone Super PACs supporting his campaign. In a Thursday interview on Breitbart News Daily on SiriusXM patriot channel 125, Trump called Super PACs a “scam” that controls candidates.
“Somehow the donor class is upset Donald Trump isn’t taking their money,” host and Breitbart News executive chairman Stephen K. Bannon said, referring to the conservative establishment’s attacks on the real estate mogul.
Trump replied someone came to his campaign office and “wanted to give me a fortune,” but Trump rebuffed him. “I don’t take it. There’s no way I can take it. You know, I don’t have the PACs and stuff. I closed — we had I think 10, or nine, or 11 — many PACs were organized, for me, by people. I mean, they just set up the PAC. But this whole thing with PACs, Steve, is a scam. It’s really a horrible thing that’s going on.”
“And they’re controlling all of the candidates, by the way,” he added.
We wrote legal letters to all of the PACs, closing them down. So other than that, we can’t take anything. Now, we take little money. You know, people send in $50, or a hundred dollars, and we take it, because if you sent it back, it would be terrible. How do you send it back with a letter ‘we don’t want your money’? These are people that write in and they send seven and a half dollars, 12 dollars, and I love that. I think it’s a great — that’s the way the system should work.
“But we closed down at least nine PACs, where we wrote letters to them,” Trump said.
Some of these people are very good people, I’m sure, that did the PACs. They did it for the right reasons. And some, I’m sure, are going to live off the PAC. But what’s happening with the candidates, is they’re totally being controlled by their SuperPACs, and their SuperPACs are — some of these things have tremendous money in them. And they’re totally controlling them.
Trump took aim at both top contender Ben Carson and establishment favorite Jeb Bush, who raised millions in Super PAC funds. “You look at Carson, his campaign in Iowa is being run by a Super PAC. It’s being run by the PAC. And it’s not supposed to be. You look at Jeb Bush, where he has an event –”
“He got a hundred million dollars,” Bannon said. “He’s got a hundred million dollar Super PAC.”
“Well, he had an event where the Super PAC is in one ballroom, and he’s in another ballroom, the one right next to it, and there’s not supposed to be any coordination,” Trump said. “We’ve got to find a better way, where people — not this way. This whole concept of a Super PAC –”
“You don’t think they have a freedom of speech right, where if they want to back Jeb — if a bunch of guys want to write checks for a hundred million dollars and back a Jeb Bush — ” Bannon began.
“Yeah, they should write them to the campaign, and I think there should be full disclosure, that they put up the money and everything else,” Trump said. “And frankly, the people should be able to spend it.”
Bannon asked if this wasn’t sour grapes on Trump’s part, where he thought he wouldn’t raise a lot of money from Super PACs so he disavowed them. “You’re absolutely, adamantly opposed to this?”
“If I wanted to, I would have had a Super PAC with $300, $400, $500 million dollars in it,” Trump said. “I would have had the biggest Super PAC ever created. I know everybody! And look, Carl Icahn just endorsed me. Carl Icahn. Everybody.”
Breitbart News previously reported that political outsiders Trump and Carson raked in millions from Americans struggling to make in an economy swamped by cheap, foreign labor:
In the same quarter, Carson raised $20.8 million, with 74 percent of donations under $200, and Trump raised $3.9 million, 72 percent of which were less than $200. The average contribution to Trump totaled only $50.46, according to his campaign, and he spent $4.2 million in the last quarter, almost breaking even.
In contrast, only seven percent of Bush’s $13.3 million campaign donations came from small donors.
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Email Katie at kmchugh@breitbart.com.
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