Trump pitches Republican donors on putting him back in the White House

Former President Donald Trump spoke to wealthy GOP donors at a Republican National Committee retreat over the weekend in Tennessee, making his case for why they should buoy his campaign with cash to put him back in the Oval Office.

Speaking behind closed doors at Nashville’s Four Seasons Hotel, Mr. Trump largely ignore the 2020 election grievances that typically dominate his public speeches in exchange for a more forward-looking case, according to excerpts reported by news outlets.

He said giving him another term would make the Republican Party an “unstoppable juggernaut that will dominate American politics for generations to come” and that the “old Republican Party is gone, and it is never coming back,” according to Politico.

“Republicans were a party known for starting wars overseas, cutting Social Security and Medicare at home, and pushing mass amnesty for illegal aliens,” Mr. Trump said.

In a reversal, he leaned heavily into early voting and vote-by-mail, methods which are dominated by Democrats and were previously discouraged by Mr. Trump.

He said the GOP needs “every vote we can get, whether it’s early or late,” according to The Washington Post.

“Our goal will be one-day voting with only paper ballots. But until that day comes, the Republican Party and the RNC must compete using every lawful means to win,” Mr. Trump said.

“That means swamping the left with mail-in votes, early votes and Election Day votes. Where we can’t get rid of drop boxes, we need them in every church and veteran center. And until we can eliminate ballot harvesting, we must become masters at ballot harvesting,” he elaborated.

The former president touched on a myriad of other topics during his roughly hour-long speech, including his dominant poll numbers over expected challengers like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. He promised as president to address critical race theory, vaccine requirements, drug cartels and the war in Ukraine and he also vowed to have the Justice Department go after “Marxist prosecutors offices.”

The speech came amid Mr. Trump’s frontrunner status being called into question by some in the GOP because of his mounting legal troubles, the latest being felony charges from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

Mr. Bragg brought the charges over hush-money payments, which he says violate business-reporting and campaign-finance laws, to women before the 2016 election to stifle news of alleged extramarital affairs.

He is also facing investigations of both alleged mishandling of classified documents after leaving office and his effort to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia.

Still, Mr. Trump leads by an average of nearly 29 points among recent polls over Mr. DeSantis, who did not attend the donor retreat.