Rollins is joining an increasingly long list of former White House officials who have formed Trump’s allied political groups since the 2020 election, a list that includes prominent figures in the orbit of the former president, such as the former manager of Trump campaign, Brad Parscale and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson. With Trump out of office and planning his political future, the emerging ecosystem promises to support the former president as he prepares to dive into the 2022 midterm elections – and potentially launch a 2024 return offer.
Former advisers are capitalizing on widespread donor interest in financing projects aligned with the former president, with pro-Trump donors ready to shell out big checks to keep Trump’s agenda up front and in the center. Now that the presidential campaign is no longer consuming donors, who can donate unlimited amounts to non-profit organizations or super PACs, a space has emerged for former Trump advisers to finance their own ventures.
“I think the investors out there,” said Rollins, are “very, very excited” about the idea of a vehicle that defends Trump’s policies. “For the people who are funding us,” she added, “they understand, they have the vision, they understand what is at stake.”
Parscale’s new vehicle, the American Greatness Fund, is not explicitly pro-Trump, but its central themes are unequivocally aligned with the former president. The group’s mission statement describes it as a “non-profit social welfare organization dedicated to retaining, cultivating and inspiring the basic energy of the ‘Make America Great Again’ movement.” The organization, he adds, will focus on voter integrity issues, creating a website that will catalog the legal and legislative efforts surrounding the elections and tackle what it describes as “canceling culture against conservatives”.
Parscale was fired as Trump’s campaign manager in July 2020, but has since returned to the former president’s orbit and is helping to manage his post-White House political efforts. Parscale said the American Greatness Fund, whose existence was first reported by Axios, has so far raised $ 300,000.
Corey Lewandowski, another former Trump campaign manager, created Fight Back Now America, a political action committee that, according to its website, is dedicated to “supporting candidates and policies that seek to advance America’s Agenda First ”.
The organization is expected to be heavily involved in the 2022 Republican primaries, targeting those who supported Trump’s impeachment, such as Congresswoman Wyoming Liz Cheney, while also focusing on expelling Democrats in the general election. Lewandowski was chosen separately to oversee the main pro-Trump super PAC, although it is unclear how this equipment will interact with Fight Back Now America.
Carson said in an interview that his American Cornerstone Institute is a conservative think tank that will emphasize electoral integrity, one of the former president’s fixations. Carson also created a PAC, Think BIG America, which can get involved in elections and distribute funds to favored candidates.
“We will be very interested,” said Carson, “in who are the people who hold views that are logical and that make sense.”
Russ Vought, who was the director of Trump’s Office of Management and Budget, founded the Center for American Restoration, a study center that espouses Trump’s populist message. Vought criticized the political establishment in a recent article published on The Federalist, a conservative website, and said his organization aims to “give voice to ordinary and forgotten men and women across this great country.”
Vought, a Heritage Action veteran, a prominent conservative advocacy group, has, among other issues, focused on conservative censorship on online platforms, a cause that Trump took on after he was banned by Twitter.
Whether Trump assists any of the organizations remains unclear. The former president has focused on establishing his own political apparatus and, during a meeting last week with his top advisers, signaled that he wanted to establish a super PAC run by Lewandowski, which would be able to raise and spend unlimited amounts of money.
Trump previously set up a leadership PAC, Save America, which could contribute directly to candidates, but has restrictions on the amounts individual donors can contribute. During an appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference over the weekend, he asked supporters to donate to Save America, which has already raised tens of millions of dollars.
Republicans have expressed an interest in building a constellation of new conservative, nonprofit groups, believing that Democrats have established a critical advantage in this space in recent years. Although nonprofits are somewhat limited in their ability to spend money in elections, they can raise unrestricted amounts of money and spend large sums to influence voters. Unlike super PACs, they do not have to disclose their donors.
Republicans point to Fair Fight, a collection of political and nonprofit organizations overseen by Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams, who devote themselves to voting rights, as a particularly effective vehicle. Abrams received credit for helping Democrats make gains in Georgia during the election, when President Joe Biden won the state and the party won both seats in the Senate.
Rollins said he attracted officials from the White House, the Trump campaign and the Capitol. She added that the organization, which is also led by former Trump adviser Larry Kudlow, will focus on a number of political issues that have been central to Trump’s White House, including school choice, energy independence and immigration reform.
We are “taking all the ideas we have built over the past four years and building on them,” said Rollins, who before joining the White House oversaw the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative Austin-based think tank.
Too many organizations aligned with Trump can create complications. Some senior Republicans have expressed concern that there may be competition for donors, who may be confused about which unit to support. They say that the main contributors are waiting for the former president’s political apparatus to be fully formed and are waiting for his guidance on where they should direct their funds.
Carson dismissed the idea that there would be conflict between the different groups and noted that his organization had maintained contact with Vought’s. The two organizations are located close to each other on Capitol Hill.
“From my point of view, we are fighting for the same things,” said Carson. “We need as many people in this fight as we can.”