Hugh Dougherty
·4 min read
Donald Trump ordered one of his closest aides to bombard a billionaire Republican backer with abusive texts accusing her of employing his Republican rivals, a new report has revealed.
The angry former president targeted Miriam Adelson, one of the Republican Party’s wealthiest backers, over claims that her $100m “Preserve America” PAC was being run by “RINOs”—Republicans In Name Only, The New York Times reported.
The messages said that her late husband Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire casino boss who was a major Republican and Trump donor, would not have allowed such aides to be involved in his operations. Trump was close to both Adelsons for many years and gave Miriam the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2018.
The texts were sent by Natalie Harp, the Trump aide known as “the human printer” for providing him with reams of print-outs during his criminal trial in state court in New York, which ended with his conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
Adelson, who with her family has a net worth currently calculated by Forbes as $27.5 billion had re-activated the Preserve America PAC after Nikki Haley dropped out of the presidential race and had already started spending large sums on pro-Trump ads in key swing states. The PAC is expected to spend as much as $100m in the run-up to the election, Politico reported in May. The value of Adelson’s personal contributions were unclear, although she was reported by Politico to be planning to spend as much as $90m for the PAC and wider Republican causes.
But New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan reported Saturday that an increasingly agitated Trump had turned on Adelson’s PAC and directed Harp to send the texts. Preserve America is run by Dave Carney, a long-term GOP operative who has previously worked for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
The messages were sent just a week after Adelson and Trump had had a “friendly” meeting at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, and as the PAC spent $18m in a blitz of TV ads. One of the ads claimed Kamala Harris, freshly announced as the Democratic candidate, “overwhelmed hospitals” with “illegal immigrants.”
But those around Trump fear that the key development since the RNC—Pres. Joe Biden stepping aside to make way for Vice Pres. Kamala Harris at the top of the Democratic ticket—has made Trump so angry that he “is susceptible” to manipulation by those around him.
In the case of the texts to Adelson, The Times reported that Adelson’s aides had “discovered” that Ike Perlmutter, the former Marvel Entertainment boss and a Mar-a-Lago member who is a longtime friend of Trump, had encouraged the text, appaparently because he wanted Adelson to contribute to a different super PAC. Perlmutter, 81, was also involved in the failed bid by another billionaire octogenarian Trump associate, Nelson Peltz, 82, to force Bob Iger out as CEO of Disney.
Perlmutter’s attorney did not respond to The Times and Adelson’s spokesperson declined to comment to The Times. The Daily Beast has also contacted them for comment.
The alleged rift with Adelson comes at a time of public and private vulnerability for Trump. The same Times report said he is calling Harris a “b---h” in private although his spokesman, Steven Cheung, denied he was using such language.
In public he has lashed out at being called “weird” by Democrats, claimed that he has bigger crowds than Harris and that the Jan 6. 2021 crowd which went on to invade the Capitol was bigger than the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had for his “I Have A Dream” speech.
Adelson took control of her late husband Sheldon’s business ventures and his political operations after his death and appeared to have opened up the cash spigot to Trump in June. She is a dual Israeli-American citizen who has also donated heavily to pro-Israel causes. Part of her previous closeness to Trump had been based on his decision to move the American embassy to Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The Adelsons bought the ambassador’s residence outside Tel Aviv which was seen as making it more difficult for a future administration to overturn the embassy move, although the Biden administration did not make any such move.
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