Over the past few years, we've become somewhat familiar with the names of Donald "Big Loser" Trump's MAGA mega-donors. There were gambling moguls like foreign government briber the late Sheldon "Smelly Shelly"Adelson and sexual harasser Steve"You Lose, I" Wynn, far-right hedge funders Robert and daughter Rebecca Mercer, the banking / investment / baseball owners Ricketts family, and so on. They've been Republican mega-donors well before the "former guy" stained politics and threatened the Constitution.
ProPublica has done a well-sourced analysis of a class of new MAGA mega-donors who have emerged recently and who have showered money on Trump's campaigns. They include a couple of Scientologists, a supermarket heiress, an oil pipeline magnate, an anti-vax couple, and the head of Marvel Entertainment. One of the most odious funders of Trump is Publix grocery chain heiress Julia Fancelli. She donated funds to support the former guy's "Stop the Steal" insurrection on January 6, which surprised her nephew:
"Wesley Barnett was just as surprised as anyone to learn from news reports that the Jan. 6 Trump rally that turned into a violent assault on the U.S. Capitol was funded by Julia Jenkins Fancelli, an heiress to the fortune of the popular Publix supermarket chain. But Barnett had extra cause for being startled: Fancelli is his aunt. [snip]
In addition to pledging $300,000 to fund the Jan. 6 rally in Washington, Julia Fancelli actually had a hotel suite reserved, according to organizers who spoke on the condition of anonymity. But in the end she did not attend, according to Caroline Wren, a Trump fundraiser involved in the planning."
It's a pity she didn't attend and get a dose of bear spray, end up with the QAnon shaman in the Capitol building, and be posted on an FBI wanted list, along with her radical right-wing son Gregory. It's a bizarre set of new converts, ranging from the plain greedy, to the niche- issue wingnuts, to the delusional. Another big donor happens to be tech oddball Palmer "Un" Luckey, the brother of the (for now) fiancé of accused child sex trafficker and midnight toker Rep. Matt "Teen Spirit" Gaetz. This paragraph says all you need to know about this creep:
"Luckey has credited Trump’s book 'The Art of the Deal' with inspiring him at age 13, according to The Wall Street Journal, and he sent Trump a letter in 2011 encouraging him to run for president. During the 2016 campaign, Luckey donated $10,000 to Nimble America, a pro-Trump group associated with misogynistic and white-supremacist online posts."
Who wants to tell him that Tony Schwartz wrote that book? The entire article is fascinating, filled with details about the new set of MAGA sedition financiers. That these wealthy monsters would be taken down a few pegs by reversing the former guy's tax giveaway is a wonderful prospect.
(photo: Shay Horse/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
