Rightwing mega-donors drift back to Trump as election rematch looms

Donald Trump’s efforts to court and cajole rightwing billionaires into financing his presidential campaign are bearing fruit as even sceptical conservative mega-donors face up to the prospect he will again be the Republican candidate.

Trump is winning back some donors who supported him four years ago but then gave their money to the former US president’s primary rivals this year, fearing he will again lose to Joe Biden in November or the chaos that will ensue if he wins. But some other former ultra-wealthy supporters, including the tech billionaire Peter Thiel, have spurned Trump’s advances.

Trump’s campaign is pushing the inevitability of his victory over the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, the last remaining challenger in the Republican primaries, in order to shift the focus to the general election as he pursues Wall Street and Silicon Valley money.

Trump successfully wooed the biggest donor to the Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s failed presidential campaign during a visit to Las Vegas last month, the billionaire developer Robert Bigelow. After meeting Trump and then joining his motorcade through Las Vegas to a political rally, Bigelow pledged $20m to the former president’s campaign – the same amount he gave to DeSantis – along with another $1m toward the mounting costs of his myriad legal problems.

Trump also won commitments from other well-heeled donors on the Las Vegas trip while the billionaire investor John Paulson held a dinner for the former president and major Republican party contributors earlier this month, according to Politico.

Two years ago, some mega-donors were backing away from Trump after the Republicans fell short of expectations in the midterm congressional elections and candidates backed by