Republican donations surge despite corporate boycott

Right after the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, dozens of U.S. companies from AT&T to Amazon announced they would halt political donations to 147 Republican lawmakers who voted to overturn Donald Trump’s presidential election loss.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: "Over the past several weeks we have amassed overwhelming evidence about a fake election."

But two months later, there is little sign that the corporate revolt has done any real damage to Republican fundraising. If anything, it seems to have produced the opposite effect.

SEN. JOSH HAWLEY: "Millions of Americans concerned about our election integrity."

Some of the biggest backers of Trump’s false election-fraud narrative like Missouri Senator Josh Hawley and Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene have been rewarded with a flood of grassroots donations.

Hawley took in $969,000 in donations in January, according to a Feb. 1 memo posted on his website, which is eight times what Hawley raised in donations in the first quarter of 2020.

REP. MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE: "You see school shootings are absolutely real."

And Greene - the freshman congresswoman who has come under fire for promoting baseless conspiracy theories and was stripped of two committee assignments - said in Twitter posts that she had netted $335,000 in contributions on Feb. 2 and 3rd alone.

Contributions from both small donors and rich individuals looking to fight the Democratic agenda have also poured into the GOP’s fundraising apparatus, underscoring the diminishing role of corporate money in U.S. politics.

And in a sign that the corporate backlash may already be fading, the nation's leading business lobby - the U.S. Chamber of Commerce - said last week that it has decided not to boycott the Republican lawmakers after discussions with more than 100 companies.