NewsBusters was first on the scene last week when ABC’s The View peddled disinformation suggesting Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis was scamming his donors with an auto-donate feature on his website. And in a press conference on Monday, DeSantis addressed the false accusations saying “they were lying about that,” and denounced the practice of campaigns automatically setting up recurring donations as “definitely wrong.”
During a discussion on Friday’s edition of The View about 2024 and donations to the DeSantis campaign, faux Republican and rumored permanent ‘conservative’ cast member Alyssa Farah Griffin suggested his campaign was scamming people by automatically signing them up for recurring monthly donations they needed to opt-out of.
“For folks who aren't familiar, what a lot of these apps and websites do is you click to give once, and it actually signs you up to recurrently give. It is so unfair. It is a grift. It is terrible,” she asserted. And she was backed up by co-host Sunny Hostin who claimed, without evidence, “people are losing their homes” and “losing their savings” because of him.
But in his response on Monday, DeSantis was forceful with his denouncement of the lies. “I got accused by some of these people on one of these shows about, ‘oh, he’s raising all this – people want to donate to him.’ And they tried to say that like, we had auto-donate where it keeps going every month. We do not do that in my [campaign],” he declared.
Adding: “They were lying about that. We do not do that.”
And the facts back him up, as noted in NewsBusters’s original report, Washington Examiner Department of Justice and investigative reporter Jerry Dunleavy reviewed DeSantis’s WinRed donation page and the auto-donate feature was an opt-in option and was not pre-selected (tweet below).
DeSantis explained his campaign’s philosophy on donations this way: “You donate. Fine. You can click a button to make it auto. We do not do that auto, because we don’t want people to have these charges if that’s not something they didn’t agree with.”
He also voiced his appreciation for his small-dollar and fixed-income donors, saying their contributions were “very meaningful”:
At the end of the day, you know, we have folks who – some people are on fixed income, very limited and they will donate a certain amount. And that’s very meaningful. You know, not everybody has the capacity to write these big [donations]. So, you see that. And so, we’re very good stewards. But we would never do automatic unless you personally as the contributor press that button.
“And so, I think it’s very important, particularly as Republicans when you’re raising money amongst your own people, that you’re doing that in a way that has honesty,” he added, seemingly denouncing the practice of opt-out monthly donations.
Putting aside Alyssa Farah calling something a “grift”— I just checked & the WinRed donation page for DeSantis’s gubernatorial campaign does not automatically make a donation a recurring one, but instead it’s a box you have to voluntarily select yourself.https://t.co/Nflc1Nt4lf https://t.co/rmlTDkCb2Q pic.twitter.com/kCotEqJ8Xy
— Jerry Dunleavy (@JerryDunleavy) July 15, 2022
The View's lies about Governor DeSantis on Friday were made possible because of lucrative sponsorships from Olay and Progressive. Their contact information is linked.
The transcript of DeSantis's response is below, click "expand" to read:
Press conference
July 18, 2022FL GOV. RON DESANTIS: You know, I got accused by some of these people on one of these shows about, “oh, he’s raising all this – people want to donate to him.” And they tried to say that like, we had auto-donate where it keeps going every month. We do not do that in my [campaign].
You donate. Fine. You can click a button to make it auto. We do not do that auto, because we don’t want people to have these charges if that’s not something they didn’t agree with.
So, they tried to act like I was doing that. And then some of these media went and said, “Wait a minute, he’s not doing that.” They were lying about that. We do not do that.
At the end of the day, you know, we have folks who – some people are on fixed income, very limited and they will donate a certain amount. And that’s very meaningful. You know, not everybody has the capacity to write these big [donations]. So, you see that. And so, we’re very good stewards. But we would never do automatic unless you personally as the contributor press that button.
And so, I think it’s very important, particularly as Republicans when you’re raising money amongst your own people, that you’re doing that in a way that has honesty.
And so, my name is being used to trick people into providing donations to something that they don’t necessarily want to do. That is definitely wrong.
