In 2016, the National Rifle Association (NRA) spent $30.3 million to elect Donald Trump. In addition, according to a report from OpenSecrets Blog and The Trace, they spent $20 million on six Senate races. The total, more than $50 million, represented 96 percent of the lobbying group’s outside spending during the 2016 cycle.
The close relationship between the NRA and Donald Trump began in May, when the organization endorsed the candidate earlier than it had ever endorsed a Republican presidential contender. Trump appeared before thousands of people at the NRA convention in Louisville, Kentucky, where he gleefully accepted the organization’s official support.
Perhaps it never occurred to anyone to wonder why the NRA was so quick to endorse Donald Trump, who was not then known to be a fanatic ammosexual interested in interpreting the Second Amendment to allow the average man on the street to own an arsenal of weaponry. According to a report of the early endorsement by Nora Kelly at The Atlantic:
Trump’s allegiance to gun rights has been spotty. He once expressed strong support for an assault-weapons ban and criticized politicians who “walk the NRA line.” Of course, he’s changed his mind since he got into politics, and that’s enough for the NRA.
Politico called the early endorsement “unprecedented.” Politico writer Sarah Wheaton wrote about the NRA membership’s pushback on the early endorsement, and included this pseudo-explanation from an unnamed NRA official:
“It was a very clear choice,” said an NRA official on Saturday, who insisted on speaking anonymously about internal NRA deliberations. “Hillary Clinton is not an option. She must be defeated at all costs.”
The campaign was “heated,” the official said, so the NRA saw the early endorsement as “an opportunity to begin the process of bringing everyone together to defeat Hillary Clinton and elect a pro-Second Amendment president.”
But perhaps there were other, less obvious reasons behind the early endorsement. Like a December 2015 meeting in Moscow.