A political group launched by some of President Donald Trump’s top campaign advisers to boost the White House in its biggest policy fights has been conspicuously absent as Trump begins to sell his agenda, hobbled by staffing delays, internal jockeying for control and a struggle to win the favor of big donors.

Trump counselor Kellyanne Conway once promised the organization, now known as America First Policies, would provide a “surround-sound super structure” to boost the president’s goals. After nearly two months, there has been little activity aside from a press release announcing the group’s formation and a recent smattering of posts on Twitter and Facebook.


“To say that the folks inside the White House are disappointed that there’s been no air support in the first 50 days is an understatement,” said a person involved with the nonprofit, one of ten Trump officials engaged with the group or at the White House who spoke about the group with POLITICO. “Things have moved very slow and there’s a lot of frustration that things need to move faster.”

Now some are setting out to create a second competing nonprofit group, with the notable backing of the wealthy Mercer family, who are perhaps the most prominent donors in Trump’s orbit and who have long sought strict authority over their political spending. A third group could even be in the works.

“There’s just a power struggle here and people want complete control,” said another official with America First Policies. “It’s just not helpful. It’s just frustrating to a lot of us.”

The emergence of two or more pro-Trump nonprofit groups with the same stated purpose — to promote Trump’s agenda — repeats a headache that plagued the Trump campaign in 2016 when multiple pro-Trump super PACs sprung up, leading to inefficiencies and donor confusion.

Marty Obst, a former Pence adviser who is spearheading fundraising for America First Policies, told POLITICO they have already amassed $25 million in commitments and banked more than half that. “It’s an urgent appeal,” Obst said, as Trump pushes forward on repealing Obamacare, getting his Supreme Court nominee confirmed and overhauling the tax code. “We’ve been really encouraged by the response.”

But America First Policies is undergoing an organizational shakeup as Brad Parscale, who ran the Trump campaign’s digital program, is taking on a reduced role as one of several leaders instead of his originally planned position as president of the nonprofit, according to four people involved in the effort.

Meanwhile, the Mercer-backed effort is speeding toward its own launch, recruiting David Bossie, who served as Trump’s deputy campaign manager and who was named in January as an adviser to America First Policies, to put together the group. It’s expected to form in the coming weeks. Other donors involved include Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus and Ed Bosarge, a Texas-based GOP donor, according to a person familiar with the effort.

How Bossie can be involved in two competing groups simultaneously is unclear. He declined to comment for this story.

Plus, another Trump campaign adviser, Michael Biundo, who ran Rick Santorum’s 2012 presidential campaign, has been so frustrated with the lack of visible progress that he has been making calls in recent weeks to operatives and donors about launching a group of his own.

“The president needs cover,” Biundo has said, according to a person familiar with the calls. Biundo also declined to comment for this story.

Officials involved in America First Policies acknowledged their slow start. They say it’s the natural result in part of having to wait for the White House to staff up before they could make hires. “It was a little like waiting for the music to stop in musical chairs,” said one official. “We’ve now gotten to the point where everything is lined up and money is being raised.”

Nick Ayers, a senior adviser to Mike Pence on the campaign, is serving as chairman of the group. Rick Gates, a former Trump aide who served as Paul Manafort’s deputy, is increasingly involved day-to-day.

America First Policies also recently brought in Alex Stroman, a former Republican National Committee official, and the group has been quietly been receiving unpaid advice from Mike Shields, who previously served as chief of staff to Reince Priebus at the RNC and then ran a super PAC and nonprofit that backed House Republicans. Shields is also engaged to Katie Walsh, another former Priebus deputy and a deputy chief of staff in the White House.

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Even before its launch, the nonprofit was riven with tensions as Parscale aggressively sought to lead the group, confronting Rebekah Mercer at a meeting in Trump Tower in December about who would be in charge. With the blessing of Jared Kushner, Trump’s influential son-in-law, Parscale had taken charge of the still-unformed group by January.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

But on January 31, a carefully crafted press release included the names of six officials involved — Parscale, Bossie, Ayers, Gates, Obst and Katrina Pierson, Trump’s top campaign spokeswoman. Notably, it included no titles or delineation of roles of any kind.

“It’s a sticky thing,” one of those officials said.

Parscale has been a polarizing figure inside Trump’s orbit, with one colleague accusing him of “showboating” to take credit for Trump’s victory. “The essence of it is that Brad has had a few instances where he’s rubbed some of the political people the wrong way,” this person said. “If you haven’t worked on politics before, you probably get one strike. But Brad is probably up to about strike four now.”

Parscale declined to respond to those comments. As for his lesser role at the group, Parscale said simply “I’m happy to be founder” and that he wanted to maintain his digital consultancy based in San Antonio, Giles-Parscale, rather than run the day-to-day operations. “I have a fiduciary responsibility to my company,” he said.

After POLITICO told officials with the nonprofit on Friday that it would be writing about its lack of activities, it ramped up its social media presence dramatically over the weekend.

America First Policies had a meager 552 followers on Twitter and 137 on Facebook as of midday Friday. But by Sunday, the group had posted a Facebook video that Trump himself reposted. The group’s follower count jumped to more than 3,600. Trump also retweeted a Twitter post by the nonprofit for the first time, and its following quintupled.

“Everybody’s saying we’re not doing anything but the only thing we haven’t done is a large TV buy,” said a fourth official with the nonprofit, noting that the video Trump linked to will be the group’s first ad and is expected to debut on television soon. A second ad on health care has been produced and is also expected to air soon.

Behind the scenes, America First Policies has not funded much in the way of research, with two officials familiar with its efforts saying it has yet to conduct any polling.

“A lot of talk about doing things,” one Trump campaign veteran familiar with the nonprofit’s inner workings summarized of the nonprofit’s work so far. “Not a lot of actually doing things.”

Throughout December and January, there were intense negotiations in hopes of heading off a fissure between various pro-Trump factions outside the White House but the growing specter of rival groups has exacerbated finger-pointing.

One person at America First Policies questioned whether those behind the Mercer efforts were truly helping Trump’s agenda — or their own. “There’s a lot of motivation,” this person said, “Maybe not all of it is pure in intent.” Said another: “The money is coming toward our c4 and people are going to get upset about it and bitch.”