NASCAR driver Corey LaJoie and his team, Go Fas Racing, took heat last weekend for running a Donald Tramp campaign ad on the No. 32 Ford Mustang in both Cup Series races at Pocono Raceway.
Whether the criticism was warranted is up for debate. One question remains, however: How did the sticker get there?
The forces responsible for the ad on LaJoie’s car reportedly first were at work in February, when Joe Nemechek ran a Trump/Mike Pence-themed car in a NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Daytona International Speedway. In both cases, a political group called Patriots of America PAC and an affiliate, Race Fans for Trump LLC, paid the respective teams significant money to run the ads, according to The Daily Beast’s Lachlan Markay.
In the case of LaJoie and Go Fas, the groups reportedly dished out $350,000.
Here’s all the relevant information from Markay:
This is the latest iteration of a pro-Trump NASCAR sponsorship effort that began in February, which which we covered a couple weeks ago. Their finances are pretty shady, so it'll be interesting to see who provided that $350k https://t.co/7vxyQy1A4C
— Lachlan Markay (@lachlan) June 30, 2020
Markay added this:
their use of an LLC to channel funds into a super PAC suggested a possible illicit straw donation, as explained in the linked story
— Lachlan Markay (@lachlan) June 30, 2020
Make of all that what you will.
Neither LaJoie nor Go Fas have issued public comments on their decision to run the Trump ad.
