The good news is that, even with the latest begging boost, he is still below the 2021 pre-earthquake level.
And a good majority of these new donors are likely of the $1 and $5 tiers. He specified that he needed the number of Patrons to increase to a certain number but didn’t give a cash amount that he needed to hit. Many new donors were saying they couldn’t afford it but grudgingly joined the lowest tier.
The bad news is that attrition at this rate is likely to drag on for years.
To keep himself in the game he is going to have to constantly be on his game and try to drum up support between end of month drops. That means he’s going to have to say and do things he really doesn’t want to do.
What killed him last year was the amount of new people he pulled in was far fewer than the EOM drops. This is why he is seeking to end the chatter about him once and for all. He found out in the last few weeks that opposition to him has tightened and many are determined to get the word out about him. What he doesn’t want are his detractors to be emboldened by huge drops like what happened a few days ago.
So in effect we have a reset to where he was about this time last year. He still has an image and reputation problem that will feed the EOM drops.
There is also the lawsuit, which in the short term was his way of scaring people into silence but in the longer term doesn’t bode well for him when it does fail.