Donald Trump, who originally ran for office promising he’d fund his own campaign so he wouldn’t be beholden to wealthy interests, is apparently in such dire financial straits he’s currently hanging out with billionaires, who, as everyone knows, he hates. He clearly prefers the effortless camaraderie and mutual, abiding respect of the lower-income, salt-of-the-earth Americans he sells gaudy, potentially trademark-infringing shoes to for $399 apiece.
In fact, Trump’s campaign coffers are so strained, he’s practically begging the ultra-wealthy for cash—while openly selling policy. And according to The New York Times, his cash crunch threatens to keep him off the campaign trail and away from the huddled masses yearning to breathe asbestos—who, again, are the people he clearly loves the most.
But facing a raft of fines, spiraling legal fees, and a non-incumbency fundraising disadvantage, Trump is miles behind President Joe Biden in available cash on hand, and he’s trying desperately to catch up. The Times reported Saturday that Democrats supporting Biden’s reelection claimed to have entered the month of February with $140 million in cash, compared to Trump’s and the Republican National Committee’s paltry $40 million.
The New York Times:
Despite years of professing massive wealth and boasting of his desire to “drain the swamp,” the deeply transactional former president is leaning yet again on the cash of others, turning Mar-a-Lago into a staging ground for billionaires and others with their own agendas. One potential leverage point with the biggest G.O.P. financiers is the package of tax cuts Mr. Trump signed into law in 2017. Many of those cuts expire at the end of 2025, and Mr. Biden has vowed not to extend them for the nation’s highest earners.
Wait, what? Didn’t Trump famously claim to be worth more than TEN BILLION DOLLARS? Why isn’t he using that? Is it all tied up in Beanie Babies? Or has T. Rowe Price’s Enchanted Unicorn Glitter-Fart Mutual Fund tanked that much in the interim?
But while it’s concerning that Trump is apparently dangling brutally regressive tax policy in front of billionaires’ noses in exchange for money, his desperation appears to have already prompted at least one policy reversal. In 2020, while cosplaying as president, Trump signed an executive order that would have effectively banned TikTok in the U.S. Now, as a candidate with his alms bowl out, he’s warning against banning the Chinese-owned app—something the Republican-controlled House voted to do just this week.
And all it took was a meeting with the owner of a company that holds a major stake in TikTok’s parent company!
As Daily Kos’ Walter Einenkel recently reported, “Trump’s dramatic reversal comes only a couple of weeks after meeting with billionaire Republican megadonor Jeff Yass. Yass’ company, Susquehanna International Group, has a 15% stake in ByteDance—the company that owns TikTok. Shocker! When CNBC’s Andrew Sorkin asked Trump about his meeting with Yass and subsequent turnabout on TikTok, Trump claimed Yass ‘never mentioned TikTok.’”
Oh, he never mentioned TikTok? Well, never mind, then. As we all know, billionaires looking for undue favors always put their requests in writing.
The Times notes that Trump has also been regularly hanging out with “some of the Republican Party’s biggest financiers,” including Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison and sugar magnate Pepe Fanjul. And while he doesn’t directly ask for money at these private dinners, “advisers to Mr. Trump’s campaign and his super PACs hope the charm offensive will eventually pay political and financial dividends.”
Meanwhile, Trump has unhinged his jaw and swallowed the RNC, presumably in hopes of gobbling up every available cent.
To prepare for the fall, Mr. Trump’s advisers have embarked on an aggressive and speedy takeover of the R.N.C. that included installing his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, as co-chair, with the intention that she’ll focus in part on shoring up fund-raising. The Trump team imposed mass layoffs in some departments on Monday, and is shipping all of the party’s finance and digital fund-raising staff to the former president’s Florida headquarters by the end of the month.
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For now, the Trump operation is ramping up its program for bundlers of midsize donations and planning to conserve cash costs by holding fewer rallies than they did at the end of the primary season.
Fewer rallies? Is he going to be campaigning from … his basement?
Well, maybe he can connect with voters by showing him his tax-cut plan for the super-rich. Or his long-awaited health care plan, which is going to be way better than the Affordable Care Act. It will be announced in two weeks. Right after Trump’s infrastructure plan. And his doctoral dissertation on the Higgs boson what happens when you drop a roll of Mentos into a 2-liter bottle of Diet Coke.
Of course, having more money on hand is no guarantee of electoral success. As Tommy Hicks Jr., a former Republican National Committee finance director, told The Times, “Hillary Clinton way out-raised President Trump but he connected with the American people and that was the difference right there.” And that’s a really good point, if you substitute “connected with” with “continually lied to about his plutocrat-friendly tax plan.”
But it’s telling that Trump is currently pumping his wealthy donors for even more cash infusions. As The Times reported, “at least two donors who made seven-figure pledges to support Mr. Trump this year were nudged to see if they could cut an eight-figure check—meaning $10 million or more—instead, according to a person familiar with the request.”
Yet some top donors are apparently reluctant to give to Trump, out of concerns that those donations would simply go to covering his legal fees, “even as his advisers have publicly said the R.N.C. won’t do so.”
Who knows where they ever got that idea?
The Associated Press:
Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law and handpicked choice to help lead the Republican National Committee said she thinks Republican voters would support having the political organization pay the former president’s ballooning legal fees.
Lara Trump said Wednesday while campaigning for her father-in-law ahead of the South Carolina primary that she was not familiar with the RNC’s rules about paying Donald Trump’s legal fees in a multitude of criminal and civil cases.
But she said she thought the idea would get broad support among GOP voters who see his legal cases as political persecution.
Of course, billionaire patrons don’t give to their political lapdogs to protect their health. They do it to ruin the health and well-being of everyone else. And Trump could surely help them with that. But their current reluctance to fund Czar Trek II: The Wrath of Con means the quid pro quos could soon start flying like ketchup bottles at a Palm Beach Denny’s.
After the New Hampshire primary, a victorious Trump name-checked billionaire casino magnate Steve Wynn and hedge fund manager John Paulson. “You know what? Put him at Treasury,” Trump said of Paulson, who is scheduled to host a fundraising dinner for Trump in April.
And here I thought cabinet positions were available only with the purchase of a 10-pack of Trump NFTs and a pair of signature gold shoes. Guess Trump isn’t quite the man of the people that he claims. Unless those people are Elon Musk and Sheldon Adelson’s widow, of course. But that pretty much goes without saying.
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