Grifters Gonna Grift
It’s almost as if the purpose of raising all that campaign cash has nothing to do with winning an election
Last weekend, the Washington Post’s reported that over half of the $35 million the Trump campaign raised in Q2 went to the Trump campaign’s Save America PAC, the outfit paying Trump’s legal fees.
Well, now we know that is so much worse than that.
The Post reported last night that in the first six months of 2023, over $40 million raised by Save America was spent on legal fees.
Team Trump likes to brag that most of the money raised by Save America comes from small-dollar donors. In light of how that money is being spent, I’m not sure that’s something to burst into glorious song about.
Trump is scamming millions from retirees, grandmas in MAGA hats, and working-class people hardest hit by the Biden economy, not to retire Biden in 2024, but to bankroll the army of lawyers defending billionaire Trump in four separate criminal investigations, a sexual assault/defamation lawsuit, and the ongoing civil investigation out of New York State.
Team Trump argues that the PAC also pays the legal expenses incurred by the grifters, liars, and crooks that work for him. But I don’t see how that makes it better.
As I said last weekend in my column “Paying a Billionaire’s Legal Fees,” Trump isn’t running a presidential campaign. Instead, his presidential campaign is “a front to pay his legal bills.” It’s why Donald Trump isn’t doing nearly as many rallies this time. That money is needed to pay for an army of lawyers.
What is most troubling to me, however, is that there are Trump fans who have no problem paying the legal costs of law firms they could never afford to hire to represent them.
These are the people who, despite all evidence to the contrary, still believe that Trump is taking the slings and arrows meant for them – a laughable belief that Donald Trump frequently encourages.
During Saturday’s sparsely-attended rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, Trump told his fans that he wears the indictments like a “badge of honor,” because “I’m being indicted for you.”
Spoiler alert: Trump isn’t being indicted for you. He isn’t MAGA Jesus taking the sins of his followers onto himself to save them.
Trump is being indicted because, as a New York liberal Democrat, he fully expected that the 2-tiered justice system that let Hillary Clinton get away with her crimes would also apply to him.
When it didn’t, he set up a political action committee and launched a presidential run to scam his supporters out of their hard-earned money to pay for the lawyers he never thought he would need.
Trump 2024 is a grift. It’s a scam. It’s the political version of Trump University.
And just as he scammed people into enrolling in his phony university, Donald Trump has convinced countless Americans to bankroll his largely self-inflicted legal fees on the laughable claim that he is taking the slings and arrows meant for them.
As AG Hamilton noted last night on Twitter:
These aren't Democrats they are scamming or political opponents, it's their own supporters. It's the audiences that trust them. I don't know how some of these people sleep at night. Shameless.
And here’s the thing. Trump’s devoted followers don’t care.
They don’t care that Trump is using their money to pay for legal fees unrelated to his presidential campaign.
They don’t care that Trump handed the “weaponized DOJ” a case on a silver platter.
There will always be an excuse, a justification, a “what about the Bidens?!” response.
They don’t care that Trump’s growing legal problems won’t just destroy his chances of getting elected but will also be a millstone around the neck of every other Republican on the ballot.
Every dollar wasted on paying a billionaire’s legal fees is another dollar that won’t be spent to ensure that Joe Biden is a one-term president, Democrats lose the Senate, and the Republican majority in the House is expanded.
Loyalty to Donald Trump is the only thing that matters to the Trump faithful, even if the price of loyalty is losing elections and abandoning any pretense of America First.
“But he’s fighting for us!” the wish-casters say.
No honey. He isn’t fighting for you; you are fighting for him.
He sent his followers into the Capitol to fight for him. Then when they got arrested in droves, Trump left them high and dry while he asked for your hard-earned money to save his sorry ass.
I don’t expect Trump’s most devoted fans to abandon the guy. They would happily let the country burn if it benefited Donald Trump.
But the people who voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 and resisted the siren song of the Trump True Believers? We are the ones who have had enough of this scam.
Donald Trump knows he can’t win the nomination with only his True Believers.
But rather than working to expand his voting base, Trump is content to “run for president” within an ever-shrinking bubble of support.
It’s almost as if the purpose of raising all that campaign cash has nothing to do with winning an election.