Follow the money, and you'll find Donald Trump in deep trouble [View all]

Follow the money, and you'll find Donald Trump in deep trouble
Fundraising figures tell a story of a troubled Trump campaign and triumphant Biden surge

By HEATHER DIGBY PARTON
Columnist
PUBLISHED MARCH 18, 2024 9:00AM (EDT)


(Salon) Back in 2000 when Donald Trump first tested the waters of a presidential campaign by giving a series of speeches as a possible Reform Party candidate, he famously told Forbes Magazine, “It’s very possible that I could be the first presidential candidate to run and make money on it." He was speaking at the time about a weird deal he had going with motivational speaker Anthony Robbins in which he timed his political appearances around paid seminars that Robbins paid him a million bucks to give. By the time he decided to run for real in 2015, he didn't publicly suggest that he could make money campaigning but he did make the case that he was incorruptible saying, "I don't need anybody's money." (He'd obviously figured out that that real graft was to be made once he was in the White House.)

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Trump has been dancing as fast as he can for decades, trying to stay one step ahead of bankruptcy and the law and he has been successful at doing it, apparently leading him to truly believe that he could always prevail by sheer force of will. When the 2020 election didn't go his way, his fragile psyche couldn't take it and he simply created an alternate reality in order to cope. Now he's faced with the greatest challenge of his life, and he has to make one great hail mary pass in order to keep himself from going broke and out of prison. He has to win the presidency and he desperately needs money to pay his own legal expenses and finance his campaign. It's not going all that well.

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But what about his campaign? Considering his precarious personal financial situation there's no way that Trump will be self-funding any part of it and he's commandeered the RNC for his personal use, most likely to help him pay for any lawyers who won't allow him to stiff them. So, according to the New York Times, he's having to hustle like crazy for campaign donations:



He's having to hit up billionaires and Wall Street more than ever before and it sure looks like he's making some deals, such as his abrupt turnaround on banning TikTok last week after meeting with one of their major investors. This is because so far, his small donor base appears to finally be a little bit tapped out. The campaign claims that February will be its strongest month for small dollar fundraising which would beat the $22.3 million in August. But as the Times pointed out, the Biden campaign is seeing a massive rush of small donor money, raising more than $10 million online after the State of the Union, more than doubling Trump's much-ballyhooed haul of $4.2 million from his ignominious mug shot. .............................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2024/03/18/follow-the-money-and-youll-find-donald-in-deep-trouble/