It's All About the Money
When it comes to the art of the grift, Donald Trump leads by example
Money never made a man happy yet, nor will it. The more a man has, the more he wants. Instead of filling a vacuum, it makes one. --Benjamin Franklin
Perhaps nothing has motivated Donald Trump throughout his life more than a desire to accumulate wealth and appear affluent. Compared to investment gurus like Warren Buffet, technology mavens such as Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos, or even captains of industry like the Koch Brothers, Trump has no true business skills. This is a man who ran 3 casinos into bankruptcy and squandered a few hundred million dollars of his father’s money in various failed ventures. What he does excel at, however, is the con, the art of separating the rubes from their money. Unhindered by a sense of moral rectitude, he views most people as marks.
In the latest installment of “Trump Cons America”, he not only offered his reactions to the execution of a Federal search warrant at his May-a-Lago club/residence- laying out his grievances at the government enforcing the law and presenting shifting explanations of why he was in possession of confidential documents- but also included a plea for donations. In one email, for example, Trump asked “…every single red-blooded American Patriot to step up during this time. Please rush in a donation IMMEDIATELY to publicly stand with me against this NEVERENDING WITCH HUNT."
As the Washington Post reported earlier this week, the torrent of emails Trump unleashed (more than 100 in one week) raked in more than $2 million in two days, up from the usual daily take of between $200,000 and $300,000. Other Republicans jumped at what they viewed as a fundraising opportunity. Various Trumpist primary candidates have echoed the former President’s outrage in their own pitches for campaign contributions and establishment GOP organizations such as the Republican National Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee beat the same drum. The Democrats, themselves in the midst of a lucrative fundraising year, “have jumped on the bandwagon”, The Guardian pointed out last week, “and have used the FBI raid to work their own messaging. Democratic groups, including American Bridge and Never Again, have praised the justice department and the FBI, and followed that with appeals for contributions.”
Raising money for campaigns is a fact of political life. Funding advertising, paying staff, travel expenses, and renting office space are expensive, so politicians are constantly asking for donations. What makes Trump’s current situation unique is that he is not yet a declared candidate for office, a circumstance that basically permits him to use donated funds as he chooses. His Save America PAC, started after he left office, has raised over $100 million to date, but he has retained most of that money. According to the Post article, the PAC has so far donated only about $5 million to Trump-endorsed candidates in GOP primaries, besides spending millions more on rallies, staff, and travel. True to his acquisitive nature, his announcement of his ex-wife Ivana’s death last month on Truth Social, his own social media site, included a link to donate to Save America.
In December 2020, Phillip Bump of the Washington Post described in detail how Trump could personally take advantage of the funds he raised.
The money in the Save America PAC, unlike money contributed to a standard campaign committee, can be used to benefit Trump in innumerable ways. Memberships at golf clubs. Travel. Rallies. Even payments directly to Trump himself, as long as he declares it as income.
This sort of financial hanky-panky is Trump‘s stock-in-trade. During the House Select Committee hearings in June, it was revealed that, following the 2020 election, emails were sent to Trump supporters asking them to donate to the “Official Election Defense Fund”. Between November 2020 and January 6, 2021, $250 million in donations were received. The problem was, of course, that the Defense Fund did not exist; most of the money went to Trump’s Save America PAC.
Trump may be the best but he is not a unique player in the grifter game. At his recent civil trial for defamation, it was revealed that right-wing media figure and crazy conspiracy theorist Alex Jones raked in between $100,000 and $200,000 a day hawking his “nutritional supplements”, which are actually over-the-counter vitamins. On his best days, he pulled in $800,000.
The reality of the confidence game is there seems to be no shortage of gullible marks, people who would, for instance, contribute their hard-earned money to a supposed billionaire. To paraphrase a line from novelist Jodi Picoult, “a lie takes two parties - the weaver of the tale and the sucker who so badly wanted to believe it.”
Those believers are worth millions of dollars.
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