When you watch Donald Trump at one of his rallies these days, you see that his heart is no longer in it. He looks old, tired, and eager to be somewhere else. Two days ago, an interesting op-ed in the New York Times gave me a possible explanation for this.
The author of the piece, Juleanna Glover, a mid-wave Gen Xer, is described by her Wikipedia entry as "an American corporate public affairs consultant, tnrepreneur, former Republican lobbyist and political strategist." She now runs an agency that advises leading Silicon Valley companies. She has looked into the accounting, such as it is, for contriobutions to Trump's campaigns in 2020 and again this year. Of the $780 milion that the Trump campaign spent in 2020, she reports, nearly $516 million was spent by a freshly created company, American Media Consultants, which has never provided an itemized accounting of what happened to the money. Trump's daughter-in-law Lara Trump was reported to be the first president of the company, and Jared Kushner and a deputy of Lara's husband Eric helped set it up and run it. Last March, the AP reported that Trump had made a fundraising agreement with the Republican National Committee that diverted contributions to the Save America PAC, which has been paying Trump's legal bills, then estimated at $76 million over the last two years. Another private company, Red Curve Solutions, has apparently received $18 million that it used to pay Trump's legal bills. So far, a deadlocked Federal Election Commission has failed to investigate any of this. Meanwhile, the Trump campaign's advertising spending seems to be lagging way behind his opponent's.
It seems to me quite possible that Trump does not really care very much about becoming president again, and that he undertook this campaign mainly to keep campaign contributions coming in, much of which are apparently being diverted to other purposes. Ironically, the legal cases against him, which some undoubtedly hoped would drive him out of the race, may have influenced him to go on with it. (To be fair, Glover also reports that the Biden campaign spent a much smaller amount on Biden's legal bills relating to the discovery of classified documents in his home.) It is sad that this story had to be broken by an op-ed writer rather than a team of reporters at the Times or any other major newspaper, but now the door is open. I hope more reporters will walk through it.
I remember when the NYT did a long piece on how the Trump family managed to save themselves losing the father's inheritance through taxes by putting everyone in the family on the payroll till the money was gone before the old man died. I also recall that the first time Trump ran it was widely assumed that, in the beginning, he was just looking to up his brand recognition, having no serious political ambitions and that he just ran with the momentum. A statement such as yours here includes purely negative perspectives and motives, some of which, in of themselves, could have a bit of truth. However, as a whole, given the importance of the events recently unfolding, assassination attempt, endless lawfare, unprecedented candidate replacement at last minute, RFK endorsement, raging wars abroad, near civil war at home, makes your conclusions seem quite superficial, avoiding deeper subject matter, clinging hopelessly to the infamous Trump Derangement Syndrome while ignoring obvious govt. collusion on years of Russia gate and deep Biden corruption for example. It seems partisanship is a fatal illness destroying the Republic.
ReplyDeletePer your blog, "So far, a deadlocked Federal Election Commission has failed to investigate any of this." And, why is the committee deadlocked? Because political maestro McConnell doesn't support measures to manage campaign expenditures. Ergo, he purposely has shelved appointment referrals to the Senate and refuses to confer (required) Senate approval. Further, Trump, during is tenure in the White House, didn't bother to fill empty seats on the FEC commission. As a result, nothing has been done, by the proper authority, to correct or regulate political fundraising over a period of years.
ReplyDeletewww.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-08-05/federal-election-commission- camapign-finance-enforcement
What a country.