Trump, Once The Man Who Couldn’t Be Bought, Is Now Up For Sale
The Republican presidential nominee is openly handing out favors to big donors in an unprecedented fashion.
In June 2015, former President Donald Trump infamously came down a golden escalator and declared himself the man who couldn’t be bought.
“I’m using my own money
Trump said in the opening speech of his presidential election campaign. “I’m not using the lobbyists. I’m not using donors. I don’t care. I’m really rich.”
Trump, who did self-fund large portions of his 2016 primary campaign, would return to this theme again and again. He would run against a field of more mainstream GOP politicians, each backed by super PACs filled with million-dollar checks from wealthy donors, and then against Democrat Hillary Clinton, who many voters saw as the embodiment of a moneyed class of Washington insiders.
Now, almost a decade later, he is running as a candidate who is openly for sale. He has said he’ll offer plum jobs to major donors like Elon Musk, promised favors to oil executives, bragged to the wealthy about the tax cuts he can deliver and has even taken time away from his campaign to pitch a cryptocurrency project for his sons.
Americans can even buy DJT on the stock market, in the form of shares in the publicly traded holding company that owns his social media site, Truth Social. That company’s revenues are meager, with the share price hitting all-time lows, but it’s still being propped up by the former president’s loyal political fandom.
“He just thinks he operates in his own world,” Fred Wertheimer, a veteran of decades of fights over campaign finance and government ethics, told HuffPost. “What he’s doing is incredibly brazen in both asking for large amounts of money and telling people what he’s going to do for them in return.”
“Bottom line, I’ve never seen anyone do what he’s doing,” Wertheimer said.
Trump’s campaign did not respond to an email seeking comment for this story.
His new strategy may have created an opening for Democrats, if Vice President Kamala Harris and her campaign can seize it.
In a survey released before the presidential debate, the Pew Research Center found the presidential race tied, 49% for Harris to 49% for Trump. Buried in those results, Pew noted one area where most Americans said they had little faith in either presidential candidate: Just 37% of Americans thought they could trust Trump to get money out of politics, and only 32% said the same of Harris.
‘Always Will Be A Con Man’
Despite his rhetoric, Trump did little to “drain the swamp” upon taking office. He failed to follow through on a promise to divest his business holdings. His hotel quickly became a gathering spot where those hoping to win Trump’s favor could also line his pockets. He appointed lobbyists to key government positions overseeing defense, trade and environmental protection. He took in up to $160 million from international business deals while he was president.
“He has and always will be a con man who’s really only looking out for himself and whatever helps him to obtain power,” said Tiffany Mueller, the president of the Democratic campaign finance group End Citizens United. “All his promises went out the window. Instead of draining the swamp, he brought the swamp to him and his properties and cashed in.”
Trump’s corruption was not a central issue for President Joe Biden’s campaign in 2020. Once Biden was in office, Democrats pitched their signature government reform legislation mostly as a way to protect voting rights.
Trump, meanwhile, has continued to intermingle his political and business interests since leaving the presidency, even though he sold his hotel. Beyond the crypto project and Truth Social, Trump is also selling Bibles, NFT trading cards, sneakers, and as of this week, silver coins. It’s enough to make even some of his allies uncomfortable.
Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), one of the Senate’s biggest crypto advocates, told HuffPost this week the crypto project made her “a little uncomfortable.”
“If I were a Trump adviser, I’d say, ‘Mr. President-elect, put it in a blind trust,’” she said.
Four years later, as Trump runs to reclaim his old job, he has faced a consistent cash crunch. His legal costs diverted huge amounts of money from his campaign in 2023, and Biden began the general election with a significant financial advantage.
Trump closed the gap after winning the GOP nomination, in the wake of Biden’s disastrous debate performance. But Harris’ selection as the Democratic nominee set off a massive wave of enthusiasm and fundraising, significantly setting Trump back. And Trump’s small-dollar fundraising is not close to the levels it was in 2020.
While Harris has raised about 42% of her campaign cash through July from donors who gave less than $200, according to the campaign finance website OpenSecrets, Trump has raised just 32% from small donors.
First off…I’m not a trump fan. But Biden is a con man also. Get the shot you won’t get Covid. I will wipe out the virus. I will cure cancer and when elected I will give everyone on Medicare a 200.00 a month raise…..still waiting for all of that.
ReplyDeleteBiden didn't say that the covid shot would be a cure. He said that it would cut the spread of covid. He has been working towards a cure for cancer, but did not promise one. It's sad to see a Trump supporter take things out of context to bolster his/her view points.
ReplyDeleteThe bottom line is that no president can fix ALL the problems we have to deal with in society. Only a fool would believe that "Only I can fix it" as a political statement. Sadly, Trump has energized these fools, and has shown how dangerous they can be.
As I write this, I'm watching Jimmy Kimmel zing Trump as he sells NFTs, trading cards, crypto currency and commemorative coins. Does it matter? Some suckers will buy these worthless items. As P.T.Barnum said: "There's a sucker born every minute." If Trump weren't such a grifter, he wouldn't be so bad. But the man has put everything up for sale, as he's the one "Billionaire" who has gone bankrupt 6 times. Would you trust him running the bank you have your money in, much less our government?
So let's get to talking about Biden. He's far from perfect, but the GOP hasn't been able to make anything stick on him. His son pleaded guilty, and no US Attorney in the justice department (including special prosecutors) has found enough "evidence" to cause Biden any trouble - simply because he's a decent Joe.
As for me, I will keep supporting Democrats until the MAGA disease has gone into remission. I left the GOP (in all but name) several years ago because I caught them in inexcusable lies and untruths. Yet, I'm more of a traditional conservative (in the Barry Goldwater model) than I am a liberal. Until we have two healthy parties opposing each other, I will have to vote "lefty" to keep the lunatic right from getting more power. But when the "right" gets its act together, I will rejoin it to check and balance the excesses coming from the left.