Donald Trump's political operation is reeling after spending around $60 million on legal fees over the course of the last year.
Donald Trump’s political operation is reeling after spending around $60 million on legal fees pertaining to the four criminal indictments and various ongoing civil lawsuits against him.
Disclosures indicate that Trump’s campaign and the various political action committees supporting it blew through tens of millions of dollars in 2023, leaving him cash-strapped heading into 2024.
Save America PAC, Trump’s primary PAC heading into his likely rematch with President Joe Biden, once had over $100 million in the bank. Now, it has just a little over $5 million left after spending over $25 million on legal bills in the second half of last year alone.
And Trump's donations have sucked all the air out of the room for all GOP candidates, state parties, etc. They're throwing the 2024 war chest down the endless hole of Trump's legal problems. Isn't he supposed to be a billionaire?
A Newsweek article says he has $2.6B networth with $426M in cash and liquid assets. However, that very article is about the trial where he inflated his assets, so the basis for that may be completely wrong.
That trial could put him under penalty of $370M. The Carroll lawsuit is $83.3M. Even if we take his liquid assets above as a given, he'd be wiped out, and his real estate is worth a fraction of what he claims.
Trump needs to be in jail, but he'd also be Al Capone running his empire from a cell if he had to. Kick him in the money. That hurts him personally.
It’s a lot like how Elron Musk theoretically is worth billions, but still feels the need to run funny schemes on doge coin. He can’t sell substantial amounts and get cash without reducing the Tesla share price and thus his overall net worth even more than what he took out.
Not wholy true, he might not be able to sell his stocks but he can take out loans against them for money.
It's the Buy, Borrow, Die Strategy, and how they avoid taxes as well. He's not poor he doesn't need to grift and he has all the liquid money he could ever need for a thousand life times...
He's not strapped for cash. He sold U.S. secrets to the Saudis for $2 Billion. Jared Kushner is holding his money for him. He won't actually be broke until we go after that pot of stolen gold.
It's $2 billion that still belongs to the Saudis. Jared is getting a management fee of probably $20 million per year. Definitely still a bribe/payment for services rendered just trying to say the amount and mechanism are not what you think.
I've always understood their "investment" into a company that doesn't actually do anything to be very similar to a "loan" given to Clarence Thomas that he never has to repay or report (because it's just a loan y'all).
Oh, yeah, that'd be great, but corporations are people. Except in terms of wage theft, unsafe working conditions, or dangerous products. There's nobody to put in jail for those, nothing we can do, sorry!
No worries, he'll release some more NFT trading cards for $2-300 a pop and he'll sell a shit ton of them because his followers are fucking dumbshits. Bitch and moan about the economy but then buy his crap.
He's gonna need to sell a whole lot more digital trading cards to refill the coffers. I wonder how many times he can do that scam and still have it work.
Legally - Trump can't use the super PAC funds at all. The super PAC decides what it does with the money. The PAC chose to pay the legal fees... However - we all know behind closed doors there is plenty of communication about what that money is used for...
At least that is my understanding of super pacs
Edit: it's not a super PAC sorry, just a PAC. I'm not a Pac-Man so I got confused. Wakka wakka.
As with any war, strategy takes a back seat to logistics, and logistics take a back seat to financing.
Can't win a war with out money for lunchables for the crayon eaters (love you). Go after the sources of funding and the game gets real, real quick.
A butchered quote from my favorite book on strategy:
The worst is to go after their fortresess, and the next worse to go after their soldiers in the field.
Beyond that it is better to go after their ability to organize, their logistics. Better even, to go after their alliances and finances.
Best of all is to win in the field of their ideas themselves.
People pay Trump because of a parasocial relationship where they believe they are having some effect. If they see that money as being lit on fire for Trumps failed court proceedings, this is an oppurtunity to drive a wedge between Trump and what he needs so much to keep his, likely absurd, burn rate going. Go after his relationships.
It's funny, if he never decided to run for president, he could have kept scamming people and assaulting women until he died and no one would have really cared.
Now he's in a position where he has to run again, because it's the only thing that can save him from the consequences of the first time he ran.
This is why I think the "rich white people never face consequences" crowd have it wrong. They tend not to face consequences because they have lawyers to find loopholes in the first place, and then they make sure to keep it all out of the public eye, and then if they do get noticed, they listen to those lawyers and don't do things to perjure themselves.
I know what you mean - in many ways he's a victim himself, even though he's also a cause, both of his own suffering, as well as ours. But it's the system that is screwed up, not (just) him.
This is the cue for all those people griping about "Bidenomics" to get out those checkbooks and start writing checks to tiny d. Because he cares about them, and is going to "fight for" them.