This is one of those cases where Trump is too dumb to realize he’s confirmed a story about his own malfeasance:
President Trump told reporters on Tuesday that he’ll spend “whatever it takes” of his own money if necessary to win in November, stressing that it’s “the most important election in the history of our country.”
The comments come after reports that Trump’s campaign is having real money concerns — an unusual position for an incumbent that has worried GOP operatives. The campaign has yet to release its August fundraising, but Joe Biden and the Democrats say they raised a record-breaking $364.5 million last month.
Some of the notable expenses for the Trump campaign include $11 million on Super Bowl advertising, roughly $4 million to Trump businesses since 2019 and approximately $156,000 on planes for aerial banners, according to the New York Times.
“We have much more money than we had last time going into the last two months, I think double or triple” Trump claimed. “But if we needed any more, I’d put it up personally.”
Late today, he went even further admitting they’re running out of money:
They had collected well over a billion dollars as of the end of July. Now they are pulling ads in battleground states and apparently don’t have much cash on hand. They have not announced their August fundraising.
Recall that in 2016, Trump barely had a campaign so saying they have more money than last time says they have spent like drunken sailors and are in financial trouble.
And there are a lot of questions about what the hell happened to all that money. Some of it is profligate spending by former campaign manager Brad Parscale and they’ve spent millions of Trump’s legal fees, much of which went to harassment law suits against political enemies and the press. Trump also threw away a ton of money on the two aborted conventions in North Carolina and Florida.
But this is very, very interesting:
Many of the specifics of Mr. Trump’s spending are opaque; since 2017, the campaign and the R.N.C. have routed $227 million through a single limited liability company linked to Trump campaign officials. That firm, American Made Media Consultants, has been used to place television and digital ads and was the subject of a recent Federal Election Commission complaint arguing it was used to disguise the final destination of spending, which has included paychecks to Lara Trump and Kimberly Guilfoyle, the partners of Mr. Trump’s two adult sons.
Golly I wonder who ended up with all that money? If Trump does write a check, I’ll bet it will come right out of that account.
I recommend reading the whole NY Times story. The campaign is being run by Jared Kushner and Trump. And they’ve run it the same way they ran their businesses. Surprise.