Oh No Who Spent All The Trump Campaign Money It's A Mystery For Sure

It's almost like they are bad at 'money.'

It's after Labor Day, and just as the election is kicking into high gear, the Trump campaign is running out of cash. Sad!

The New York Times   reports that the campaign has burned through $800 million of its $1.1 billion stash, only to find itself 7.5 points behind in the FiveThirtyEight average.

"I think a lot of the money was spent when voters weren't paying attention," said veteran GOP strategist Ed Rollins, who condemns former campaign manager Brad "Chin Pubes" Parscale for spending "like a drunken sailor." And the Times seems to agree Parscale is to blame for the premature ejaculation of cash, after spending great wads of it on travel, online fundraising, and his own media companies. For comparison Parscale, who had his own dedicated car and driver, pocketed more every month than Biden's campaign manager Jen O'Malley Dillon makes in a year. And her candidate is actually leading in the polls.

Far be it from Your Wonkette to defend that pituitary case, but ... this sure as shit ain't all on Brad. Parscale's got a point when he complains, "I ran the campaign the same way I did in 2016, which also included all of the marketing, strategy and expenses under the very close eye of the family. No decision was made without their approval." When the House of Grift is running the campaign, you have to anticipate a whole bunch of people are going to take a bite.  

People like Don Jr.'s ladyfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle and Eric Trump's wife Lara Trump, each of whom are paid $15,000/month for fundraising work. Or Trump's former bodyguard Keith Schiller, who's pocketed upwards of $500,000 from the RNC since he left the White House in 2017. And not for nothing, but Omarosa Manigault Newman said she'd been offered a salary of $15,000/monthly to come over to the campaign and sign an NDA that would prevent her writing a book and shittalking the president. How many other former White House staffers have been parked at the campaign, RNC, or a PAC to keep them quiet and on-side?

And then there's the Grifter in Chief himself. Since 2019, the campaign has forked over more than $4 million to Trump's personal businesses for office space in Trump Tower and events at Mar-a-Lago and the Trump Hotel in DC. Ka-ching!

The campaign and RNC also picked up legal bills associated with the impeachment and Russia investigation for favored Gippers like Don Jr., and it plans to spend $50 million subsidizing cases all over the country to "protect" the election from the scourges of mail-in voting and ballot drop boxes.

There's also this odd tidbit which sent every reporter in DC scurrying off to figure out exactly WTF is going on.

The R.N.C. also paid a large legal bill of $666,666.67 to Reuters News & Media at the end of June. Both Reuters and the R.N.C. declined to discuss the payment. It was labeled "legal proceedings — IP resolution," suggesting it was related to a potential litigation over intellectual property.

Who paid the other $333,333.33, and more importantly, WHY?????

On top of which, there are "other squandered costs driven by Mr. Trump's sometimes mercurial desires," which is NYTspeak for all the stupid shit the campaign has to shell out for because their candidate is a whinyass little narcissist. Like $11 million in Super Bowl ads last February during the primary, because that's what Bloomberg spent for his worthless primary bid, and Trump needed to keep pace. Or $400,000 in June to run ads in DC — DC! — to calm President Couch Potato down after the Lincoln Project successfully trolled him into losing his shit by running ads during Trump's morning television fix.

And let's not forget the $38 million they lit on fire when Trump stomped out of North Carolina because Gov. Roy Cooper wouldn't let him run a mask-free Covidapalooza Convention in Charlotte. Although he showed us by staging it on the White House lawn instead, because fuck the Hatch Act, amirite?

But forget the blame game. Let's go back to pointing and laughing at the campaign's current cash crunch, which is equally delicious. When Parscale finally got the axe and was replaced by Bill Stepien, the campaign immediately went dark on ads and reined in spending. Depending on which staffer is leaking to Maggie Haberman and Shane Goldmacher, this is either a crafty strategy to save money for the fall when voters are tuning in, or a sign that we've entered the Spirit Airlines phase of the campaign.

In August, the Biden campaign raised a whopping $365 million. The previous one-month record was held by Obama, whose campaign netted $193 million in September of 2012. During that same period, Trump campaign and RNC have raised ... well, no one knows because they haven't released the numbers yet. But it's a safe bet they would have shouted them from the rooftops if they were anywhere close to Biden's haul.

But don't worry, the campaign is about to get a yuuuuuuuuuge cash infusion. Bloomberg News says Trump is threatening to spend $100 million of his own money to ensure he gets to continue squatting in the Oval Office livetweeting "Fox and Friends." Hey, quit laughing, you guys! He's really for serious going to fork over that money!

In 2016, Trump put $66 million into his own campaign. But Bloomberg notes that Trump's net worth is down $300 million since he took office and he appears to have somewhere between $46 million and $157 million cash on hand. And if you think Trump is going to wager his last liquid dollar on this campaign, well, perhaps you'd be interested in purchasing a mint condition bridge.

In summary and in conclusion, Trump is poor. And a loser. The other countries are all laughing at us. The end.

[ NYT / Bloomberg ]

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