Can Trump Afford to Run for President?
Can Trump Afford to Run for President?
His legal fees are trumping campaign cash
Supporters saw a different Donald Trump on the stump back in the fall of 2015. He was a big-time braggart, about everything really, but especially his wealth and his would-be self-funded campaign for the White House. The value of Trump’s empire? Nearly $9 billion, or so he claimed.
“I don’t need anybody’s money. I’m using my own money. I’m really rich,” he boasted in 2015.
That was then. Facing 91 felony indictments, hundreds of millions of dollars in judgments, and a long line of lawyers with their hands out can charge a man.
Or at least make him worry.
Here’s the real story of what’s going on. Trump is burning through cash and paying his mounting legal bills with money from donors. Federal Election Commission filings reveal just how bad it is for Team Trump.
In February, Trump’s Save America PAC took in $5 million, most of which was a reimbursement from his campaign fund. Only $10,890 came from actual donors. This is a real problem. Trump has 62% fewer small donors now than he did during the last election cycle. Big donors are gun-shy, too, because they are worried he will spend their money on legal fees. And they should be: The PAC used more than $5 million in February to pay Trump’s battalion of lawyers fighting cases all over the country. Is that legal? A former FEC counsel told Forbes the practice is “highly questionable.”
One of those lawyers is Alina Habba. She defended Trump in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case, with a courtroom performance some legal experts called “embarrassing.” Trump lost, twice, and now owes Carroll almost $90 million. Trump has paid Habba more than $1.5 million over the past year for her work.
Trump received a rare bit of good financial news today. After months of shenanigans, lawsuits, and strong-arming, his social media company is merging with a cash-rich publicly traded shell company. That means Trump will own a majority of the new company, which will trade on the NASDAQ in the next week or so. He can’t sell his stock or use it as collateral for six months. The company’s board could vote to waive that restriction, but dumping a lot of the stock quickly will cause it to lose value. Although this merger could help him pay his legal fees and judgments, it won’t be in time to stop New York’s attorney general from seizing property to meet the $454 million judgment in the civil fraud case she won.
While Trump’s campaign is spending millions of fundraising dollars on legal fees, President Biden is raising more and spending it on new staff, travel to battleground states, and TV ads in those key states. Since Super Tuesday Biden has been to every swing state but one. During the same period, The New York Times reports Trump has been holed up at Mar-a-Lago wining and dining potential donors. Long gone are the days of bragging; now he’s begging. The Times says Trump is “turning Mar-a-Lago into a staging ground for billionaires and others with their own agendas.”
He has been to one battleground state, and his campaign managers are so worried about money that they actually canceled a trip to Arizona.
The Biden campaign, which raised more than twice what Trump did in February and has $155 million cash on hand, wasted no time calling out Trump.
“We are two weeks into the general election and Donald Trump can’t raise money, is hiding at his country club, and is letting convicts and conspiracy theorists take over his campaign. That is not a winning strategy.”
-Ammar Moussa, Biden for President spokesperson
As the campaign continues, so do Trump’s legal cases and the bills that come with them. Though there have been postponements galore, the four criminal cases against the former president are moving forward, with the hush-money case to start next month. As well as various appeals.
This campaign is like no other. Hard and fast rules seem not to apply. But one thing we can say with certainty, in a race this close, is that both candidates need to make their case in front of voters. If Trump is spending most of his time in courtrooms rather than on rally stages, and if his campaign coffers continue to be barren, his ability to reach those needed swing voters will be seriously curtailed.
Even the late-night comedians are cashing in on Trump. Said Jimmy Fallon about the popular NCAA basketball tournament, “Yep, Trump didn’t fill out a bracket ’cause he doesn’t have the 10 bucks to join the pool.”
None of this means Trump is beaten. It does indicate that the road to victory has gotten harder.
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Dan
America can't afford for him to run, that's for certain.
This seems like a golden opportunity for Putin, his oligarchs, Chinese and other tyrants, and global billionaires - like Elon Musk - to "lend" or give him millions for his legal and campaign expenses. Who will own him then? Scary, scary time for us and the world.