One of my favorite niche storylines of the 2020 presidential campaign is “how did the Trump campaign blow through $800 million before September?” I’m not saying that I’m a huge nerd who is fascinated by campaign finance (I am not), but I could easily read dozens of stories about Where The Money Went and Why. Now, in the final days of the campaign, it looks like the worst is happening for the Trump campaign: they don’t have the money to make their final push in advertising in swing states. Which has revived the conversations about where, how and why in the hell did they spend a billion dollars?
The Associated Press reports that despite having raised over $1 billion since 2017, the president’s reelection campaign has “set a lot of it on fire.” One of the biggest tells is that Joe Biden and his Democratic allies are expected to outspend Trump and the GOP by more than 2-to-1 on ads in the final days of the campaign, reportedly because Trump just doesn’t have the cash. Per the AP: “On Monday, the firm Medium Buying reported Trump was canceling ads in Wisconsin; Minnesota, which Trump had hoped to flip; and Ohio, which went for Trump in 2016 but now appears to be a tight contest….”
Trump is now in a position that’s virtually unthinkable for an incumbent president, said Travis Ridout, codirector of the Wesleyan Media Project, which tracks advertising spending. “Advertising obviously isn’t everything. But we do think ads matter for a couple percentage points in a presidential race. And it’s just not a good sign for the Trump campaign,” Ridout said.
Where the campaign has dropped major money on advertising, it might as well have put the cash through an industrial shredder for all the impact it made. In January, Trump spent $10 million on a Super Bowl ad when he didn’t even have a Democratic challenger, in a pointless pissing contest with Mike Bloomberg. Last fall, he dropped $250,000 on an ad that ran during Game 7 of the World Series, after the booing against him reached “almost 100 decibels” during Game 5. The campaign also sunk $1.6 million on TV ads in the Washington, D.C., media market—where he received a humiliating 4% of the vote in 2016 and has no chance of winning in 2020—so Trump could gaze adoringly at himself during Fox News commercial breaks.
Additionally, Parscale reportedly purchased “a fleet of luxury vehicles“; surrogates were flown on private jets; and it wouldn’t be a Trump operation if the candidate wasn’t charging his own campaign to stay at his properties to the tune of more than $7.4 million since 2017. “They spent their money on unnecessary overhead, lifestyles-of-the-rich-and-famous activity by the campaign staff and vanity ads,” Mike Murphy, a Republican consultant, told the AP. “You could literally have 10 monkeys with flamethrowers go after the money, and they wouldn’t have burned through it as stupidly.”
Mike Murphy made me laugh! He’s a Never Trumper Republican and that was a great quote. VF also details some of the other ways the Trump campaign blew through millions of dollars: “legal fees ($38.7 million), merchandise ($35.2 million), and relocating the Republican National Convention after a fight with North Carolina’s governor over coronavirus safety measures.” They also had to spend $100K to buy copies of Don Jr’s sad book. And even then… “$310 million can’t be accounted for because it went through limited liability firms, which is precisely the amount of sketchy one should expect from Team Trump.” 310 MILLION DOLLARS. Cannot be accounted for!!! That’s almost a third of all of the money the campaign raised over three years!! Jesus Christ.
Photos courtesy of Backgrid.
He pocketed the money into his and his friends’ bank accounts. That’s it.
Just his…and possibly Daughter-wife’s…off-shore.
Maybe it’s being hidden in the Chinese bank account!
That’s my conclusion. Him/immediate family.
Yep. No one knows “for sure”, but we can hazard a fairly accurate guess that he trousered it, and that the spoils will be divvied up with family when it’s safe to do so.
Pretty sure Brad Parscale helped himself to a bunch of that cash.
Don’t get complacent. Adelson dropped $75 million into a super PAC to try to save Trump.
Exactly. It’s all about the grift with them.
There’s a Forbes magazine article from this week saying he has $900m in loans due over the next few years and if re-elected, it’s a serious threat to national security…
310 mil is awfully close to the amt of money he owns on his loans according to his taxes
Yup, guaranteed he funneled that money to pay off those loans to foreign interests.
Thats what I was thinking. He’s scamming the donors to pay his debts.
It’s really the only thing that makes sense.
There’s a Forbes magazine article from this week saying he has $900m in loans due over the next few years and if re-elected, it’s a serious threat to national security…
I love that top picture, he looks like sh*t.
My first thought was that he looks like a corpse. Maybe he’s gunning for a cameo as an extra zombie on the walking dead?
We will be hearing about the corruption and ineptitude of anything and everything Trump related for the next 30 years. He and his family are a sh!t stain on the White House. Pray that the election is decisive and brutal against him.
Well, he borrowed money from everyone in order to keep up this charade that he’s a great businessman. All those chickens coming home to roost.
Great businessmen don’t file for bankruptcy multiple times. He’s a bad businessman.
So many chickens coming home to roost that he could start a Foster Farms factory. Or is his post presidency plan to open a KFC franchise?
And they still haven’t figured out where the inauguration money went.
This is random, but we can take a moment and “appreciate” the insanity of the headlines on this site today?? From the blank book of “healthcare accomplishments,” to Rudy’s whole….thing, to Prince Phillip caring where his grandson lives, to Disney sticking it to Shonda Rimes over Disneyland passes……
This is just an absolutely insane time to be alive, and I don’t mean that in a really positive way.
It really is an insane time. I think back to simpler days (midMarch) when insanity meant Sarah Palin in a bear costume and Tom Hanks getting covid-19. Every day seems to out-match the previous day’s insanity.
Who goes up to a hotel room and lies down on a bed to take off a microphone? Priceless!
I bet he’s pocketed a lot of it. I’ve also heard a lot of his “supporters” at his rallies are paid. That costs a lot of money.
They can’t afford to run rallies and pay people right now. That’s why they are using the airports he lands in as a rally location because they can’t afford to rent and secure alternate locations. I believe they are really unhinged people who will show up for him without social distancing and masks.
I’ve heard that, too, that lots of the people at Trump related rallies are paid t o be there in their MAGA gear.
Just a guess? Maybe it is in his newly discovered Chinese bank account?
That scene in Casino where Joe Pesci is narrating how the casino runs and he talks about how people are stealing at every level, that’s trumps campaign.
Exactly. Anyone who is surprised by this hasn’t been paying attention. He’s always been a fraud and a cheat, and surrounded himself with more frauds and cheaters. It’s shocking the amount “missing” isn’t higher.
We know where it went. It was obviously….haircuts.
Just hold the giant yam upside down and shake him. I’m sure the money will come falling out of his pockets.
*snort* I’m laughing because this comment is so funny. Whats not funny: It would take a minimum of 10 secret service agents to accomplish this feat, and 100k to pay for the subsequent back surgeries they would need afterwards.
Another place where the money went>>> Kimberly Guilfoyle and Lara Trump are each being paid a 6 figure salary by the campaign. (150k if memory serves)
That header pic… is….something.
The entire team (including the dear leader, obvs) are grifters, so trying to figure out which one grifted more is kind of a lost cause.
I like the karma aspect of it though, as most of the big donors are grifters as well
That last photo looks like he’s waddling with an adult diaper-load. Are continence briefs making his suit pants hang like that?
My guess, some of it went into off shore accounts (so he can have a cushion when he loses) and up Trump Jr’s nose.
Junior is trying to emulate Tony Montana when he’s basically nothing but a Fredo Corleone, lol.
I just read a CNN article about Trump supporters, why they are practically foaming at the mouth to vote for him again. The typical response I read, while extremely ignorant of facts and logic, but I think their honest feelings nonetheless, is about Christian values, how Trump is the only one that represents Christians – just a lot of Christian, religious justifications and pure nonsense.
CLEARLY, Trump is the least religious, spiritual, devout or pious man ever to hold the office of President. So, the disconnect is humongous. And rage inducing. I’d throw them a bone if they’d throw Trump under the bus and call him out for being totally NOT what they think represents their beliefs, but that they are too conservative to ever vote a Democrat in. But when they say that Biden, a very spiritual man who wears his faith very starkly, is their enemy… well, they have no credibility, no self-awareness. And that is why people can be so nasty in their comments about and to a Trump supporter. Any defense of Trump comes off as a lie. Or supremely ignorant, or hypocritical, or all things at once. You don’t have to be on the left or right of any political spectrum to recognize decent reasonable behavior. Or in the case of his campaign fund grift, you can see criminality as plain as day. Perhaps the icing on this crap sundae is that those idiots that contributed to Trump’s campaign lost their money to a conman, and may have to lick their pocketbook wounds in the dark (because they would never admit they were conned).
With all of the information that CONFIRMS Trump’s lawless ways, that any person can still vote for him, with fervent loyalty… it is indefensible, and I wish there were a way to shame these people for their ignorance and hypocrisy. But maybe the fact that they lost their money in a such a public and humiliating way is the little bit of schadenfreude I need today.
Excellent comment Teebee
Maybe check his Chinese bank account!!!
GOP and Moscow Mitch are awfully quiet – what is he planning? GOP has to know they are going to lose – the question is when will they turn on him? Before or after he loses so bigly!!!!!
He’s going to be humiliated in 3 weeks time and I fear what his retaliation on America will be. He will burn down as much as he can between now and Jan 2020. If we think he’s nasty now, he will get nastier in a few weeks time.
All that spray tanner isn’t cheap. Especially to maintain that level of orange.
Well, the campaign had enough money to pay for commercials in my market. Which is Portland, OR. Also branches out a bit into Vancouver, WA. Talk about a waste of their money. Some of the burbs around here might think he’s less than awful and more so on the other side of the border, but as a general rule, PDX residents hate his guts.
Bronzer, my guess is it was used for bronzer.
I made the prediction last week and I see no signs I won’t turn out to have been right: The money was embezzled.
Have they checked his spray tan and hair color budget?? Because that has got to be astronomical.
Isn’t this just another grift to his supporters to pay up again now if you want the good times to continue to roll? Like, maybe the Democrats stole the 310 mil or they got lost in Hillary’s email or Comey will open up an investigation in 3, 2, 1 seconds against Hunter Biden (yeah, I know Comey is gone, but does everyone know that)? The list can go on. Sorry, not sorry, but stupid never dies.