If he pulls this off, former President Trump will have earned his place as the most successful con artist in political history.
Who but Trump has openly turned a presidential campaign political action committee into a money machine to pay his legal bills?
Trump’s PAC reportedly started last year with $105 million. It now has less than $4 million after legal bills.
And don’t forget, before Trump was a declared candidate, he used Republican National Committee donor dollars to pay his legal bills.
This is what we call a “crass act.”
Republican voters are being hustled so effectively that they are cheering Trump on, laughing as he rips them off.
Can you compare him to Jim and Tammy Faye Baker, televangelists who made an art of taking money from old ladies sitting alone in front of the television?
Can you compare him to Bernie Madoff, who pulled in wealthy, sophisticated celebrity clients with promises of wealth beyond belief?
Can you compare him to Elizabeth Holmes, who convinced famous investors to send her millions for a mysterious “Twilight Zone” medical device?
No, you can’t. Because Trump is making them all look like small-time grifters.
“MAGA grandmas were scammed in order to pay a billionaire’s legal bills,” said Christina Pushaw, an aide to one of Trump’s rivals, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R). It’s hard to argue with her.
Chris Christie, another rival, spoke with more sadness than humor. He summarized the Trump campaign filings as revealing a tragedy for “middle-class Americans” who sent donations to Trump.
“I mean, this guy’s a billionaire,” said Christie. “Maybe he just sells Trump Tower and pay for his legal fees that way. Or maybe, sell the plane, he could do that, or one of the golf courses. But instead, he’s taking $25, $50, $100 from everyday Americans who believe they’re giving it to him to help elect him president, and he’s paying his legal fees.”
Christie noted that Trump added insult to injury by using his donors’ money to pay for his wife’s stylist — $108,000 — which Trump labeled as “political strategy consulting.”
If we take a step back from Trump’s brazen money grabbing, the most disturbing fact of this whole sad saga is not the grifting. It is that Trump is damaging trust in American politics by turning it into nothing more than a personal slush fund to deal with his legal bills.
To review, in 2023, Trump has been found liable for sexual battery and defamation of E. Jean Carroll. He will face another trial on related allegations next year.
He has been indicted in New York for hiding hush money payments to an adult film actress. He has been indicted twice by the federal government, for mishandling classified documents and for telling lies about supposed fraud in the 2020 election, leading his supporters to riot in the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
In Georgia, another indictment for election interference is pending.
Somehow, Trump has used these successive charges to increase his standing in the polls as the 2024 Republican nominee for president.
A New York Times/Sienna poll taken before the latest indictment found Trump with a whopping 37-point national lead over DeSantis, his nearest rival.
At rallies, Trump is cheered when he says he is a victim of a weaponized leftist government. That makes him a stand-in for every conservative who can send him a check.
Former Vice President Mike Pence can no longer laugh along with the farce.
“Our country is more important than one man,” Pence recently said. “Our constitution is more important than any one man’s career. On Jan. 6, Former President Trump demanded that I choose between him and the Constitution. I chose the Constitution. And I always will.”
Pence has a lot of company among Republican politicians who fell for Trump’s scam and then recognized they had been played for fools.
Take Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), for example. Here are his words after Jan. 6: “There is no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the event of that day,” he said.
Even then, he still voted “not guilty,” after the House impeached Trump a second time. Trump went on to mock McConnell and make fun of his wife’s Asian heritage.
Also used by Trump was Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). He once spoke truthfully about Trump: “The president bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters,” McCarthy said on the House floor after Jan. 6.
But then McConnell decided to play along with Trump. And now he finds himself playing the gullible straight man to Trump’s carnival barker.
In this game, Trump always wins. The losers are McCarthy’s dysfunctional House GOP majority, which is being stripped of principles as it baselessly attacks President Biden’s son, Hunter, to distract from Trump’s troubles.
Gov. Christie quipped on CNBC that Trump might be “out on bail in four different jurisdictions” in order to attend this month’s GOP debate in Milwaukee.
Christie wasn’t joking. He told the sad truth. Republicans are being played for fools once again.
Juan Williams is an author and a political analyst for Fox News Channel.