The Grift Goes On

A new arrangement with the RNC shows that they’re all just suckers.

Image courtesy of MSNBC

A few weeks ago, Trump pushed out former RNC Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel and replaced her with his cronies, including his daughter-in-law Lara Trump. And he put his campaign chair, Chris LaCivita, in charge of RNC operations. Conflict of interest much?

At the time, most political watchers had the same reaction: Trump is going to bleed the party dry. So LaCivita sought to assure donors that this wouldn’t happen. 

The RNC won’t be used as a piggy bank for Trump and won’t pay his big legal bills, he insisted. He told the AP that “not a penny of the RNC’s money or, for that matter, the campaign’s money has gone or will go to pay legal fees.”

“What’s the catch?” I remember thinking. And here it is: Trump has figured out a way to skim tens of millions of dollars off the top. This means that not only is the RNC woefully behind in raising money, but any money that it does raise goes first to line the pockets of the Trump Campaign and his Save America PAC—the entity that has been paying Trump’s legal bills.

Let’s take a closer look at this new arrangement, which is a grift of rather epic proportions. We’ll understand how it works and what it likely will produce for Trump. Then we’ll zoom out and look at how this will impact the RNC, which Trump’s team is now vetting to ensure loyalty even while badly mismanaging it.

One for me, two for me, then for you

Under the agreement between the Trump Campaign and the RNC, Trump gets dibs on the first chunk of money—up to $6,600—that comes in from any donor to their joint fundraising effort. That’s the maximum amount allowed for any individual donor.

And guess who is next in line? Hint: It’s not the RNC!

The second chunk—up to $5,000—goes next to Trump’s PAC, Save America, which has been paying Trump’s legal fees to the tune of some 76 million dollars.

Only after the Trump Campaign and the Save America PAC have taken their big cuts does the RNC even get a single penny. What this literally means is that Trump and his PAC get the first $11,600 of any donation.

Chris LaCivita was technically correct! Not a penny of the RNC’s money will go to paying Trump’s legal bills… because the entity that will foot those bills gets paid out first before the RNC even sees a cent.

Of course, for people donating over $11,600, this still means the lion’s share will go to the RNC. But Trump and his campaign will get all the money from small donors.

How much will this net for Trump and his PAC?

We don’t know how much money Trump and the RNC will raise together. But if 2020 is any indication, there are tens of millions of dollars that could go directly to Trump and his PAC. According to a calculation by HuffPost, Trump and his PAC would skim some $32 million from the unusual arrangement.

A former member of the RNC, Jennifer Horn, who used to run New Hampshire’s Republican Party and spoke to HuffPost, was quite blunt in her assessment: “The RNC has become a money-laundering operation for the most crooked president in history.” 

Others tried to put a positive spin on the siphoning of funds. “The campaign doesn’t care, and it seems the donors don’t care either. I think people increasingly see the legal challenges as part of the campaign,” said GOP consultant David Kochel. “He has to fight the ‘lawfare’ and the Biden campaign.”

Where is all the money going?

Save America is structured as a “Leadership PAC.” That means that its money can’t be spent directly on Trump campaign activities. The fine print makes it clear, however, that donations will go toward covering Trump’s legal bills. So how much of each dollar is going to his lawyers? It’s actually quite staggering. According to the AP:

Legal spending made up 85% of Save America’s total operating expenses during the first two months of this year, roughly the same as 2023, when such expenses were about 89%. It has spent $8.5 million on legal fees so far this year.

That trend will likely continue, and increase, as Trump actually heads to a criminal trial in a couple of weeks.

That means there will be tens of millions less money available from small donors to spend on the campaign itself and on Republican candidates around the country. The lawyers, however, will make out like bandits.

Trump’s fundraising is already floundering

The Trump Campaign and its allied PAC are already well behind in their fundraising efforts to date compared to the Biden Campaign. In the first two months of this year, the two entities brought in a combined $15.9 million in February, with $37 million on hand. 

The Biden Campaign recently raised $26 million on a single fundraiser in NYC.

And in February, Biden raised more than three times what Trump and his PAC raised. Biden pulled in a whopping $53 million—and ended the month with over four times as much cash: $155 million.

Trump is facing large judgments in New York for defamation, sexual assault and civil fraud. He has to post a bond in a matter of days in the amount of $175 million to cover his appeal of the New York civil fraud judgment. While Trump claims to have the cash to cover it, he is also busy hawking gold Trump tennis shoes and Trump Bibles for $60.

About that SPAC lifeline

Trump and his campaign are no doubt eyeing a vital lifeline: the recent success of Trump Media (now trading at ticker symbol DJT) that went public through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC. On the first day of trading, the stock shot up, making Trump a billionaire many times over on paper. 

But there are some obstacles ahead. Trump will need to get permission to sell his shares outside of the lock-out period of six months. While it’s likely he will get this green light (after all, the board is made up of his family members and cronies), any whiff that Trump may be unloading some of his majority interest could cause the stock to slump or even induce panic selling. The stock is wildly overvalued with a capitalization in the billions, even though it had paltry revenues of just a few million in 2023 and steep losses to boot.

Trump is clearly not willing to put all his faith in his meme-stock holdings, built as they are on hype alone. And so he will grift wherever he can. Luckily for him, Republicans have left their national committee defenseless against his appetite and greed.

Thoughts and prayers

As for the RNC itself, it seems more concerned with political litmus tests and unwavering loyalty than it does functional operations and fundraising. The latest rather unsettling news is that RNC job applicants now must answer a question meant to test their loyalty.

Per reporting by the Washington Post, one prospect recalled being asked by two top Trump advisers, “Was the 2020 election stolen?” 

That’s a startling question for a simple job position. There’s no requirement to say yes, but as one former RNC employee put it, “But if you say the election wasn’t stolen, do you really think you’re going to get hired?” 

Perhaps we shouldn’t be shocked by this question. It’s meant to weed out any of those pesky Haley, Cheney or Romney types. After all, Trump handpicked the new RNC co-chair, Michael Whatley, a North Carolina Republican known for amplifying Trump’s false claims of voter fraud. So it looks like the new RNC will brook no dissent over Trump’s entirely made-up election fraud conspiracies.

Finally, in the make-sure-it’s-not-an-April-Fools category, the RNC’s other new co-chair, Lara Trump, has been busy. She’s not really out fundraising, as she has no experience doing any of that, but has been recording music. Yes indeed, Lara Trump has released a second single, to the delight of her fans and those who regularly mock her.

It bears the rather ironic and ominous title, “Anything Is Possible.”

And I suppose that is true, with enough creative accounting!

Have a great week.

Jay