President Donald Trump has been oddly reluctant to spend the vast amount of money accumulated in his political war chest as the midterm elections approach. But a new report from Time magazine raises the possibility that he’s choosing to save a chunk of the money to spend on self-promotion and his pet projects in his final years in office.
Trump has only recently started spending the over $400 million he accumulated over the summer through his super PAC, MAGA Inc. The PAC took in more than it spent in August. And only in mid-September did it reportedly book about $140 million in ads through affiliated super PACs to help GOP candidates. That amount notably only came after Republican politicians pleaded for his help and wondered why he wasn’t spending ahead of a race that could be a wave election for Democrats. With just a month left before the midterms, there is a possibility that some of the MAGA Inc. money won’t be spent at all.
Time’s reporting helps illuminate why:
Aides say he has been reluctant to spend because he wants to preserve cash for future elections as a means of keeping his grip on his party. “He wants to have as much money in his account as possible when he’s no longer able to raise the kind of money he can now,” a Trump aide told Time this fall. “He doesn’t seem to care that much about the midterms, thinks they’re a lost cause anyway, and wants to preserve future possibilities.”
That’s a striking claim. If it’s true, it’s another classic “shocking but not surprising” moment of the Trump era.
It’s in Trump’s interest to try to do what he can to minimize the odds that Democrats flip the House and the Senate. If the GOP were to maintain control of Congress, it would allow him to continue to more easily pass major bills, appoint judges and shield the White House from investigations and impeachment efforts. Even though the polls are looking grim for Republicans, this isn’t necessarily a “lost cause”; the polls aren’t always right, the Senate map is tough for Democrats and just minimizing Democratic gains can still help preserve his power. An extremely narrow Democratic majority in the House and a Republican-held Senate could allow Trump to still push some of his priorities through the new Congress. If Trump cares about getting anything meaningful done in the next two years, the midterms should be a priority.
Perhaps Trump is simply thinking of it as political insurance.
So then the question is what Trump would want to save this money for? Would it be spent in support of a quixotic attempt to run for a third term in office? Would it be so he can spend money on ads promoting his own accomplishments in a desperate bid to leave a good final impression? Would it be to try to spend money on messaging, whether in primaries or a general election, to boost his preferred successor? We have no way of knowing.
But what we do know, as my colleague Hayes Brown recently put it in a piece on Trump musing over whether he’s better at real estate than politics, is that our president fixates on “micromanaging over unimportant details and an obsession with selling himself as a brand” instead of policy. Perhaps Trump is simply thinking of it as political insurance — money set aside just in case he needs to shore up his legacy.
And this could explain in part why Trump is aggressively pursuing flagrantly corrupt schemes to accumulate money, such as another exclusive dinner for the largest holders of his meme coin. Trump has systematically used the presidency to enrich himself, and that seems to be a goal unto itself. Yet he may also be cognizant of how his social currency is ephemeral, and, as his aide noted to Time, knows that he has a unique ability to raise money based off his political power that’s basically peaking right now.
To be sure, it is possible that Trump spends all the money in his war chest. But his apparent hesitation tracks for a president who doesn’t view himself as part of a party, but rather sees that party as a vehicle for securing his own power. From that point of view, a potential November shellacking for the GOP is less a problem for himself than a problem for all the other Republicans who’ve sworn loyalty to him. And the transactional Trump likely believes that holding back some money for future years is the best way to keep that loyalty after he’s left office.
The post A theory on why Trump’s super PAC appears to be hoarding money appeared first on MS NOW.
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