Kevin Dietsch/Pool//CNP via ZUMA
Why is President Trump continuing to loudly claim that the election was a fraud? Why is he filing lawsuit after lawsuit, each more ridiculous than the last? One possibility, of course, is that he’s unhinged from reality and truly believes he was robbed. But then again, there’s also this:
President Trump has raised about $170 million since Election Day as his campaign operation has continued to aggressively solicit donations with hyped-up appeals that have funded his fruitless attempts to overturn the election and that have seeded his post-presidential political ambitions, according to a person familiar with the matter….Instead of slowing down after the election, Mr. Trump’s campaign has ratcheted up its volume of email solicitations for cash, telling supporters that money was needed for an “Election Defense Fund.”
Of this haul, about $130 million has gone into a new leadership PAC, Save America, that’s essentially a Trump slush fund. There are few restrictions on what he can do with it, and it’s a good bet that practically none of it is going into his efforts to challenge the election. Trump just wants a big pile of money for his future use.
But what will he do with this stash? If he were anyone else, I’d guess that he’s planning to use it to keep himself in the public eye and possibly set the stage for a future run at the presidency. But Trump being Trump, it’s also possible that he’s just interested in a quasi-legal way of paying for his personal jet and his personal staff and the upkeep on Mar-a-Lago. In other words, it’s a pure grift.
And the fact that he’s mostly taking this money from elderly pensioners who have been conned into believing that the country is facing Armageddon and only Donald Trump can save it? He doesn’t care. Sociopaths never do.
