Former President Donald J. Trump is running for reelection in 2024 and he wants everyone to know that “I am your voice…I am your retribution.” While revenge may be a dish best served cold, it is not a free lunch.
That’s why Trump needs your campaign donations. Revenge is a costly business, after all. Moreover, legally defending your previous attempts at retribution is an even costlier affair. And, since that vengeance was enacted on your behalf—with your voice, no less—why shouldn’t you help to pay for those legal fees?
Of course, there’s nothing new in a candidate for higher office begging for money from supporters and donors alike. That’s just part of the seedy underbelly of American politics. It’s a necessary evil. And Trump has a cult following on the Right, so people are happy to give their ochre tribune whatever they can.
Those who are most loyal to the former president have no qualms with who he is. To Trump’s opponents, he is an orange ogre. To his supporters, he is the avatar for their rage.
The truth, as always, lies somewhere in the middle.
We can get to the truth of who Donald Trump truly is best by understanding just where all that money he’s generating as the likely Republican Party nominee for president in 2024 is going.
Sadly—and unbeknownst to the rank-and-file Trump supporters—large portions of that money are not going to his reelection campaign. Much of that money is being redirected to combat Trump’s ever-widening arc of legal fees resulting from the ongoing Administrative State prosecution against the forty-fifth president.
Donald Trump Is ‘Bleeding Cash’ on Trash
Specifically, the former president has gone through $42.8 million of the $53 million his campaign had raised since the start of 2023.
This, I suspect, is part of the point of the seemingly bottomless well of indictments that America’s justice system can fire at the former president. Not only is Trump being challenged by a half dozen fellow Republicans for the Grand Old Party’s presidential nomination—including the walking ATM that is Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis—but Trump’s likely Democratic Party opponent, President Joe Biden, is out-fundraising Trump.
Should Trump win the 2024 GOP Presidential Primary, he will likely be doing so at a considerable financial deficit because the legal woes afflicting Trump are simply not going away. They’ve got a lifespan of at least a year (more, in some cases), as well as a political half-life that will deeply impact the way voters—notably independent voters—view the Trump candidacy, should be the GOP nominee.
One would suppose that the hope among the Donald Trump Campaign leadership is that independents would see the continual DOJ indictment machine as unfair and excessive and vote for Trump out of sympathy.
But that’s hardly a viable electoral strategy—not when the fate of the republic is on the line (and, believe me, it is in 2024).
The Lovable Loser?
Plus, the forty-fifth president is, sadly, a man with a terrible electoral track record. Sure, Trump won an unprecedented victory in 2016. He subsequently presided over the GOP’s disastrous loss in the 2018 Midterms.
From there, whether by hook-or-by-crook, Trump lost the presidency in 2020. After that, Donald Trump failed to help the Republicans achieve what should have been an easy win in the 2022 Midterm elections. So, the man is not batting a thousand when it comes to crafting viable campaign strategies in the aggregate.
Blowing through one’s campaign cash on legal problems associated with their past problems, not only from when they were in office, but from both before and after they were in office, is not the best use of limited (no matter how large of a pile they may have, campaign dollars are not limitless) donor money.
We can rail endlessly about the obvious politicization the so-called justice system has undergone to get us to the point where the former president who is running for reelection is conveniently made to endure a cavalcade of indictments.
Trump’s Legal Problems
Trump has been indicted in a Manhattan-based grand jury investigation involving ancient accusations of alleged hush money payments to the adult film star, Stormy Daniels. Trump now has three federal grand jury investigations—one for Trump’s purported misappropriation of classified documents as well as two related to the January 6 riots—along with a civil case involving a New York journalist about incidents that happened years ago.
In that civil case involving E. Jean Carroll, Trump was found liable by a New York jury of libelous speech about Carroll and of battery (sexual assault).
Whatever is the truth about these cases, the world must acknowledge that, irrespective of any politicization that likely occurred, many of these cases were entirely avoidable. The justice system only initiated these investigations because of Trump’s supposed actions and/or statements.
They did not make these things up entirely.
The justice system, acting on behalf or in defense of President Biden (Trump’s likely Democratic Party rival in 2024), is overzealously prosecuting Trump for political purposes. But Trump did expose himself to these cases with his sloppy, even arrogant, behavior.
This is particularly true in the cases involving allegations of Trump’s mishandling of classified documents and his supposed attempts to interfere with the outcome of the 2020 Presidential Election.
Trump did take those documents and proceeded to try to eliminate the evidence of their existence at his residence in Florida. The former president was caught on a recording demanding that Georgia election officials just find an additional 11,780 Trump votes for his reelection campaign.
Is there more to these stories that the prosecution and media aren’t elaborating upon? Probably. Does the prosecution have a useful fact pattern that they can get indictments—as well as a high probability that they’ll get a guilty verdict against Trump in federal court for these cases?
Unfortunately, the answer on both counts is “yes.”
The House Always Wins
Not only has Donald Trump spent massive amounts of his campaign donations on legal fees, but he is going to continue doing so—and will likely have to do so at increasing rates—as the year progresses.
Maybe Trump, who defied all the odds in 2016 with a shoestring campaign and a lot of gumption, can replicate those odds eight years later. He’s already the most unconventional political figure in modern American presidential history.
Then again, though, the house always wins. Even for those who defy the odds, if you stay in the game long enough, whatever winnings you enjoyed will be won back by the house.
And Trump is definitely not the house in this analogy.
What’s needed is for a more dynamic candidate, with less baggage—and legal fees—to take up the mantle of Trump’s necessary cause and push the “Make America Great Again” agenda into the next decade. Trump is simply overcome by events.
It’s Time to Turn a New Page
Between Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy competing for the GOP nomination against Trump, as well as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s unconventional challenge to Joe Biden’s nomination for the Democratic Party’s nomination gaining steam, I don’t even think Trump is the most compelling or unconventional candidate in 2024 anymore.
It’s time for everyone to move on. Donald Trump should be angling to cut a deal with these possible successors to get a pardon for his many legal issues rather than even wasting his time—or the money of his supporters—on the campaign trail. Come to think of it, he’s not even wasting his time or your money on a campaign he’s likely to lose. He’s wasting them on hopeless legal battles.
A 19FortyFive Senior Editor, Brandon J. Weichert is a former Congressional staffer and geopolitical analyst who is a contributor at The Washington Times, as well as at American Greatness and the Asia Times. He is the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower (Republic Book Publishers), Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life (Encounter Books), and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy (July 23). Weichert can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.
From 19FortyFive
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