First, some humor:
This is the headlline to an actual op ed by Rich Lowry, the editor in chief of National Review. I don’t know what’s going on at National Review, but I skimmed enough of this thing to be able to assure you it’s not a joke. But I’m not going to waste one of my few remaining “gift article” links for the month on it.
There’s another piece at the New York Times that’s actually useful to read: Republican Donors: Do You Know Where Your Money Goes? This one’s a gift article. The author, Juleanna Glover, is some sort of big deal corporate consultant who has worked for past Republican administrations, although not Trump’s.
Anyone who has spent time reviewing Donald Trump’s campaign spending reports would quickly conclude they’re a governance nightmare. There is so little disclosure about what happened to the billions raised in 2020 and 2024 that donors (and maybe even the former president himself) can’t possibly know how it was spent.
Federal Election Commission campaign disclosure reports from 2020 show that much of the money donated to the Trump campaign went into a legal and financial black hole reportedly controlled by Trump family members and close associates. This year’s campaign disclosures are shaping up to be the same. Donors big and small give their hard-earned dollars to candidates with the expectation they will be spent on direct efforts to win votes. They deserve better.
During the 2020 election, almost $516 million of the over $780 million spent by the Trump campaign was directed to American Made Media Consultants, a Delaware-based private company created in 2018 that masked the identities of who ultimately received donor dollars, according to a complaint filed with the F.E.C. by the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center. How A.M.M.C. spent the money was a mystery even to Mr. Trump’s campaign team, according to news reports shortly after the election.
Apparently nobody can tell if any laws were broken, because there aren’t enough details. Lara Trump was AMMC’s first president. Jared Kushner was also involved with it somehow.
This election, the Trump campaign and four of its PACs have paid Red Curve Solutions, another private company, at least $18 million. The Campaign Legal Center says Red Curve appears to pay Mr. Trump’s legal bills and then gets reimbursed by the PACs. (The law is murky on what types of legal bills can be paid by campaigns, but some are allowed.) The head of Red Curve also serves as the treasurer for the Trump campaign as well as the affiliated PACs.
What percentage of donor contributions go to lawyers defending Mr. Trump? It’s impossible to know.
In June, NBC revealed the existence of a new mystery company, called Launchpad Strategies. Launchpad took in almost $15 million in Trump political cash via the Trump Save America Joint Fundraising Committee and the Trump National Committee. Little is known about this new group. It was created in 2023 and the Trump campaign says it is related to fund-raising. We don’t know who owns it, who runs it or where the $15 million went.
One assumes the Trumps are using campaign money as a kind of all-purpose slush fund, but if Trump is re-elected we’ll never know. If he isn’t, I seriously hope this is investigated. I’m remembering that we never did get the full story of where all the money for his 2017 inauguration went.
Debate May Be Cancelled
This morning there were headlines saying that Trump might call off the September 10 debate. Initially the reports pointed to Trump’s complaints about the host network, ABC. But Politico has another explanation.
With just 15 days left until the scheduled Sept. 10 presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, negotiations between their two campaigns have hit an impasse over whether the candidates’ microphones will be muted when it is not their turn to speak, according to four people familiar with the issue.
In June, President Joe Biden’s campaign came to an agreement with Trump’s: There would be two debates — CNN’s on June 27 and ABC’s on Sept. 10 — conducted by mutually negotiated rules. One of the Biden team’s demands — which the Trump team agreed to — was that microphones “will be muted throughout the debate except for the candidate whose turn it is to speak,” as CNN announced on June 15.
But Biden is no longer running for president. And Harris’ campaign wants the microphones to be hot at all times during the ABC debate — as has historically been the case at presidential debates.
So Kamala Harris wants open mics, and Trump doesn’t. Maybe Kamala the prosecutor is itching to cross examine Trump. I’d love to see that. But I hope this doesn’t crash the debate altogether.
In other news — a daughter of RFK the Lesser says that once her dad found a dead whale on the beach. So as anyone would do, he somehow cut off the whale’s head and strapped it to his car, then drove five hours home with it. “Every time we accelerated on the highway, whale juice would pour into the windows of the car, and it was the rankest thing on the planet,” the daughter said. “We all had plastic bags over our heads with mouth holes cut out, and people on the highway were giving us the finger, but that was just normal day-to-day stuff for us.” I regret that the article doesn’t say what happened to the head.
In more other news — The estate of the late Isaac Hayes served Trump with a notice that he is being sued over use of the Hayes song “Hold On, I’m Coming,” in his campaign, without permission.
Maybe Rich Lowry means doubling down on the bullying lying sack of shit grifter character? Who would steal like the dickens as part of his presidential duties? Worked before.
Not sure about the hot microphone thing. Like most MAGA influencers, Trump is a really good talker-overer. If I was Kamala, I’d then demand CC subtitles for both, so the audience could at least try to understand what the hell was going on.
Long ago while asleep in the back seat of a car on the highway, my travel friends pranked me by driving right behind a tallow truck. When I shot straight up from my sleeping position with a WTF? look on my face, they both had a good laugh. But at least we all had an idea where all those animal corpses were going.
You could expect that garbage from the National Review but what's going on at the NYT's that they would waste ink on that blather? So much for "all the news that's fit to print", what a joke!
Like he does with everything, TFG finds ways to "monetize" it. Laws about campaign finance be damned, all of that political fundraising money is just too tempting of a scam to him.
Never has perception and reality received the literary stretch given by Rich Lowry. editor in chief of the National Review in his contention that Trump might still win on character. Commenters questioned if this opinion piece was his lame attempt at comedy. It was that unserious. That alone does not make a funny piece of writing. Other commentors listed the many facts that offer proof of Trump's character flaws. That is hard work. Forget trying to list them all. No one wants to read a comment that long. Hit the lowest of low points. So, what. He never executed the family dog or ditched a bear in Central Park. It helps to surround yourself with people that have real character flaws. Another commentor did a great job of psychological diagnosis and elaboration on Trumps apparent narcissism. Not good enough to get Trump to seek rehab for his disorder, though, so what good does that do. We are the ones suffering the distress, not him.
Perception is reality. Lowry just does not have the writing skills to create the perception to convince the Times' readers of Trump's superior character. He might for his readers, but they understand this kind of fiction. They too need to ride the perception that a suit and tie and inherited wealth come with some perception of character. It is a house of Lords kind of thing. It is more an English notion than a French one, The English know enough to give it lip service, we don't.
You can see by the Catholic matriarchs of the Kennedy family that explaining a rouge and weird Kennedy is not easy. Nor is it easy to get them treated for their problems or keeping them out of the public eye. Did you ever notice they have an attraction to like others. Birds of a feather you know. They look elite enough to fool some.
From I've read the debate kerfuffle is over mic muting. Biden negotiated that mics should be muted to keep Big Bag of Shit from filibustering and talking over him, sounds like a good idea to me. Apparently the Harris folks think it would be good to let Stump's verbal diarrhea flow? I say do the debate as agreed upon, that was after all Harris's reason for insisting the first debate between the two be on ABC, let's not give Stump a reason to back out now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26Nt5RNOf4Y&list=PLADC8E2F349D0FF19
RFK & the whale tied to his car roof far surpasses Mitt Romney and the dog crate! Mittster never wins!