Last week it was assumed by many that the Slush Fund Part of the ‘settlement’ Acting AG Blanche worked out with the IRS was dead. It seemed to me then, and more so now to be more like that scene from The Princess Bride where the character says ‘There’s dead, and there’s all the way dead. This guy isn’t all the way dead. The reason I didn’t believe Trump would revive (or try to) it goes beyond compensating those the fund was supposedly going to benefit. I felt then, and still do that the $1.8 billion was just a starting number.
Let’s do a quick review on what’s transpired. Trump demanded ten billion from the IRS for his claim of the government being ‘weaponized’ against him. That quickly got blasted in a rare case of bipartisanship and with his poll numbers already sinking lower into his fake gold toilet each week Americans were mightily pissed over Trump’s audacity. I doubt Trump has the brainpower to concoct such a scheme (once upon a time he would have) but Blanche or someone else figured out a way to create a proverbial side-door to Trump getting paid.
Hence the Slush Fund proposal, with tax amnesty for Trumpty-Dumpty AND his kin for any and all tax crimes past and future. Talk about a major distraction from the Slush Fund and paying huge sums to insurrectionist rioters, some of whom pled guilty to or were convicted of assaulting police officers! Well, the outrage over the payouts was such that not even Trump wanted to deal with it. He does after all have his tacky-assed projects geared towards wrecking the beauty of our White House and the nation’s Capitol occupying so much of his limited energy.
For his part Blanche left a bit of wiggle room when announcing the Slush Fund’s demise. That part in his statement about the lawsuit blocking it being ‘premature’ got my attention. He also, at least to the best of my knowledge hasn’t said no way the idea might come back. However as Esquire reminds us Trump for sure wants the whole thing revived. It came up in the already infamous Meet the Press Trump did with Kristen Welker that aired yesterday. The linked article first quotes Blanche:
In a filing Friday afternoon, Justice Department attorney Andrew Block and other DOJ representatives said that no money had been transferred to the fund and that no members of the five-person panel tasked with making decisions about distributing the funds had been appointed. “This is a rare case that is simultaneously moot and premature,” they wrote. “One of the reasons Plaintiffs were forced to speculate so much about how the Fund would operate is because so little had happened when they sued.”
The author colorfully notes this level of “weasel speak” was beyond him. But more importantly he says any statements or promises on this coming from this administration aren’t worth the paper the eventual indictments will be printed on. Then he gets to the real heart of things and how it’s clear Trump himself isn’t done with this Slush Fund. He by god wants it to become a reality and if Blanche won’t do it he’ll find someone else to do it, or at least try:
Trump: So let—let me explain what the fund is. People have been hurt so badly by radical left lunatics that worked for the Biden administration and Sleepy Joe. They’re vicious. They’re violent, what they did to people. And of course they went after me more than anybody else. They raided Mar-a-Lago and all the other things. But people have been badly hurt. They’ve committed suicide. They’ve lost their jobs. They’re lost their families. They’ve lost their wives. They’ve lost everything. They’ve lost everything over a fake weaponization of government.
To her credit Welker pressed Trump for clarity and he sure sounds like he wants that fund created and giving out money to felons:
Trump: Well, look. If it was up to me, I’d pay them the kind of money that they deserve. People have been destroyed. Lives have been destroyed. Many suicides, think of it. People have committed suicide because a bunch of thugs went after them. … So me, personally, I think the weaponization fund is a great idea, and so do many other Republicans. You have to get it approved. If they get it approved, that’s great. If they don’t get it approved, I’d be disappointed.
I urge you to check out the link because it has a transcript of the ensuing set of pointed questions and crazy-assed answers from Trump. He gets into Comey, ‘dirty cops’ and so on. It’s really quite something and it hasn’t gotten airtime because another part of the interview has sucked up all the media attention.
Anyway I want to return to why this is something Trump won’t let go of. HE intends to get a payout from the fund. Remember he started with wanting ten billion directly from the IRS. That didn’t fly and so the Slush Fund was created. It was never intended to be anything but a means to an end. First, give out a bunch of taxpayer money to undeserving insurrectionist felons. Then as I’ve said that initial amount would have been enough and the size of the fund would be arbitrarily increased. The idea was to get the public outrage over the payouts largely over with.
THEN, once the dust he’d up the amount in the Slush Fund. By a LOT. Yes, more people he thinks were ‘horribly treated” would get payouts but here’s the kicker: the committee would suddenly have another 12-15 billion at it’s disposal. AND decide that Trump deserved a huge, say ten billion payout himself! That my friends is what this has been about from the beginning. The original Slush Fund scheme was just a means to get the machine installed and functioning. Think of it as opening a new factory with a brand new way of making widgets – with a lot of land to allow for making the factory bigger. Then, once the new widget line was up and running, and the inevitable kinks worked out there’d be a huge expansion.
That was the plan was with the Slush Fund, and the plan is sitting in a drawer instead of having been shredded and put in a burn bag. Trump has all but said he’ll bring it back, or rather have his AG do so. Or maybe order Bessent to do it. But I’ll say it again, it’s a start-up project destined to pay out a whole lot more money including a whopping sum to Trump himself!
Friends, I know everyone begs you for money. I promise, among all those asking for spare change, we are the smallest and the hardest working. We’re a group of old, disabled people, except for one writer in his mid-50s. The rest of us are in our sixties and seventies, and this is a labor of love. All we’re asking for is the chance to keep telling the truth about Trump and help ensure democracy survives. If you can help, please do. Thank you. Ursula
