Trump World Claims $$, Support Pouring In Post-Conviction, the Facts Paint A Very Different Picture

You may recall last week when Donald Trump crowed that his campaign had made $35 million, at the rate of $2 million per hour, in one day. Yes, that is pretty amazing, alright. Let us wait to see what donations actually get reported to the Federal Elections Commission or if this boast is something that is meant to impress and will vanish like a mirage when a point of actual accountability happens. It would certainly seem that the conviction is a blessing, then, right? In fact, if being convicted is such a winner, why doesn’t Trump move as quickly as possible to get all of his trials heard before the election?

Think of it now, it’s a win/win situation. If Trump is acquitted, great. Can’t beat that for positive optics, right? He’s been saying all along that he’s not guilty and if a jury agrees with him, what a boost. Alternatively, if he is convicted, then money cascades in like Niagara Falls. Trump’s point, we assume, is that the money is pouring in because the American people are outraged and it is that outrage vote that’s going to get him elected in November. Except, it’s not as simple as that.

As political consultant Stuart Stevens put it: “I worked in five presidential races and helped elect Republican governors or Senators in over half the country. I have never heard anything more transparently desperate than a party trying to spin that there is some non-MAGA pool of voters who can’t wait to vote for a convicted felon.”

On Friday, Morning Consult conducted a poll to gauge how voters were reacting to the guilty verdict. It showed that 54% of registered voters approved of it, while only 34% disapproved. Perhaps worse for Trump was that 49% of Independents and 15% of Republicans thought he should end his campaign. A Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 10% of registered Republican voters and 25% of Independents said that his conviction made it less likely that they would vote for him for president. 

Take a look at just these figures here. 10% of registered Republicans said they were now less likely to vote for Trump and 25% of Independents. That, right there, could determine the election. In fact, if even a fraction of the people polled actually didn’t vote for Trump now, even 5% of Republicans and 10% of Independents, that could decide the election right there. So where, on these facts, is this magical pool of outraged voters who intends to return Trump to power?

Then, on Saturday, there was what Danny Westneat of the Seattle Times called a plot twist. It turns out the state of Washington has a law on the books that prevents felons from running for office. But because a candidate has to be certified to be on a ballot before they can be challenged, the issue can’t be resolved until Trump officially becomes the Republican Party’s presidential nominee at the July convention. Westneat asked, “Republicans: You sure you want to go down this road?”

On Sunday, Trump appeared on Fox and Friends for his first interview since his conviction. The interview was heavily edited, suggesting his comments were problematic in some way, but what was there was still bad enough. He repeated his plans to fire generals who refuse to do his bidding and to deport immigrants by using local police to round them up. Notably, considering his own looming sentencing, he claimed he never said “lock her up” about Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a claim that reporters on social media promptly shredded with video clips of him doing exactly that.

Media figures are puncturing Trump’s image. The verdict buried a story by The Apprentice producer Bill Pruitt, who is now free of a nondisclosure agreement, explaining how he and others created an illusion that Trump was a successful businessman and alleging that Trump used the n-word on set. On Saturday, an image circulated on social media of Trump leaving Trump Tower and waving as if to a crowd, but there was no one there.

Also on Saturday, top sports talk host Colin Cowherd pushed back on the idea that the trial was rigged, telling his listeners: “If everybody in your circle is a felon, maybe it’s not rigged. Maybe the world isn’t against you.” “Donald Trump is now a felon,” Cowherd said. “His campaign chairman was a felon. So is his deputy campaign manager, his personal lawyer, his chief strategist, his National Security Adviser, his Trade Advisor, his Foreign Policy Adviser, his campaign fixer, and his company CFO. They’re all felons. Judged by the company you keep. It’s a cabal of convicts.”

Cowherd went on: “[Trump’s] trying to sell me an America that doesn’t exist.” “Stop trying to sell me on ‘everything’s rigged, the country’s falling into the sea, the economy’s terrible,’” he continued. “The America that I live in is imperfect. But compared to the rest of the world, I think we’re doing okay.”

This is very true. The economy is fine, booming in fact, considering that a recession was feared in 2023 as the world economy finally began to adjust to the post-COVID reality. We didn’t have a recession, we had a soft landing. The stock market is breaking records and jobs creation is through the roof. But still, the insistence on an alternative reality persists. And why not? It appears that Trump is paying handsomely for exactly that.

This morning, Robert Faturechi, Justin Elliott, and Alex Mierjeski of ProPublica reported that Trump’s businesses and campaign committees have funneled significant financial benefits to at least nine witnesses in the criminal campaigns against Trump, often at crucial moments in the legal proceedings. The pay of one campaign aide doubled; another got a $2 million severance package that barred him from cooperating with law enforcement. The daughter of one of the campaign’s top officials was hired onto the staff and is now the fourth-highest-paid employee, with a salary of $222,000. Payments to the companies of certain witnesses dramatically increased.

Faturechi, Elliott, and Mierjeski note that it is not uncommon for bosses to find themselves defendants, complicating their relationship with employees who might have witnessed alleged crimes. In such cases, lawyers advise the defendant not to provide any unusual benefits or penalties, to avoid the appearance of witness tampering.

Trump’s attorney, David Warrington, sent ProPublica a cease-and-desist letter saying that if the outlet and its reporters “continue their reckless campaign of defamation, President Trump will evaluate all legal remedies.” He demanded that ProPublica kill the article, keeping it from publication.

ProPublica isn’t going to cease and desist. That article has been re-published far and wide, including re-publication in full on this website. If you haven’t read it, you need to.

And then, this afternoon, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Damian Williams, along with the U.S. Department of Labor and the State Department, unsealed an indictment charging Weidong Guan, also known as Bill Guan, the chief financial officer of the global news outlet The Epoch Times, with using the outlet to launder at least $67 million. The Epoch Times is affiliated with the ultraconservative Chinese anticommunist religious group Falun Gong and supports Donald Trump and other right-wing U.S. politicians with both press and cash. It was a major promoter of Dinesh D’Souza’s film 2000 Mules that claimed the 2020 presidential election was stolen. A voter depicted in that film sued for defamation, and just last week the distributor settled with the plaintiff, issued an apology, and stopped distributing the film.

The allegation that The Epoch Times is a money-laundering operation comes on top of yesterday’s story by Joseph Menn in the Washington Post, reporting that the editor of another media site that pushes disinformation from both the far right and the far left, The Grayzone, has worked for Russia’s Sputnik as well as taken money from Iranian government-owned media. One of the people who retweets Grayzone stories is Senator Mike Lee (R-UT).

Wow, some really terrific company the GOP is keeping right? Money launderers and shills for foreign governments. And that’s precisely who you would expect to show up in right-wing media. Steve Bannon was arrested on the yacht of a Chinese billionaire under investigation for SEC fraud. Intriguing how all these anti-American birds of a feather flock together and that includes prominent elected officials in the GOP.

Trump is dirty. Trump world is dirty. Trump is a felon and surrounded by felons. Peter Navarro is still in prison, Steve Bannon will be there shortly.

A vote for anybody in the Republican party is not a vote for the party of Eisenhower or Reagan, or even McCain or Cheney. It is a vote for MAGA and Trump corruption.

[Illustration by Michael Hogue, Center For Public Integrity]

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