The President* Is Running a Direct-Mail Scam From Inside the White House

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

01 December 20

Exiled Nigerian princes in my inbox have a less obvious pitch than this guy does.

ord, the late Guy Clark sang, you'd think there's less fools in this world. From the Washington Post:

President Trump’s political operation has raised more than $150 million since Election Day, using a blizzard of misleading appeals about the election to shatter fundraising records set during the campaign, according to people with knowledge of the contributions...Much of the money raised since the election is likely to go into an account for the president to use on political activities after he leaves office, while some of the contributions will go toward what’s left of the legal fight.

I anxiously await the inevitable declaration that servicing the debt on a golf course in Scotland consists of "political activities" once the Oval Office has been fumigated. But holy hell, $150 million, raised through one of the most obvious shell games in the history of American politics?

According to the fine print in the latest fundraising appeals, 75 percent of each contribution to the joint fundraising committee would first go toward the Save America leadership PAC and the rest would be shared with the party committee, to help with the party’s operating expenses. This effectively means that the vast majority of low-dollar donations under the current agreement would go toward financing the president’s new leadership PAC, instead of efforts to support the party or to finance voting lawsuits.

Given the scorecard up to this point—1-and-39—I might not want a lot of money to go to that legal team, either, but this is pure, unadulterated grift. And $150 million—The New York Times puts the total at $170 million—is almost as much as Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, and Ross Perot spent combined to contest the 1992 election. The President* of the United States is running a direct-mail scam from inside the White House. Exiled Nigerian princes in my inbox have a less obvious pitch than this guy does. In my time, I've been fleeced by experts, and this guy is not an expert. P.T. Barnum undersold the nature of the American sucker.