One of my previous posts posited the question along the lines of, “Can we afford Trump?” I was not asking so much because of his political philosophies (if you can call them that!) but more just in terms of dollars and cents. His legal bills have already reached the tens of millions of dollars and there is a long way to go. Not only are his legal bills significant, but there are now two substantial financial judgments against him. There was the $83.3 million judgment against him in the E. Jean Carroll trial. And now, he has been hit with a $355 million dollar judgment in the civil fraud trial in New York.
Both judgments will be appealed and could change somewhat, but it is unlikely they will get thrown out altogether. The bottom line is that Trump, his sons, and his company are likely to have to pony up a substantial amount of money when the dust settles on the appeals. The big question is, “Where will this money come from?” And, perhaps more importantly, how long will people continue to throw money down the Trump rat hole because of these self-inflicted wounds?
This question would appear, on the surface, to present yet another mine field for Trump because there are laws governing how campaign finances are spent, despite him trying to install his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, as co-chair of the RNC. Given Trump’s reluctance to ever use his own funds and his penchant for skirting the laws whenever he thinks he can get away with it, there is always the possibility that Trump may violate even more campaign finance laws depending upon which pot or pots of money he uses to satisfy these judgments. That would be typical Trump – get convicted of one crime and commit yet another crime trying to satisfy the judgment handed down in the first crime. We’ll just have to wait and see.
Back to my original question, “How long are people going to continue to fund this nonsense?” I would think some of the Republican mega-donors would sooner or later do a quick cost-benefit analysis and reach a rational conclusion that it no longer makes economic sense to burn money on this Trump bonfire. These mega-donors did not become wealthy by being stupid. At some point, they might conclude that it is more cost-effective, even if Joe Biden stays in office and pushes through some tax increases on the wealthy, to just cut their losses on Trump and back another candidate or regroup to fight another battle four years down the road. It seems like the Koch brothers have already made that calculation which is why they are backing Nikki Haley instead of Trump.
Trump will continue to fleece the MAGA base to help defer his legal costs and they have consumed so much of the Trump Kool-Aid that they are more than likely willing to follow him off the political and financial cliff. However, that said, if he is convicted in the upcoming Stormy Daniels payment trial scheduled to start March 25th, and actually becomes a convicted felon, one has to believe (I hope) that even amongst his diehard supports there might be those who feel that is a bridge to far and will begin to redirect their support.
I believe that will certainly be true of some of the wealthy Republican business leaders. I think the optics of corporate business leaders supporting a convicted felon for the presidency will ultimately cause at least some of them to pull their support from Trump. As the saying goes, nobody likes a loser and Trump isn’t exactly on a winning streak lately.
It is somewhat ironic that Trump originally went to Wahington to ‘drain the swamp.’ And now he finds himself in a swamp of his own making filled with legal quicksand and unintimidated prosecutorial crocodiles. Will someone throw him a rope? Or will people finally get tired of the chaos and wasted money and let nature take its course? Survival experts agree that wildly thrashing around is not the best way to escape quicksand or crocodiles! Then again, when did Trump ever take advice from anyone? No doubt Trump would offer that he knows more about quicksand and crocodiles than anyone else on the planet! We shall see!
