Week after week, the headlines have been humiliating for Donald Trump.
In the 2024 fundraising battle, the twice-impeached one-term loser is losing bigly to "Jacked-Up Joe."
A few examples:
- Trump and his allies scramble to close fundraising gap with Biden, Washington Post, February 23
- Biden’s cash edge widens, Trump’s lawyer fees pile up, CNN, March 21
- Trump can't match Biden's 2024 fundraising, Republican's campaign says, Reuters, March 28
Struggling to compete with the massive waves of support Biden is receiving from donors big and small—including at the President's recent headline-making, star-studded NY fundraising event—Trump is now leaning heavily on that most reliable source of GOP cash: fascist-friendly billionaires.
As The Washington Post reported on March 29, Trump is winning back the support of a group of aging billionaires who swore they would never vote for Trump again after his violent January 6 coup attempt.
Having thought about it some more, these flip-flopping fat cats have decided they would prefer to end democracy, destroy the planet, and condemn their granddaughters to a Handmaid's Tale-future if the alternative is paying slightly higher taxes.
The "greedy grandpas of the GOP" who are pledging cash and support for Trump in 2024 include:
- Activist food industry investor Nelson Peltz, 81.
- Entertainment mogul Isaac Perlmutter, 81
- Sugar baron José Fanjul, 80
- Hotel owner and aerospace entrepreneur Robert Bigelow, 79
- Oil tycoon Harold Hamm, 78
- Big-data billionaire (and funder of the 2016 anti-Hillary psy ops campaign) Bob Mercer, 77
- NY supermarket king John Catsimidis, 75
Trump—and his lawyers—are happily welcoming these unprincipled billionaires back into the GOP fold because, after all, there are only so many $60 Bibles and gold-painted sneakers that Trump's exhausted MAGA cult members can possibly buy.
Laughing at the poorly educateds
Some of the greedy grandpas re-opening their checkbooks for Trump in 2024 were likely within earshot of Trump as he yukked it up with friends at Mar-a-Lago in December 2017.
That's when Trump, celebrating the passage of his debt-exploding tax cuts, told his assembled guests, "You all just got a lot richer."
Meanwhile, the Trump tax cuts did little for the rest of us. Even before the Trump-induced Covid Collapse of 2020, the second and third years of Trump's failed first term were marked by failures on infrastructure, slowing job growth, a manufacturing recession, the worst farm crisis since the 1980s, and rising poverty in many Trump-voting counties.
In the Biden years, many of the billionaires now in Trump's corner—especially those in the food and energy sectors—have seized every opportunity to contribute to inflation (and inflame anti-Biden sentiment) through merciless price gouging.
We should no longer be surprised that billionaires who have built their wealth by gobbling up corporate welfare and government incentives, exploiting workers, and poisoning our air and water would continue to support Trump. These guys—they're almost all guys—have always supported policies that prioritize short-term advantages for the already-rich over investments in areas like education, healthcare and environmental protection.
But we can still be outraged by the fact that Trump's April 6 fundraiser will be co-chaired by another "greedy grandpa," the 82-year-old serial predator and former foreign agent Steve Wynn—who allegedly sexually harassed and assaulted women for decades and secretly worked for China during the last Trump administration. (For more on Wynn, read my article: Mocking the Me-Too Movement.)
Old men with outdated views about women and minorities shouldn't be allowed to dictate America's future
The calendar says it's 2024.
But across America—from the halls of Congress to the Supreme Court to America's C-suites to social media platforms to corporate media to the GOP donor class—the levers of power are still mostly in the hands of wealthy men who are disproportionately white and increasingly out-of-touch with the needs of the bottom 99%.
Trump himself is a racist, sexist, psychopathic man-child who spent most of his adult life cheating, stealing, scamming, feuding, insulting, and pussy-grabbing without facing any real consequences for his actions.
- He remains the most unrepentant sex criminal in America.
- His fines for sexual assault, defamation and fraud already top half a billion dollars.
- He still faces four separate criminal trials on 88 felony charges.
- Time after time, his ability to lie, bluff or bribe his way out of trouble only encouraged his criminal ambitions.
The "greedy grandpas of the GOP" who will gather at Mar-a-Lago on April 6 don't care about any of that.
They support Trump because they're just like him—selfish, intolerant, and stuck in the past, with no intention of ever updating their personal hard drives.
Like Trump, these old geezers have no new political ideas. No solutions to America's problems. No real vision for the future. They're happy with the status quo, locked into their outdated views about "the Blacks" and "the gays"—and content to watch men like Trump and Steve Wynn insult and abuse women with impunity.
These are not "conservatives" holding their noses to vote reluctantly for Trump.
They're showering him with cash in the full knowledge of how despicable and depraved he is.
Because they're just like him.
American democracy—and the future direction of the country, including education, healthcare, voting rights, women's rights, and LGBTQ rights—shouldn't be for sale to men like these.
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