Chunk 30: Please send help/money.
Come 3 November, Donald Trump will have been running for reelection as president of the United States for a record 3 years, 9 months and 13 days, or, if you like, 1,382 days.
That’s because, on the very day he was inaugurated, Trump did something unprecedented (a sign of things to come) and filed paperwork for his reelection. Why so early? So that he could begin immediately raising money for his second term in office.
And, at least initially, it worked. While Joe Biden - still emerging as the Democratic nominee - was essentially broke (raising just $8.9 million in January and $18 million in February), Trump had nearly $200 million on hand. In fact, he raised a total of $1.1 billion in the 18 months from January 2019 to July of this year.
Except there was a problem: he was burning through cash, some $800 million of it, and in some very questionable ways. Running ads on Fox News in Washington DC (that Trump has no chance of winning) but that his team thought would pep his spirits when he saw them; $156,000 on planes pulling aerial banners (and those people are essentially Carnies in the sky); and $110,000 on magnetic pouches used to store donors mobile phones so they couldn’t secretly film or record Trump at fancy fundraisers.
In the meantime, supercharged by his clever decision to put Kamala Harris on the ticket, Biden’s fundraising boomed. I won’t bog you down in endless figures, but these two sets best illustrate the point: this September, Biden raised $383 million to Trump’s $248, a $135 million difference at the very pointy end of the race. And when every dollar is now going into dragging out every vote, it’s a significant advantage.
So the upshot is, Trump’s in financial trouble. And I don’t mean personally (that’s a different matter entirely). I mean electorally. But if you’re feeling sorry for him, thankfully, there are some very nice items on his website that you may want to consider buying.
For the dog that has everything, how about a Make America Great Again collar and lead? And please ignore the photo of the dog in question. The fact that it appears to be looking upwards as though it’s contemplating hanging itself from a tree branch is entirely coincidental.
That’s right lawyers, he wants you. And as you can tell by the expression on his face, it’s not in the creepy way.
Trump has always been an upstanding family man. He has, after all, started families with three different women (that we know of), and here, he is clearly encouraging men to commit to the father/son time that Donald Jnr and Eric so obviously lacked. What there is to actually read in a colouring book is another matter …
There’s something very meta about a pen with a signature on it, isn’t there? You almost don’t know which came first; it’s like looking into time itself. But at least if you buy this Donald Trump branded Sharpie …
… you’ll then be free to mark up your very own hurricane charts. Who could resist that temptation?
And finally, if running for reelection for 1,382 days has finally driven you to drink, why not consider these lovely matching tumblers? With only 16 days to go, I’ll leave it up to you to decide if they’re half full or half empty.
