[image_credit]REUTERS/Erin Scott[/image_credit][image_caption]Former President Donald Trump[/image_caption]
Today’s excuse is to pass along a story that ran over the weekend in New York Times and elsewhere. Just when we thought we couldn’t be shocked by such things, we learn that the Trump 2020 campaign organization bilked his own supporters out of tens of millions of dollars by getting them to unwittingly authorize regular withdrawals from their bank accounts and credit cards when the donors – again, I repeat, Trump’s own supporters – had meant to make a single finite contribution.
The details, as reported by the New York Times on Saturday, are available here.
Read the whole Times piece. It should make your blood boil. But until you have time for that, here’s a quick overview:
The Trump campaign sent out an online fund-raising request that enabled willing donors to authorize a donation to be debited from their bank or credit card accounts.
But, unless they were incredibly thorough and read the hidden terms of the agreement, they were authorizing not only regular monthly contributions of the same amount but even – this is beyond Snidely Whiplash stuff – for the amount of the original unintended recurring donation to be doubled after a while. And in September, “monthly” changed to “weekly.”
Some of those who discovered the ripoff have been able to get their money back, which is good. I assume some lawyer helped design this fraud in a way that avoids criminal penalties for those who perpetrated it. But someone should go to prison for a fraud this bold and despicable.
When one eagerly deals with a known conman and professional fraudster, one should expect to bilked. It’s not like Trumpolini’s supporters weren’t told what his entire career was all about. Then of course there is the old saying, “A fool and his money….”, etc.
The “unwitting” supporters of the Trump crime family should count themselves lucky their “one time” online donation wasn’t rolled into weekly donations for the (long-planned) Trumpolini Insurrection….indeed, are they sure they aren’t STILL “donating”?
The creaky, cranky GOP money machine is really taking a hit these days: defraud the little guys, alienate the big guys like Delta, Coke, Dell.
Mitch McConnell is probably so angry at these big corporations that he will support raising their taxes to rebuild infrastructure to benefit everybody. Well, no, that’s a bridge too far.
When the party is almost entirely focused on unending dislike and division these things will happen.
Never better illustrated than by the recent surge in Fauci attacks: a nerdy little scientist who has devoted his life to public service (and been very effective at it) is now topping their enemies list. How twisted do you have to be to get to that conclusion?
It’s very hard to know where campaign finance will go. Obviously the small donor model has now proven its effectiveness, even to the point of Trump’s fraudulent grifting of his disciples. Equally obvious, the illegitimate Trump Court majority will never permit any meaningful reform of campaign finance. Corporations have already begun to move out of the Repub/”conservative” donation sphere, and are more “bipartisan” in their giving.
It’s kind of comical for Mitch to have been all-in on the idea that “corporations are people”, too, when it came to the terrible Citizens United and political contributions, but now when those corporate “people” start voicing opinions on, say, the return of Jim Crow by Repubs, they are threatened with some form of retaliation by Mitch. To Repubs, corporations should pay, accept all the goodies and and keep their mouths shut on Repub rural minority rule measures….one can’t look a gift horse in the mouth!
I’m sure you’ve seen that Mitch and the “conservative” movement are seeking to appropriate the “Big Lie” label onto Dem efforts to draw attention to their vote suppression efforts in places like GA. This shows that correctly describing Trumpolini’s claims of “election theft” as the “Big Lie” are drawing blood. This follows the usual path of dim “conservatives” having to rely on progressive cleverness and imagination. We’ll see if our hapless corporate media will let this gambit succeed.
I’d also note that the corporations now claiming to be concerned about (utterly baseless) efforts to make voting harder (especially for non-whites) maybe should have said something before GA Repubs passed their Jim Crow Jr. law. It’s not like it wasn’t crystal clear that the Repubs of Gerrymandered Georgia weren’t serious about passing it, both to restrict minority turnout and wrest control over elections. Denouncing a vote suppression and election control measure after it passes is a “day-late-and-a-dollar-short” feebleness.
I wonder what Mitch has to say about big corporations and his father-in-law?
The fact that Trump is, and always will be, a grifter is old news.
The only novelty will be seeing how his ardent supporters step up to defend him (and no, that other thing that Democrat did that one time is a deflection, not a defense).
There is no bottom with this guy.
There really is no challenge to Trump’s title as the world’s greatest grifter. Do you suppose fox & other right-wing media are reporting this story? I wonder how many of the fleeced haven’t realized how much they’ve been overcharged?
For those of you who’ve not clicked through, the practice was to pre-set multiple opt-in checkboxes to setup recurring monthly campaign contributions. You might go & intend to donate $100 to the campaign & later find additional transactions for Trump’s birthday, and that your donation was setup as weekly. Yikes!
Now there’s a new checkbox!!
This time the NRCC is getting in on the action, but the text in the recurring donation box says they’ll report you to Trump as a DEFECTOR if you don’t submit monthly recurring donations.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/07/us/politics/republicans-donations-trump.html
Seems like it could drive down donations overall, but then I’ve been wrong about these people before…
As others are saying, it’s not news that Trump is (and always has been) a conman operating on the edge of the law.
The scary thing is that a third of the country believes him.
In general, this sort of fraud should be met with a strong federal response.
On the other hand, a fool and his money…
Every event like this knocks another 1% point off of Trumpian loyalty.
Since he does this at least monthly he will be at his terminal approval rate of 15% by election day 2022.
I did not feel sorry for those greedy people who were all too willing to believe the unbelievable returns offered by Bernie Madoff. Nor do I have much sympathy for victims of this fraud.
“Despicable” is a fair one-word definition of Donald Trump, and he continues to prove that part of Twain’s line that “You can fool some of the people all of the time…”.
I just think of all the money that won’t be reclaimed. So many people will be unaware of what happened, or too embarrassed to do anything about it. Class action suit?
It’s not embarrassment that will stop them from making claims, it’s fealty. The money ultimately went to the Great Helmsman. Their value systems prevent them from saying he did anything wrong getting that money, even though it would have been wrong for anyone else in the world to do it.
In other words, the domestic assault victim will drop the charges against the abuser!
The victim will be incensed that anyone dared to think anything negative about the assaulter, and ask what about Ted Bundy?
Not exactly on the subject here, but the Trump donation scan was first brought to light by a MN contributor. Curious, I looked at the MN GOP site and was greeted by an image of 4 diverse, hip / woke looking young people all decked out in MAGA gear:
https://mngopstore.com/
Thought to myself: “Not your typical MAGA crowd, how much did they pay them for the shot”
Through the wonders of Google Image search, discovered they did not: just took an image for a clothing line and redressed them in MAGA gear:
https://www.facebook.com/zazanoshop
They could not even find 4 representative folks to sell their wares: had to go the devious and underhanded route.
I guess the basket of deplorables did not contain the diversity they were looking for….
OK Edward, you get the Sherlock Holmes award for the day, great catch!
So is anyone going to let the Zazano Shop folks know about this?
Awesome Work!
Hilarious Edward! It is possible that the base photo is a stock photo you can buy, or the stock company itself will do the desired photoshopping… but still.
Sorry, but I can’t summon one bit of sympathy for anyone who got taken by this. If they hadn’t figured out what the great leader was all about by then, they were not paying attention. We still have more than a few folks flying their Trump 2020 flags around here. They could easily replace them with a flag stating, “I’m very gullible.”
And birds gotta fly,
but don’t walk under them.
Where are the usual suspects defending Trump and the GOP? Why is no one making the usual equivalence arguments, like “but Hunter Biden,” “but BLM fundraisers,” etc.?
Could it be that ever-faithful Trump loyalists have discovered an issue on which they DON’T agree with him?
Pity that instead of caging children, ignoring a deadly pandemic, disgracing Christian ideals, lying with nearly every waking breath and inciting an insurrection, it took the orange man’s hand in their wallets to upset their blind loyalty. If, in fact, it has done so.
Hilariously, in order to “uncheck the box” on these Repub fundraising tactics, a supporter apparently has to affirm some statement that denies and disavows the Great Leader and his “agenda”. “I say unto you that, before the cock crows, you will deny me three times…” Name that quote!
This is a party with total contempt for the (small donor) rubes that support it. Donate at your peril, Team Conservative…