Our View: Fundraiser to challenge election results is the real fraud
Donald Trump is hardly the first politician to raise money to retire campaign debt, pay legal bills or create a political action committee. But at least his predecessors had the decency to tell potential donors what they were up to.
Since his loss to Joe Biden, Trump has been on a fundraising tear, pulling in an astounding $170 million in contributions under the guise of challenging the election results, according to The Washington Post. “We are fighting against the Democrats, Mainstream media, AND Big Tech all at once,” reads one of his many solicitation emails. “They want you to think this Election is over, but they are wrong.”
The fine print, however, makes clear that donations up to $5,000 would go to a new Trump PAC called Save America, and that a huge chunk would fund the Republican National Committee.
It is fitting that the Trump presidency would end on another lie. It began with him claiming — falsely — that he had won the popular vote in 2016. It concludes with him claiming — again falsely — that voter fraud in multiple states, many of them controlled by Republicans, denied him a second term. Both lies are unnecessary. Under our system, the Electoral College, and not the popular vote, determines the presidency. And if Trump now said he was raising money for a variety of purposes that included setting up a PAC and maintaining a presence in politics after leaving office, he would have little trouble with donors.
To some degree, this latest fabrication is to be expected. Trump lies the same way that people smoke cigarettes — because they are incapable of not doing so. But there is a sense of urgency, even desperation, to this latest lie.
Trump knows that history has not been kind to presidents turned out of office. In the century before this election, incumbents were on the ballot 16 times and only lost on four occasions. None of the four presidents who lost — George H.W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford and Herbert Hoover — remained a force in politics.
Trump is aware of this. He is also aware that while he remains immensely popular among large segments of the Republican base, there are plenty in the GOP who want to move on. They saw Trump more as a means to an end, rather than an end itself.
Now out of office, highly polarizing and unable to serve more than one term were he to make a political comeback, Trump is far from ideal as a face of the Republican Party going forward.
In his latest fundraising blitz, Trump is out to keep this narrative from taking hold and prevent erosion of his support at the edges. The ability to give money to Republican candidates is vital to that cause. Even more vital is Trump’s effort to maintain an air of invincibility, all evidence to the contrary.
After an almost comically inept career in business that saw multiple bankruptcies, Trump turned to reality television to rewrite the script. Now, after losing an election, he is turning to unreality in a bid to rewrite the script.
In the end, though, there is a word for people who lose elections. It is the same for people who repeatedly fail at business. We call these people losers.