Remember when Donald Trump said he was going to completely self fund his campaign so that he wouldn’t be beholden to anyone other than the American people?
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Those were good times. On Wednesday The Donald did a complete 180 and announced that he will be actively raising money for his campaign in order to compete with Hillary; “I’ll be putting up money, but won’t be completely self-funding“ Trump said.
Trump has since launched a fundraising operation, and just as ironic as going back on his self-funding promise, has selected former Goldmanite and current CEO of hedge fund Dune Capital Steven Mnuchin as his Finance Chairman.
Trump will now be relying on donors and super PAC’s to help fend off Hillary (presumably, if she doesn’t get indicted before then) this fall. The same super PAC’s he called his opponents’ “puppets” for relying on throughout the GOP primary.
The effort of one major pro-Trump super PAC – that the Trump campaign will be relying on in the new post-self-funding-world – has already hit a speed bump.
The newly hired chief strategist of The Great America PAC (formerly TrumPAC until Trump made them change the name back when he cared about staying true to his word), Jesse Benton, was just found guilty on felony charges for buying former Iowa state senator Kent Sorensen’s vote for Ron Paul.
Benton has ties to Ron and Rand Paul, as well as Mitch McConnell throughout his previous stints.
It’s unclear what impact the conviction will have on Benton’s role with the Great America PAC, but what is clear is that this entire ordeal has just made Hillary’s job a little bit easier. Clinton will now be able to point to the fact that Trump not only isn’t self-funding, but those who support him are crooked (not that the same couldn’t be levied against her of course).
In the aftermath of Trump’s announcement that he is hiring a hard-core Wall Street legacy fundraiser, it does lead some to question whether voters even pay attention to such apparent hypocricy, or if the narrative of Donald as a true outsider who is only interested in the average American – instead of the banks and wealthy individuals – will continue to hold.
via http://ift.tt/1TsHRmD Tyler Durden