Donald Trump ‘Can’t Believe’ The Washington Post Knows He’s Ripping Off Unemployed Nannies

Donald Trump is up early and he’s pretty fired up about an article in the Washington Post. But not in the way you might think. Here’s the President:

Ok, so for one thing, this is like the jobs reports and the econ data. It’s either “fake news” or it isn’t “fake news” – but if you want to maintain any shred of credibility, you can’t say it’s fake when it’s unfavorable and real when it’s favorable. Recall this from the late Sean Spicer:

Got that? Same thing here. “In the past the President has referred to the Washington Post as “fake news”, does the President believe this story is real but the others aren’t?”

But let’s leave that aside because even though the hypocrisy there is glaring to the rest of us, to Trump that’s what counts as “nuance” so he can’t be expected to understand it, although don’t say we didn’t try:

well, they're either fake news or they're not, Sir.

so is this one fake too? or are only the negative articles fake?

— Heisenberg Report (@heisenbergrpt) October 7, 2017

The second we saw that tweet we knew the chances of Trump having actually read the whole Washington Post article were probably zero. Sure enough, if you read the whole thing, the message is just as clear as it is sad: small campaign contributions (i.e. contributions from working class people who definitely can’t afford it and definitely don’t benefit from Trump) have changed the game for the RNC.

“Fueled by a string of fundraising appeals from President Trump to his supporters, the Republican Party is on track to raise more money from small-dollar contributions than it has collected in more than a decade,” the WaPo article reads. Here’s more:

The influx of cash from Trump’s base is helping the GOP amass a major advantage as the parties prepare to battle for control of Congress in the 2018 elections, with the Republican National Committee pulling in nearly twice as much money overall as its Democratic counterpart this year.

The RNC’s success with small donors illustrates how the Republican Party, long a center of the political establishment, has managed to turn Trump’s anti-Washington message to its advantage.

And it shows how Trump’s base, angered by the sense that the president is being treated unfairly, is helping to redefine a party that has long cultivated rich contributors.

This year, more than $40 million of the $68 million in direct contributions to the RNC by the end of August came in donations of $200 and less – nearly 60 percent of contributions, campaign finance data shows.

Of course small donors have no conception of where their money is going.

One of these small donors is Martha Adams 70, a retired speech pathologist from Austin, who told the Post that when she donated to the joint committee, she intended for her money to go to the president. “I tried to give just to him, because I think he knows best what to do,” she said. “I don’t know if I really meant to give it to the RNC.”

Right. Same thing for Gwynne Abrams, an unemployed nanny in Henderson, Nev., who gave $78 to the joint committee. “I’m not giving to the Republican Party, really,” she said, and her rationale is simple: “[the GOP has] done nothing since they’ve been in control of the Senate and House.”

But see that’s the thing: she is giving to the Republican Party – “really“.

As the Post reminds you, “the national party gets a cut of donations flowing to the Trump Make America Great Again Committee, a joint fundraising committee that primarily benefits Trump’s reelection campaign but currently gives a quarter of its proceeds to the RNC.”

How would small donors know that? Well, here’s how:

The joint committee notes its RNC affiliation at the bottom of donor emails.

So: don’t read the fine print.

Here’s something else the “unemployed nannies” and “retired speech pathologists” giving away $78 dollars at a time might not know:

The committee recently confirmed it is helping pay for the legal fees Trump has incurred because of the Russia investigations.

Now we know that sounds absolutely horrible, but don’t worry because according to the committee, “those costs are being covered by a legal account financed by wealthy donors, not small contributions.”

“Believe me.”

So just to be clear: small donors like Gwynne and Martha are being duped into giving money to the RNC which, as Noam Chomsky explains, is hard at work trying to screw the Gwynnes and Marthas of the world (the only saving grace being that Republicans are so inept at getting anything done that their platform is stymied).

Not only that, some of the money being sent in by small donors is being used to finance Trump’s lawyer fees – even as they swear there’s some kind of Chinese wall (there are so many ironies in using that descriptor it would be difficult to list them all) between money from “wealthy” donors and small donors, with contributions from the latter not being used to help Trump defend himself against charges of collusion. Again: “believe me.”

This would be bad enough if Trump actually were fighting for the interests of these small donors. That is, given that Trump and his family almost unquestionably colluded with The Kremlin to win the election, it would still be egregious for him to be financing his defense using nanny fees from Gwynne. But he’s not fighting for Gwynne and Martha. In fact, he’s pushing a tax reform agenda that quite clearly benefits the wealthy and based on all the evidence available (which admittedly isn’t complete because he won’t release his most recent tax returns for fear of what they would show about Russia), would benefit him to the tune of $1.1 billion. That’s a lot of nannying.

Just to drive home how truly sad this is, we’ll leave you with two more excerpts from the Post:

Chris Chavez, a 20-year-old who runs a small vending business in Scottsdale, Ariz., and grew up watching Trump on the reality show “The Apprentice” with his father made his first political donations ever to support Trump’s campaign last year and has contributed about $50 this year, including $3 to the RNC as part of a contest to meet the president at a rally in Arizona in August. He won and got to meet Trump backstage.

“My heart just stopped,” Chavez recalled. “I would donate to his 2020 campaign in a heartbeat.”