Last night at a major GOP donor conference, Trump was in fine form (for him), unleashing attacks on everyone who have not continued to give him full-throated support.  He attacked, by name, everyone who supported the Constitution by certifying the election for Biden.  He attacked all of his nemeses including Nancy Pelosi, “Barack Hussein Obama”, Anthony Fauci, and Brian Kemp of Georgia, the governor who refused to buckle to Trump’s demands that he throw his career out the window by illegally throwing the election to him.  But he saved his juiciest insults for Mitch McConnell calling him a “dumb son of a bitch” and a “stone cold loser.”  He also repeated all the same lies he’s told countless times, even attacking Mark Zuckerberg directly claiming that he spent $500 million on a “lockbox” that delivered every vote for “Saintly Joe Biden.”  He did praise a few, like Jim Jordan and the January 6 protestors, while lamely trying to distance himself from those who sacked the Capitol (even though he incited them to do so).

As he rails against all of his enemies, the GOP continues to struggle for its own identity and direction.  Even this weekend when donors gathered at the nearby Four Seasons, Trump was holding a competing “investor” conference at Mar a Lago for his big donors.  And to get face to face with him, the donors attending the Four Seasons conference had to trek to Trump’s property and pay his club for the privilege.  This weekend was symbolic of the turmoil that is tearing the GOP apart.  Even as his former staffers, including Mark Meadows and career grave robber, Stephen Miller form their own PACs and political operations.  While they all want the enthusiasm for Trump among the faithful, they don’t want Trump himself.  He’s insulted and pissed off all of the establishment Republicans, and has frozen dozens of 2022 and 2024 campaigns, especially for the GOP nomination for president next time around.

As Trump continues his multi-hundred million dollar grift, he’s unforgiving of what he perceives as disloyalty, and future candidates are lined up at the gates of Mar a Lago seeking the blessing of His Orangeness.  Not doing so will draw his wrath and most certainly a primary opponent.  He is desperately clinging to his control of the GOP, even as many maneuver to wrest that control from his iron grip.  In his wake he leaves nothing but toxic waste and destruction.

Matt Gaetz is spinning so fast he’s going to fall down.  After deny, deny, deny didn’t work, he’s now saying that the DOJ investigation into sex trafficking and crossing state lines with a minor for sex is all a Democratic plot to take him down.  The little detail he left out?  The investigation was begun last year when Trump and Bill Barr were still in office.  Oops.  Oh, and it gets worse.  While Gaetz continues to dig a deeper hole for himself, the NY Times is reporting that he had petitioned the Trump WH for a blanket preemptive pardon for himself a some unnamed associates for crimes they may have committed during his term in office.  Mercifully, WH counsel determined that request to be a non-starter.  Apparently, he did not disclose to the WH that he was under federal investigation at the time of the pardon request.  Oops, again.

Trump is a crook – we all know that (at least normal people do); he played his supporters from chumps and they fell for it.  A television game show host who wears heavy makeup, a weird hair weave, and has 5 kids from 3 wives, is accused of 2 dozen incidents of sexual assault, has 4,000 lawsuits against him and who’s being investigated by the NY AG, NYC DA, and the feds for everything from financial fraud, to tax fraud, to cooperating with foreign powers, and even inciting insurrection is not the ideal guy to lead the free world.  His followers, though, were actual chumps and we all paid for it with economic disaster, half a million pandemic deaths, and being labeled a pariah on the world stage.

As bad as all that is, it actually hit Trump’s supporters directly in the wallet, and I’m not talking about just the economy. During the 2020 campaign, Trump’s fundraising actually grifted his most loyal followers.  Trailing far behind the Dems in fundraising, Trump’s campaigned CHANGED the giving option on its website to default to recurring rather than one time.  What that meant was that if a donor wasn’t paying attention, whatever donation they made to Trump, the same amount was charged each week until the election, draining thousands of people’s bank accounts and running up credit card bills.  The only way to opt out was to wade through all the fine print and then check the box for one time donation.  That’s right, folks, Trump actually drained the bank accounts of supporters, using the money to pay for his campaign.

AND, if it’s even possible, it got worse.  Late in the campaign, the opt out box was made more opaque, and even buried another pre-checked box that DOUBLED the contribution. This scheme snagged scores of people including retirees, military veterans, and people couldn’t afford to donate thousands of dollars to anything, much less Trump.  One veteran donated $900, only to have his account drained by $8,000.

The effort was clearly intentional.  Trump grifted money from loyalists in the waning days of the campaign to prop up his spending.  Even worse, after his election loss, Trump’s disinformation campaign where he falsely claimed massive election fraud raised tens of millions of dollars that he then used to refund the money to donors he had defrauded before the election.  The total he had to refund?  Over $122 million.

As if anyone needed more evidence of Trump’s criminality and utter disregard for anyone but himself, this is it.  By deception, Trump shook down his unwitting loyalists for over $122 million to fund his own charade to cling to the presidency.  I’m just thankful the effort ultimately failed.

Last week, Trump sent a cease and desist letter to the RNC, NRCC, and the NRSC, ordering these organizations to stop using his name in their fundraising campaigns.  His takeover, and ultimate destruction of the GOP is now unavoidable.  The Republican party that we came to know and disagree with no longer exists; in 2016, the party handed trump the keys to the kingdom and he’s now burned the whole thing down.  He’s coopted the entire organization with all of its members, and now has cut off the money they were using to perpetuate themselves.

Think about it – CPAC this year was nothing short of a Trump coronation.  Every single speaker worshiped him, and declared him the only brand the GOP had.  Hell, they even had a golden idol of Trump and everyone wanted to be photographed standing next to it.  No Republican will oppose him on any policy or even publicly disagree with him.  Trump has so amassed support for himself with a radical (and violent) base that he’s cowed the entire Republican delegation at the local, state, and federal level.  After handing the party over to Trump, he’s now cut off the money so he can take it all for himself.

After coopting the party, he’s now using the same tactics he’s always used in life – lawsuits.  Trump’s primary tool, besides prolific lying, is to use lawsuits as a bludgeon to force capitulation to his demands. That didn’t work as president, but it most certainly works in private life, and now he’s turned it on those who have handed him their party and their fundraising apparatus.  Trump’s plan is now crystal clear – when he announced at CPAC last week that he’s not starting a third party, what he meant was there was no need to, because he was taking over the GOP.  Now party leaders have a decision; start a new party to siphon people away from Trump, or just lay low, hoping that one of the criminal cases against Trump sticks enough to take him out of the limelight.

This will be interesting for those of us on the outside of this soap opera to watch.  I can only hope it continues to weaken the GOP and its really bad ideas.

UPDATED: Oh, this is good…

White House press sec. Jen Psaki: "We don't take our advice or counsel from former Pres. Trump on immigration policy." https://t.co/kdimldYgxN pic.twitter.com/ohsrECEXfZ

— ABC News (@ABC) March 5, 2021

UPDATE: There have been questions who the reporter was.  It wasn’t an actual reporter, but one of the propagandists for Trump on OAN (One America News) which is not really news.  Her name is Chanel Rion (actually Chanel Nmi-Dayn Ryan. She changed her name when applying for credentials in the Trump WH).  Here’s the whole thing with the Rion video:

REPORTER: Americans are saying immigrant surges are happening under President Biden's watch

PSAKI: Who are the Americans?

REPORTER: The former president

PSAKI: Former President Trump?

REPORTER: Yes

PSAKI: We don't take our advice or counsel from former President Trump pic.twitter.com/I5d0utFNs9

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 5, 2021

Among the outrages committed by Trump during his 4 year infestation of the WH is the damage he did to the US’s global standing.  Not only did he turn against centuries-long alliances and quit global cooperation (the WHO, Paris Climate Accord, Iranian nuclear deal), he ceded global trade positions to China.  Oh, he talked tough and launched a disastrous trade war, but the real damage he did was allowing China to get a giant leg up on global trade, diplomacy, and even defense.   When Trump was boasting about his “America First” policy, other countries were moving into the vacuum and moving quickly.  After a smaller increase last year due to the pandemic, China announced today an increase in its defense budget of 6.8% as it modernizes and increases its military capabilities.  Xi Jinping, facing no real political opposition, has jumped into the void created by Trump’s bungling cementing not only China’s dominance, but also his own.

Xi saw Trump’s bungling as an opportunity for China, and he took it.  He let Trump think he did the “biggest deal ever”, when, in fact, he pantsed him in front of the entire world, and the only people who didn’t see it were MAGHats and Lindsey Graham.  His trade war and “deal” with China used his crack negotiating skills – he gave China everything it wanted.  The Brookings Institute put it best just before the 2020 election:

“Despite Trump’s claim that “trade wars are good, and easy to win,” the ultimate results of the phase one trade deal between China and the United States — and the trade war that preceded it — have significantly hurt the American economy without solving the underlying economic concerns that the trade war was meant to resolve. The effects of the trade war go beyond economics, though. Trump’s prioritization on the trade deal and de-prioritization of all other dimensions of the relationship produced a more permissive environment for China to advance its interests abroad and oppress its own people at home, secure in the knowledge that American responses would be muted by a president who was reluctant to risk losing the deal.”

Trump’s paper tiger presidency allowed bad actors like Iran, Russian, and China to actually do the opposite of what he boasted would happen.  These countries, without the vigilance of the allies lead by the US to hold them to account, increased their global dominance.  Russia has expanded its cyber operations targeting all global democracies, China stepped into the void to dominate Pacific trade, and Iran is once again expanding its nuclear capability.  Worse, our own allies have backed away from us, and Biden’s aggressive re-engagement has not calmed fears about who the US will elect in 2024 and simply return to Trumpism.  This problem is not going away any time soon, especially with a Senate that can’t even pass a bill that will provide some relief to our long haul misery caused by Trump’s incompetence that was magnified by politicians terrified of his violent supporters.  Remarkably, it seems that Trump’s greatest accomplishment was creating an environment in the US toxic enough to enable domestic terrorism to rise from the shadows out into the light of day for the entire world to witness.  Domestic terrorists espousing fascist ideology and violence doesn’t give our allies confidence in our long term viability and most certainly takes away our moral authority as the biggest proponent of democracy around the world.

The damage Trump did will be long lasting and far reaching.  Republicans, trying to protect their own hides, refuse to acknowledge the problem, and this problem can’t be fixed with more executive orders and the efforts of only one party.  I’m not hopeful.