Trump Is Broke

Rich people are cheap. I have had some limited time with rich people, and holy hell are they are cheap (#notallrichpeople). But the Trump grift can only be understood by acknowledging that Trump is broke. Not precisely, of course, but broke in the sense that he lives paycheck to paycheck and at the mercy of creditors like most of the rest of us if at a grander if short-fingered scale.

President Donald Trump is using money donated to his reelection campaign and the Republican National Committee to pay for his lawyers in the probe of alleged Russian interference in the U.S. election, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The U.S. Federal Election Commission allows the use of private campaign funds to pay legal bills arising from being a candidate or elected official.

While previous presidential campaigns have used these funds to pay for routine legal matters such as ballot access disputes and compliance requirements, Trump would be the first U.S. president in the modern campaign finance era to use such funds to cover the costs of responding to a criminal probe, said election law experts.