Trump Is Running His Campaign Like He Ran His Businesses
In 2016, Donald Trump’s campaign ran on a shoestring, and won. He planned a different 2020: It would be the biggest, richest, most expensive presidential campaign ever. But with just two months to go before the election, the president has burned through massive amounts of money, and now his campaign is at a cash disadvantage to the Democratic nominee, Joe Biden.
This is an amazing feat—how did the campaign blow through nearly $1 billion to so little effect?—yet also inevitable. The Trump 2020 campaign seems to be running on the same principle as many of the president’s commercial endeavors: Trump gets richer, while other people’s money gets lit on fire. This was how some of the president’s real-estate ventures and casinos operated, and so it’s unsurprising that it’s how he’s chosen to run his campaign—and the country.
Few things get Trump peeved faster than bringing up the four times his companies declared bankruptcy. Chris Wallace of Fox News learned this in 2015, when, during a GOP primary debate, he asked Trump whether voters should trust him to run the government, given his private track record.
“I have never gone bankrupt, by the way.—he’d merely used the nation’s bankruptcy laws to his advantage.
