Donald Trump is cashing out

| 11:10 pm EDT June 20, 2018
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Donald Trump has been trying to cash in on his illegitimate presidency from the very start. He’s spent his time in the White House running cons ranging from steering international diplomatic visitors to his own hotel, to bilking the Feds for golf cart rentals at his golf resorts. It’s been one naked cash grab after another, big and small. Now that his back is thoroughly against the wall, Trump seems to have something else on his mind: cashing out.

Trump is in full blown crisis today. He bet all his remaining chips on the idea that he could lock immigrant kids in cages and use them as hostages, in order to force Congress to hand him a few legislative accomplishments. It blew up in his face so badly, he had to sign an executive order this morning which waters down his own child cage scheme, and takes away most of his leverage with Congress. He’s now so frantically scrambling to figure out what to do next, he canceled tomorrow’s scheduled picnic with Congress at the last minute.

But even as Trump tries to figure out how to prevent his failed child cage gambit from snowballing and taking down his presidency before the week is over, he found time to fly all the way to Minnesota tonight to hold a rally for his imaginary 2020 reelection campaign. Sure, he loves these kinds of rallies, because he gets to say horrible things to his garbage supporters for an hour. But there’s a more important reason he does these rallies: he uses them as fundraisers for his “reelection” campaign, and then he spends the money paying his family’s legal bills.

How much cash did Donald Trump make from tonight’s rally? Certainly, not all that much. Yet, even in the midst of a presidency-sinking crisis that’s prompted him to cancel a picnic that he could have used as an opportunity to beg Republican Congressmen for support, he made a point of going out to Minnesota to collect his cash. His mindset appears to be that he may not be able to cash in on any more rallies next week or next month if things continue to explode in his face, so wants that cash now – even if it means taking his focus off a crisis that has him halfway out the Oval Office door. He’s no longer cashing in; he’s cashing out.