No, Donald Trump can’t magically come up with the money he just lost

| 9:46 pm EST February 16, 2024
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Donald Trump lost $364 million today to the state of New York, which has since turned out to be $453 million with interest. Trump also recently lost $83 million to E. Jean Carroll. That’s a combined $536 million, more than a half a billion dollars.

Now we’re suddenly hearing all kinds of tall tales on social media about how Trump is going to be able to come up with the money, pay the penalties, and keep his financial house of cards intact. But these storylines are all kind of chuckle worthy.

For starters, while Trump recently claimed that he had about $400 million cash on hand, this is a guy who constantly lies – especially about his finances. So any news outlets printing that $400 million number today, as if it were a reliable figure, are being complicit. People who are deeply in debt tend to have very little cash on hand, because everything that comes in the door goes right back out each month to make the minimum payments on that debt.

There is also a narrative today that Trump’s base is going to be able to crowdfund enough money to pay off these penalties for him. But that’s also laughable. In the entire election cycle, Trump’s base hasn’t donated enough money to pay off more than a fraction of what these two judgments add up to. And again, the donations Trump has already received throughout his campaign are likely already gone, as tends to happen when you’re in debt (and when you have tens of millions of dollars in legal bills). If Trump owed $10 million, maybe his base could come up with it. But he owes fifty times that much. It’s just not realistic at these dollar amounts.

Finally, someone leaked to the media this evening that Trump is about to make up to $4 billion in a Truth Social merger. This might be the most laughable storyline of all. Does anyone really think that a niche social platform is worth that much? By the way, Truth Social’s parent company is reportedly under criminal investigation for alleged financial fraud. And given the timing, you have to ask yourself just who it is that’s telling the media tonight that Trump is about to become magically rich, hours after Trump just became very poor.

Whenever Donald Trump takes yet another devastatingly ugly blow, there are always these contrarian hot takes about how he’s going to magically get away with it all. But these storylines are never realistic, and never end up saving him. It’s all just noise.