The jig is up: Trump is going to take the money and run

U.S. President Donald Trump smiles as he signs energy-related executive orders, at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., April 8, 2025.

REUTERS/Nathan Howard
John Stoehr
September 03, 2026 | 04:12PM ET

There are amazing sentences in this Post report from this morning about the president not spending hundreds of millions intended to support Republicans in the coming midterms.

They are amazing sentences, because they exist in a mainstream news outlet owned by a billionaire who profits from his patronage of the White House, but also because they never quite land on the truth in plain sight, which is that Donald Trump is stealing the money.

Examples:

• "Trump has kept most of his super PAC money on the sidelines, causing Republican leaders to conclude it’s too late to fully deploy the cash in the midterms and that he intends to hold on to much of it for his own purposes."
• "Trump’s political advisers have been assuring anxious allies that MAGA Inc., the president’s super PAC that had more than $400 million on hand as of July 31, will come to the rescue ... But Republicans are increasingly skeptical and suspicious that Trump — who must personally approve the spending — has other ideas."
• "Some people around Trump have concluded that he has little interest in spending the bulk of his super PAC funds on this year’s midterm races."

"Theories" about what he's planning include:

• "protecting his political influence in the next presidential race by passing on the money to his chosen successor and saving up for legal fees."
• "post-presidential travel, events and pet projects, such as his library."

But here's the kicker:

• "Trump [believes his] ability to rake in massive donations will take a hit after the midterm elections, giving the president an incentive to keep hold of the money."
• Trump's "super PAC and funds for his inauguration, White House ballroom and Freedom 250 events ... have been inundated with donations from companies looking to get in Trump’s good graces, a dynamic that is likely to change as he becomes a lame duck."

In other words, the president has a feeling the jig is nearly up. As deranged, damaged and demented as he is, a lifetime of scamming tells him the end is near. If the Democrats take the House, and especially if they take the Senate, Trump will face the deadliest kind of exposure imaginable for the following two years. Over that time, the Republicans won't want him anymore. Worse, the rich won't want to "donate" to him or his "projects," that is, they will be less inclined to bribe him. The Post report may be an early indication that the Republicans and their donors are reading the writing on the wall. Trump, now age 80, is a depleted force.

It's time for him to take the money and run.

Of course, no sane person should shed a tear for the Republicans. They knew what they were doing from the day Donald Trump descended his gold-plated escalator more than a decade ago. Their lust for power and desire for control (of women, of minorities, of immigrants, of workers, of religion, of free thought and expression) drove them to his side. While everyone else knows that no one survives a deal with the devil, what makes the Republicans exceptional is their belief that they are the exception. Consequences for me! Disgraceful!

That said, if the only consequences of the next two years are Trump sitting on a pile of bribes and blood money, running down the clock, with some House Republicans looking for work, the party should be grateful. As it stands, the Republicans put a malignant narcissist in charge of the government, with the blessing of legal immunity by a lawless court. They might want to leave the president. They might envision a future without him. But to a malignant narcissist, there is no future. There is no leaving. And if you try, he will make you pay.

Consider what Anthony Scaramucci said some months ago. The White House communications director during Trump's first term told Bloomberg that up to now, Trump has actually constrained his contempt. That will change after the midterms, but especially in the run up to 2028, he said. "His personality is 'you guys were nothing before I got on the stage and I’ve carried you for the last 12 years, and the 2020 election was rigged and everyone knows it, and I should’ve won that election, and I’ve returned to the presidency carrying all the Republicans on my back, and when I leave ... you’re going back to nothing.'"

Milo Yiannopoulos: "I didn't really understand the physical reality of how institutionalized the brutality is in America. The manner in which they arrest you, they put you in manacles, everybody is arrested like an MS 13 gang member.
It was physically degrading. It was… pic.twitter.com/71yM6bmiGl
— Reggie B. (@reggiebblue) September 1, 2026

Scaramucci added that "we try to normalize him, sane-wash him, and put him into a bucket. 'Oh, he’s a Republican, he'll want a Republican to succeed him or he’ll want JD Vance or Marco Rubio.' He doesn’t want those guys to succeed him. Let's say he has a successful remaining two years of his presidency, which seems unlikely, but let's say he did. He wouldn’t want those guys taking any credit for anything that happened in the administration."

What would Trump do? Obviously, no one can say. Something similar to the J6 insurrection is one possibility. However, given the consolidation of Trump's control over the federal government, a more plausible option is doing to select Republicans what the administration did to Milo Yiannopoulos, the British propagandist and fascist who was one of Trumpism's greatest champions before getting on the wrong side of Laura Loomer, a Trump confidante.

ICE arrested him, brutalized him and humiliated him before deporting him. The law didn't protect Yiannopoulos from Trump's secret police any more than the law protected the East Wing from Trump's wrecking ball. Yiannopoulos' experience is a dramatic example of what a bureaucracy run by a vindictive sociopath can do in subtler ways to ensure that his enemies are reduced to nothing. If all he does is take their money, the Republicans will be lucky.