The Slush Fund

Trump continues to spit on the republic.

I can’t even begin to describe how tired I am of thinking that I could write about something interesting that y’all might not be thinking about only to find that Donald Trump did something – again – so outrageous that I feel as if it would be inappropriate to just ignore it.

Which is why I’m stuck with writing about Trump’s newly announced slush fund of government money that he intends to give to the January 6 criminals he pardoned at the beginning of his current presidency.

Let’s see how many short reactions I can come up with

One: It may not be the worst Trump story of the last 24 hours (from when I’m writing in the afternoon; who knows what will happen by the time you read this.) There’s increasing evidence that he’s been purchasing stocks and then using the presidency to increase their value. Then there’s his incoherent Iran actions – let’s not call his impulses a “strategy.” And then there’s how his incoherent China “policy” has been hurting the US and endangering Taiwan. The slush fund might be worse than those, but I’m not really sure.

Two: Yes, this is Trump essentially stealing money from the US treasury to give out to his friends, allies, or perhaps just to himself. That’s what this is.

Three: I’ll leave the question of legality to the lawyers (start with Sam Bagenstos here), but it’s certainly unconstitutional, impeachable, and flat-out corrupt. Can it be stopped in the courts? No idea. Could Congress stop it? Sure, if they really wanted to, but with Republican majorities that seems unlikely before next year, when the money will presumably be out the door.

Four: I agree with those who say that it’s wrong to call this a “settlement” of Trump’s phony lawsuit against the IRS. The lawsuit was going nowhere, and at least as far as I can see it’s at best a flimsy pretext for Trump to simply assert authority not granted to presidents by the Constitution.

Five: Does Chief Justice John Roberts bear some of the responsibility for this? He does! Trump might have done it anyway, but the idea that presidents are personally immune from legal consequences for things they do – legal or not, constitutionally authorized or not – in their official capacity certainly makes it a lower-risk move.¹

Six: The big politics news before the slush fund was announced was a New York TImes/Sienna poll showing Trump’s approval numbers continuing to fall; over the weekend, Trump dropped below -23.0 approval at FiftyPlusOne and -20.0 per Silver.² The relevant point here: Take a look at those charts and it’s actually not obvious that there’s a big Iran/gas prices effect; it appears just as likely that there’s just been steady erosion from January 20, 2025. I don’t know; perhaps there are a whole bunch of equally damaging events that show up in more or less regular increments. At any rate, this all started with Trump’s high-profile pardons of those January 6 criminals. You never want to predict public opinion, especially any large effect, but let’s just say that a $2B slush fund is unlikely to be popular – and putting the insurrectionists back in the news is unlikely to help him and the Republicans, either.

Seven: Is this part of a plot to steal the 2026 or 2028 elections? It may have that effect (not that he’ll succeed, but that some thugs will feel even more emboldened to attempt all sorts of thugery). But I strongly discourage anyone from thinking that Trump is acting strategically. If you think he does, I recommend thinking more about his ballroom, his arch, his plan to paint the Reflecting Pool, and more – all things that are terribly unpopular, but that he keeps in the news constantly.

Eight: The best explanation as always is that he believes that winning the presidential election means winning a prize – the United States of America, his to do what he wants – when in fact he’s been hired to do a job and he has over three million bosses. This causes constant trouble for him as he flops and flails at presidenting. It causes no end of problems for the nation because he’s oblivious to the damage that he does, and he pretty much ignores the incentives built into the job.

Nine: I suppose I should mention somewhere in here that it’s preposterous to claim that prosecutors went after the people who attempted to steal the 2020 presidential election, Trump included and the January 6 defendants included, as some sort of partisan vendetta. One certainly can argue about the proper charges for violently breaking into the Capitol, but overall no one seriously thinks that there were no crimes committed.

Ten: Seriously, Governor Polis?

Eleven: Is this slush fund “the most brazenly corrupt action in US Presidential history”? Plausible! Is it true that “If you ranked the 1000 most corrupt things ever done by an executive branch official in the history of the United States something like 950 of them would have happened since Jan 20 2025”? Also plausible! I’ve said before that if you look at any presidential scandal in US history that Trump has one that’s similar only worse, but I’m really not sure I can come up with a good comp for this one, which means he’s not only topping other presidents on their own ground but inventing entirely new forms of presidential misbehavior.

Twelve: Should Democrats press to impeach him over it? I’ll say the same thing I’ve said before: attempting to impeach without the votes is basically a stunt, but stunts aren’t necessarily bad. There’s no broader importance, though; the impeachment part of it would be a one day story.

Thirteen: What I do think Democrats should start doing, however, is thinking about what a real impeachment trial in the Senate next year would look like if they wind up with the votes to make that happen. None of the three modern impeachments produced very much of a real trail, with witnesses and testimony and all that, so it’s not really clear what one would look like. Now is the time to start preparing. This only matters if Democrats wind up with at least 51 Senators next year, but there’s a very real possibility that will happen.

Fourteen: And I’ll say again: It doesn’t really matter whether House Democratic leadership thinks an impeachment is smart politics or not. Trump will keep doing things to force the issue. That’s what happened twice during his first term, and he’s been a lot less subtle about it this time around.

1. It’s not just the idiotic and anti-Constitutional immunity decision. This is also to some extent a consequence of the entire idea of the “unified executive,” a doctrine that bears no relationship at all to the design, origins, and actual history of the Constitutional system.

2. The approval numbers from NYT/Sienna are consistent with everything else out there; what was a surprise was a 10 percentage point gap in the “generic ballot” question. That’s way off the current Democratic lead, which is only 5 or 6 percentage points. On the one hand, definitely trust the averages, not single polls. On the other hand…it does have me wondering what the models say about state legislatures if the national tide favors Democrats by 10 percentage points this November. Or 12 points. Or 15. I still have no real idea what the plausible range is at this point.