Weekly Recap: Mar 16th - 22nd
Weekly Recap: Mar 16th - 22nd
A recap of the big political stories affecting the United States this past week.
Trump still hasn’t paid his fraud penalty, which continues to accrue interest until a bond is in place. Previously, Trump’s lawyer, Alina Habba, had said Trump had the money and paying the penalty wouldn’t be an issue. However, Trump’s lawyers have now changed their tune and said he is experiencing financial hardship. Their efforts were undermined by Trump's posting on Truth Social at the same time, saying that he had $500 million in cash but refused to pay since he believed he would win on appeal.
The penalty deadline is early next week, and Letitia James, the main prosecutor in the fraud case, is preparing to seize assets to cover the penalty. Ms. James could pursue Trump’s bank accounts and has also prepared the necessary paperwork to go after some of Trump’s properties in Westchester County.
Trump’s options here are limited. If he declared bankruptcy, it wouldn’t make the penalty go away, but it would buy him some time. Bankruptcy would also hurt his identity with his voting base as it would confirm he isn’t a billionaire and isn’t as successful as he claims. Trump can sell some properties, but again, that would expose how little value he actually has in the properties, and in the chance that Trump won his appeal, he would still have already sold the properties. The main path is a bond secured through a financial group, but Trump has come up short in finding anyone who will cover his judgment due to his lies about his net worth and history of not paying his debts.
America will find out what happens in a couple of days.
The fraud penalty isn’t Trump’s only problem right now. The Trump campaign managed to bring in $20 million in February, increasing its cash on hand to $42 million. The Biden campaign brought in $53 million and has a record-breaking $155 million in cash on hand.
Trump has been struggling with fundraising this year, and a review of his donations has revealed that he is over 200,000 donors below the number he had at this point in his last presidential campaign, highlighting his struggles to find support. It didn’t help that Trump told Nikki Haley donors that they weren’t welcome in his campaign. In the time since Haley dropped out, prominent Haley fundraisers and donors have switched to helping the Biden campaign.
The Trump campaign has also been spending more than it is bringing in for months as it attempts to cover Trump’s legal bills. Now that Lara Trump is co-chair of the Republican National Convention, the RNC has set aside fundraising to go to Trump and his legal fees before going to other Republican candidates.
Trump’s struggles don’t stop with money; they continue at the polls. Despite Nikki Haley having already dropped out, she continues to get a meaningful share of the votes in Republican primaries. Overall, Trump continues to struggle with 20% or more of Republican voters in each primary, which is consistent with polling that finds ~20% of Republicans who say they will not vote for Trump. Most of Trump’s former administration, including his Vice President Mike Pence, have also come out saying they will not support Trump’s bid for President.
Congress barely got its act together this week and finalized the budget that was due almost six months ago. Even still, parts of the government did technically shut down for a couple of hours early this morning while the Senate debated amendments to the budget proposed by Republicans. No amendments could truly be considered since the House had already passed the budget and then went on recess.
Despite continuing to call the issues at the border a crisis and continuing to fearmonger about migrants, the House of Representatives took another recess after only being back in session for one month since their previous recess. Foreign aid to Ukraine still hasn’t been addressed, although Speaker Johnson said the House would deal with the issue when they return in two weeks. Republicans have been obstructing Ukraine aid for months now, showing how little they care about the fight our ally is facing.
Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene was so upset that Speaker Johnson brought forward a budget that passed the House that she wrote up articles to vacate the Speakership.
Ms. Greene did not attempt to bring that motion to a floor vote before the recess and called it a “warning.” If ousting Johnson is brought to a vote and is successful, it would be the second Republican speaker to be pushed out of their position in less than six months. It took several weeks to find a replacement for McCarthy that Republicans could agree on, and it would potentially be even more difficult this time around.
James Comer and the Oversight Committee held another public impeachment inquiry, which did nothing to help their case and only highlighted the lack of evidence of any wrongdoing.
Democrat Representative Jared Moskowitz even called Comer and Jordan out directly by attempting to get them to hold an impeachment vote right then and there, which they refused to do.
Later, Comer went on Newsmax and stated that there wouldn’t ever be an impeachment vote because it wouldn’t pass. Instead they will wrap it up with some criminal referrals to the Department of Justice which are unlikely to yield anything since there still has been zero evidence of any crime presented by the committee.
