"Donald Trump narrowly winning two presidential elections in conditions highly favorable to the out party may suggest the conclusion that playing dirty is always good politics, but I don’t think that this is true. Trump’s illegal taxpayer-funded campaign ads are very bad, but I continue to think that to the extent that they matter they will be a net negative for Republicans [snip]
"The thing about this is that Trump has dark money coming out of his ass — there’s absolutely no reason his Riefenstahl-for-even-bigger-morons ads couldn’t have been self-funded. The looting of the public fisc was an end in itself. But it’s not a great idea to remind people of your endless corrupt self-dealing during the football game while it costs $110 to fill up their truck." -- Scott Lemieux, LGM, on "Counterproductive Authoritarianism." The American public sees what's going on and is overwhelmingly against the Malignant Fascist's taxpayer-funded political ads. After near universal condemnation, it caused an extremely rare walk-back from the MF, who claims those ads will be funded by one of his PACs going forward. (The Democratic Party is suing him to have the government reimbursed for the ads already run that the MF still wants taxpayers to pay for.) In the meantime, the ads have served the purpose of reminding voters of the MF's heavy-handed authoritarianism (ad content and style) and his corruption (ads method of funding), it sends a strong (though unintended) message of a crooked, out-of-touch politician willing to spend millions of tax dollars on self-promoting projects (see also, the Golden Ballroom/bunker, the Triumphal Arch/sniper tower, and various building re-namings).
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