Desperately Seeking Dollars

GOP’s Future Turns Dire As Trump Turns Off Tap

WASHINGTON, DC — Now that Donald Trump has turned off the tap, the GOP is freaking out.

Trump’s lawyers have sent cease and desist letters to all the major fundraising organs of the GOP — Republican National Committee, National Republican Congressional Committee, National Republican Senatorial Committee — forbidding them from using his face or name to raise money.

“They tell themselves that he’s angry about being impeached, again,” said a low-level staffer of Trump 2024, speaking without attribution for fear of reprisal. “That he’ll get over it and turn on the tap again in a month or two.”

“It’s not true,” he cautioned. “That money? It’s gone. All gone. He’s keeping it for himself, his golf clubs, his hotels, his kids, his bitches, you name it.”

This stunning reversal in the fundraising fortunes of the Grand Old Party comes on the heels of the death of mega-donor Sheldon Adelson, the new ambivalence of mega-donors Robert and Rebekah Mercer, as well as the Koch Brothers, who are angered by the January 6 insurrection, as are many other traditional supporters of the GOP.

The new financial weakness places a great deal of doubt on the outcome of 2022. This, at a time when the GOP confidently hoped to flip the House and recapture the Senate in the next cycle, banking on the American tradition that the President’s party typically loses a number of Congressional seats in off-year elections.

Some of the party’s more creative minds were heard tackling the problem last night at the Capital Grille on Pennsylvania Avenue, legendary watering hole of the Republican Party.

Inspired by the fabled pair of life size bronze lions flanking the restaurant’s entrance, one staffer — who refused to confirm that she does development work with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s office — roared out her defiance.

“What?!” she exclaimed over their $50 aged beef porterhouse steaks, “Are we a bunch of whiny Democrats now? Let’s work the problem!”

And work the problem they did, indeed. As could be seen by the discarded napkins full of scribblings left behind as they staggered out long after midnight. A partial list of their new fundraising ideas follows…

• Ask for spare change on the corners of Wall Street
• Slap a valet parking toll on foreign cars at private clubs
• Fine a Democrat $25 every time one asks why a person isn’t wearing a COVID mask on the Hill
• Double the mooring fees for yachts over 300 feet long
• Charge a per head servant duty on all mansions sporting more than 17 bathrooms
• Levy a surcharge on all golf memberships
• Assess an excise on all Gulfstream private airplanes
• All fees above to be reimbursed through another generous capital gains tax cut upon recapturing the House and Senate funded…
• Through lavish reforms to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security

“And they say,” one staffer was heard to growse while stiffing the check girl as he picked up his Bergdorf Goodman coat, “that we’re better at cutting taxes than creating them.”

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