It’s Not a Payoff; It’s a Bribe
What you need to know about Trump’s $1.8 billion slush fund
Before she retired several years ago, a family member of mine worked in the accounts receivable department of one of the larger elevator companies in America. She managed a number of the company’s larger national relationships, handling installations and yearly maintenance contracts, which means she had dealings with Trump properties on an almost daily basis. And there was one thing that was almost universally true about Trump properties.
Now, this is something that has become widely known over the years and demonstrated over and over again by pretty much everyone dumb enough to go into business with Trump or aid him in any way. But for some reason, when we discuss Trump’s new $1.776 billion slush fund – which he created by suing himself – we again and again refer to it as a tool to “pay back” the J6 terrorists for their work on Trump’s attempted coup back in 2021. This is a mistake, and it’s potentially a significant one at that.
Trump is not paying J6 terrorists for anything they have already done because, as has been previously established, Trump never pays his bills. The only way to be paid for any work done for a Trump entity is to be paid in advance. Anyone who does the work first will get stiffed on the backend, whether we’re installing an elevator or storming the Capitol. So the slush fund cannot be payment for services rendered; it can only be an advance payment for the political violence Trump will need to steal the election in November and beyond.
The same logic should be but typically is not applied to the pardons given to the J6 terrorists as well. They weren’t pardoned as payment for their illegal acts, which is how the pardons were framed all over corporate media. Instead, they were pardoned so they would be available to commit political violence in the future. After all, when Trump calls someone a traitor on his crappy social media app, or when he complains about a judge ruling against him, he needs someone to make the death threats that come after. And since calling collect from prison just doesn’t have the same effect, Trump’s most violent minions can’t be behind bars. That’s why they were pardoned, not for what they had done, but for what they are needed to do next.
Improperly framing both the J6 pardons and the creation of the slush fund as payoffs for services rendered is a mistake, and one that could blind us to significant political violence in our future. These are not payoffs. They are bribes.
So when the violence comes, and it certainly will, know that the perpetrators will expect both a pardon and a payment for whatever it is they do.
That is what Trump bought with $1.8 billion of your tax dollars. He bought future political violence. After all, he sure as heck isn’t going to pay any bills with it, because that’s not what Trumps do.
Brett Pransky is a writer, a teacher, a father, and a husband, but rarely in that order. He spends his days amplifying the voices of freedom and democracy as an Editor right here at The Political Voices Network, and he spends his nights trying to fix the world one clever sentence at a time.