Photo Illustration by Erin O’Flynn/The Daily Beast/Getty
For all of his golden toilets, former President Donald Trump is notoriously stingy—with his personal funds as well as the hundreds of millions of dollars he’s extracted from his supporters over the years. And that’s all the more reason why government watchdogs are raising the alarm about a new campaign finance filing that shows, one month ahead of the midterm elections, an eye-popping $20 million political donation from Trump.
The contribution—Trump’s largest ever by far—went from his Save America leadership PAC on Oct. 3 to a new Trump-aligned super PAC, called Make America Great Again Inc. That same day, an old pro-Trump super PAC threw another $8.9 million behind the new group.
Super PACs can spend unlimited amounts of money to support candidates, so on its face, the donation could be said to be a generous contribution from Trump to the MAGA cause during a critical election. But as a number of campaign finance experts explained, the specifics here suggest Trump is really trying to get around laws that would otherwise prevent him from spending his personal stash on a 2024 presidential run.