Flooding The Zone

 Maybe it was Steve Bannon, but there was someone who described Trump's strategy of dealing with scandal as "flooding the zone." What this means is that there are SO MANY scandals that none of them really land. The media environment gets saturated with so many stories of Trump doing things that would normally end a political career that no individual story has a chance to land before the next one comes along. If that doesn't work, just wait for Robert Kennedy, Jr. to do something so fucking weird it boggles the mind.

This, by the way, is why the "weird" tactic works. It manages to encapsulate a lot of different things into a single line of attack. What they need, though, is another pithy line of attack for Trump's epic corruption. Just the other day, we learned that Egypt seemed to be offering a bribe to Trump in January of 2017. This is more or less what Bob Menendez was just convicted for. I'm guessing few people have actually followed that story.

Meanwhile, Trump on the Stump continues to actively solicit bribes. He is asking for money from Musk in return for supporting EVs. He's been shaking down donors for favors in his stump speeches. He went before the Bitcoin lunatics and he's openly suggesting a quid pro quo. He calls billionaires to Mar a Lago and shakes them down.In recent weeks, one strategy for raising money has become clear: 

Trump is going to wealthy donors and interest groups and offering to cede policymaking to them—in exchange for massive campaign contributions. Last month, The Washington Post reported that Trump gathered oil executives at Mar-a-Lago and made a pitch: For the low cost of $1 billion, he would, as president “reverse dozens of President Biden’s environmental rules and policies and stop new ones from being enacted.” The pitch reportedly “stunned several of the executives in the room.” But it is nevertheless in keeping with Trump’s larger program. Despite promising during his first run for office in 2016 that he was, as a rich person, incorruptible—and that he would use his inside knowledge of a corrupt system to benefit his voters—Trump has always dispensed with subtlety and flaunted his corruption. Here, he is advertising his willingness to take a bribe: Give me what I want, and I’ll give you what you want.

And less than two weeks after that Post report, Trump made even more promises to oil and gas executives at a campaign fundraiser. He reportedly ended his speech by saying, “Be generous, please,” and was rewarded with more than $25 million in donations.

That this would be the lead story on Kamala Harris every day from now until the polls close goes without saying. Oh, and Trump loots his campaign funds to pay for other expenses like legal bills and fines, so these are direct payments to him.