Trump's re-election campaign and supporting political action committees have already spent $983m to try and secure him a second term, a record for this point in a presidential run, reports The Washington Post. Joe Biden's spending trails so far behind as to be both reassuring (he has a double-digit polling lead anyway) and alarming (quantity has a quality of its own.)

Despite the historic spending, Trump has been slipping in national polls and approval ratings amid the spread of the coronavirus and a weakened economy. Biden holds a double-digit lead nationally and Trump faces a narrow path to victory through electoral college majority in battleground states, according to a Washington Post analysis.

It's funny how threadbare the results of the spending seem to be--a handful of amateurish campaign ads and sparsely-attended rallies--and tempting to imagine that his campaign is acting as a cash funnel to the proverbial swiss accounts he'll end up exiled to. But the spending has hardly begun, and that prospective Biden win is nowhere near secure. A lot of people will be debagged and defenestrated should Trump be turfed out of office and the incentives to keep him in it are vast Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/07/21/trump-and-his-allies-have-alre.html