Westneat: Trump still fleecing voters

It shows the Godzilla-sized sway Trump maintains over the base of the Republican Party, despite it all. His two PACs received more than 14,000 itemized donations totaling $697,700 from donors with Washington addresses in just the past six months.

This is more than local GOP Reps. Jaime Herrera Beutler ($247,000 from Washington state donors), Cathy McMorris Rodgers ($197,000) and Dan Newhouse ($80,000) raised from state residents, combined. And they’re all up for election in 2022, while Trump may never be up for election again.

Trump’s stolen election scheme is “probably the most lucrative thing he’s had in terms of cash flow since the Plaza casino in Atlantic City,” Trump biographer, Tim O’Brien, told The Washington Post.

He’s certainly milking it. I’m on Trump’s fundraising lists, and so I get the constant pitches, fueled on grievance about how he’s the rightful president. Some are righteous: “Only Trump can win the fight to SECURE OUR ELECTIONS!” And some pathetic: “We’ve emailed you 13x. Fail to respond = Trump knows you’ve abandoned him.”

Somehow this contrived psychodrama about a rigged election is still gold — even here, where, nine months later, there have been no cases of fraud found related to the 2020 election. And where numerous local recounts in King, Snohomish and San Juan counties, paid for by Republicans last winter, uncovered nothing amiss.

Personally, I get why Republicans may have backed Trump financially at one time. Despite the always high risk he may be conning you, he was, back then, the top dog of conservative policy and politics. But then he lost. He also ignited a crackpot rebellion that stormed the Capitol and embarrassed himself as the sorest loser by refusing to attend the inauguration. So why throw good money, now, after bad?

People keep on believing, though. And the lucrative stolen election racket has local mini-me types mimicking Trump.

There’s Loren Culp, who’s now running for Congress in Washington’s 4th District, and still maintaining he was cheated out of the 2020 governor’s election.

“We believe the election was not legitimate,” his campaign director, Chris Gergen, insisted again last week in a video conference, but offering, again, zero evidence. Like Trump, Culp is trying to raise money off this fake grievance, but so far the PAC he set up for it has brought in only $5,185 (though I bet that money was important to someone).

Then there’s “prepare for war” conspiracy theorist Rep. Robert Sutherland, R-Granite Falls, who is pushing for a postelection “forensic audit” similar to the Cyber Ninja circus down in Arizona. But if you click the “donate now” button at the “Audit WA” website, you get directed not to a fund for an audit but to … Friends of Sutherland, his own state House campaign account.

Finally, Tim Eyman has of course decided to chase this same ambulance. He announced at a GOP picnic recently that he’s working on bringing seven “voter integrity” initiatives to the ballot in seven states. “There is very little faith in our election system right now and we must restore that,” Eyman said.

If there is very little faith, it was mendaciously eroded not by facts but by the same people now attempting to profit from it. Trump is ripping off his own supporters, and these wannabes are gleefully following down the same path.

It’s a sorry testament to the damage Trump has caused the GOP in Washington state that the party isn’t calling this out for the total scam that it is.