RFK Jr.’s Campaign Is Suddenly Very Short on Cash

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign is in financial trouble.

The campaign is spending more money than it is bringing in, according to Federal Election Commission filings. It has $3.9 million in cash on hand, but is nearly $3.5 million in debt. In July, the campaign spent over $7 million while raising only $5.6 million, almost half of which came from RFK Jr.’s running mate Nicole Shanahan, a Silicon Valley lawyer and investor.

The campaign’s spending remained high despite a cutback on events, according to Politico. Kennedy has not appeared at any public events since the beginning of July, instead sporadically showing up on podcasts and at conferences. Much of the campaign’s funds have gone towards ballot access, Facebook and Google ads, and a security firm run by a longtime associate.

Even with the help of a partnership with the Libertarian Party, the campaign’s fundraising, despite a slight uptick, hasn’t kept up with spending. The fact that Kennedy seems to be relying on Shanahan’s money more than outside donations suggests that he’s not bringing in a lot of new fans, either.

Kennedy seems to be aware of his diminishing fortunes. Last month, the independent candidate spoke with Donald Trump about getting a White House job in exchange for dropping out of the race and endorsing the convicted felon. Kennedy also reached out to the Kamala Harris campaign with a similar proposition, only to be rebuffed, probably because he might actually help her by staying in the race.

RFK Jr.’s campaign was in trouble even before President Biden stepped aside, with Kennedy failing to qualify for the first presidential debate. There were also a series of damaging revelations, from reports of a worm in his brain to the news that he dumped a bear carcass in Central Park to allegations of sexual assault. With diminished polling, all of this begs the question of what the point of Kennedy’s campaign actually is.

Several Republicans are slated to speak at the Democratic National Convention this week, as Democrats attempt to unify forces against a potential second Trump presidency. But on Tuesday, Democrats announced that they had secured one of Donald Trump’s former communications directors, and she’s expected to make a splash with an endorsement of Trump’s political rival, Vice President Kamala Harris.

Trump White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham will join the liberal party’s long list of speakers, reported NBC News.

“I never thought I’d be speaking at a Democratic convention. But, after seeing firsthand who Donald Trump really is, and the threat he poses to our country, I feel very strongly about speaking out,” Grisham told NBC. “While I don’t agree with Vice President Harris on everything, I am proud to be supporting her because I know she will defend our freedoms and represent our nation with honesty and integrity.”

Grisham had served as Melania Trump’s chief of staff and press secretary before briefly joining Trump’s administration in 2019. She was the first member of Trump’s team to resign after the January 6 riot on the U.S. Capitol and has since been an outspoken critic of the former president.

“Jan. 6, of course, was my breaking point,” Grisham told NBC News’s Meet the Press in October 2021.

Last week, Grisham made waves when she wholly dismissed the Trump campaign’s new strategy of mini-rallies and hyper-focused press events in an effort to rein in the bloviating populist’s affinity for rambling, ad hominem attacks on Harris, which don’t seem to be doing him any favors with voters.

“I imagine he will do some of them, and maybe for a week he’ll, you know, attempt to stay on message,” Grisham told CNN. “It depends on how tough his staff is being with him, but he will get bored. He doesn’t like those small events; he never has. And he will be demanding to do a large rally sooner rather than later.”

“They want him to be a fake version of himself,” she added. “Donald Trump is a bombastic narcissist, and he loves attention.”

In a wild right-wing technologist update of Thelma and Louise, it seems that both Donald Trump and Elon Musk have officially driven their respective social media companies off of a cliff. But hey, at least they’re going down together?

Trump’s Truth Social stock appears to be in serious jeopardy, according to a new report from Forbes published Saturday. Next month, Trump—who owns well over 50 percent of the company—and other shareholders will finally be able to sell their shares of the volatile stock, but that puts the stock at risk of collapse.

Earlier this month, Truth Social’s stock value plummeted following Trump’s apparent “return” to X, formerly Twitter. It was so bad that even a booming stock market couldn’t save it. This coincided with a poor second quarter earnings report that found the company lost more than $16 million, and raised just $836,900, down 30 percent from $1.2 million a year earlier. That was still far better than the previous quarterly report, which found that the company lost $327.6 million, and only raised $770,500 in revenue.

Truth Social stock has become particularly risky, because its volatility gives it a high chance of heavy selling as soon as it becomes unlocked in September, according to Forbes. This would only worsen if the board allowed Trump to sell his stocks early, capturing the current price instead of whatever they might drop to on the downward trajectory.

As for Elon Musk’s X, not even Trump returning could give it a much-needed boost. The platform’s billionaire technocrat owner has pulled the social media site into historically bad territory, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Musk acquired X in October 2022 for $44 billion, borrowing $13 billion from several banks, including Morgan Stanley, Barclays, and Bank of America. Those banks have found themselves unable to quickly offload Musk’s debt to other investors, leaving it stuck on their balance sheets, or “hung” in industry terms, straining their loan books and, in one case, even curbing their compensation.

Apparently, Musk’s X loans have been on the books for so long, they’ve outlived every unsold deal since the 2008 financial crisis, according to data from Pitchbook LCD. While there were more hung deals during the crisis, banks were able to sell or write off their hung debt within 12 months after issuing the loan. Not only is X the longest lasting hung deal since 2008, it’s also reportedly one of the biggest.

While the banks have been able to collect a hefty interest, it’s unclear how Musk will ever repay the principal if X continues on its current trajectory. Last year, X reported that its value had plummeted by more than half, to around $19 billion. When the banks formulated a plan to restructure the loan, X didn’t follow through, according to the Journal.

Unfortunately for Musk, X has been unable to fully capitalize on its recent uptick in user engagement, because Musk went out of his way to make an enemy of all advertisers everywhere, suing a group of advertisers who didn’t want to use his platform filled with blatantly pro-Nazi content.

As Musk’s adversarial streak has continued, officials at Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, another bank that shelled out money for the acquisition, downgraded the bank’s internal credit rating on his loan, meaning they don’t think it’s likely they’ll get paid back anytime soon.

A spokesman for the bank told the Journal, “MUFG has had several constructive conversations with Mr. Musk and his leadership team. We anticipate reaching a positive outcome regarding repayment.”

While Musk isn’t in the business of robbing banks, he’s getting pretty close to the outlaw life of Thelma and Louise. One thing has become clear: When Trump and Musk started out on their right-wing social media experiments, they thought they were really goin’ somewhere. But this is it. They’re just going.

Several major lawmakers, from Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez to President Joe Biden, made mention of the atrocities in Gaza during the first night of the Democratic National Convention on Monday. But among the crowd and behind the scenes, efforts to cover up mention of the genocide were still underway.

During Biden’s speech, a Jewish delegation unfurled a large sign revealing the text “Stop Arming Israel.” The effort was quickly stopped by nearby attendees, who blocked the sign with “We [Heart] Joe” sticks while another attendee in a row above the protesters attempted to snatch the banner away.

Another attendee, two rows away from the protesters, used one of the pro-Biden signs to repeatedly hit a woman wearing a hijab on the head.

“It matters to me so much because I’m a Jew,” Liano Sharon, one of the protesters holding the antiwar sign, told Al Jazeera after being escorted away from the arena. “And I was always brought up to believe that ‘never again’ means never again for anyone, anywhere, ever, period. And that’s not what’s happening right now.”

“What’s happening right now is that we are continuing to fund and support an ongoing genocide, the mass murder of children, and it needs to stop,” Sharon added.

The response is ironic considering that, earlier in the day, the DNC hosted its first panel on Palestinian rights. The war in Gaza has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians.

Far-right activists allied with Donald Trump attempted to attend the Democratic National Convention in an attempt to troll liberals. But instead, they found themselves brutally rebuffed at every turn, broadcasting their own humiliation. 

White nationalist Charlie Kirk showed up at the DNC on Monday. Kirk’s organization, Turning Point USA, is working in tandem with Trump’s campaign, which has outsourced some of its canvassing work to the advocacy arm of the conservative youth organization, Turning Point Action. 

Kirk seemed to have a tough time making friends at the event. Parker Short, president of the Young Democrats of Georgia, immediately approached Kirk, going in on the far-right influencer.

“We have a Republican governor and Republican secretary of state in Georgia that approved our elections, and Donald Trump said that wasn’t constitutional. Donald Trump tried to undermine our Constitution,” Short said, pointing aggressively at Kirk.

“Dude, you’re at a 10. I just walked in. I’m here to just learn,” Kirk said.

“You’re an anti-patriotic, anti-constitutional person crashing our party because you tried to stop our democracy,” Short replied. “Donald Trump called the secretary of state of Georgia and told him to ‘find him some votes.’”

“So let me ask you one question. I just have one question for you,” Kirk said, interrupting him. “What is a woman?”

“Oh my God,” Short replied, starting to walk off. “That is so fucking weird, y’all. Maybe you should meet one!” 

“I’m married to one,” Kirk said after him.

“Same!” Short shouted over his shoulder. 

Kirk posted the video to his own X account, a decision that astounded many online, who thought it was brutally humiliating for the misogynistic right-winger. 

Later, when Kirk tried to approach Hasan Piker, the leftist streamer, he was brutally snubbed.

Kirk wasn’t the only right-wing influencer to attend the Democratic event. Far-right conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec, who started the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory, was also in Chicago on Monday. Posobiec co-wrote the books Unhumans, a violent book that decries all progressives as secret communists and all secret communists as sub-human. If that seems extreme, know that J.D. Vance seems to agree with him—he even helped to promote the book. 

Posobiec attempted to troll protesters and DNC attendees, interviewing them undercover for his show Human Events, which was being broadcast on the far-right network Real America’s Voice. Unfortunately for him, he ran into Amanda Moore, a journalist who spent 11 months undercover with the alt-right. 

“I just want to check,” Posobiec said, approaching Moore and another person. “Are you upset because you couldn’t get into the abortion van on time?”

“I don’t understand what you’re talking about,” Moore replied. 

“Because I understand they said they ran out of pills, they ran out of vasectomies,” Posobiec said. “Are you so upset because you couldn’t get into the abortion van on time that it’s causing you mental distress and anguish?”  

“I don’t understand why would I need [to get] into the abortion van?” Moore said.

“Oh, because you’re with the guys with the vasectomies, you’re on the vasectomy side of this!” Posobiec said, clearly thinking he had tricked her.

“It’s because I’m not fucking anybody currently. So like, I don’t understand. Do you understand?” Moore said.

“They will cut this if there’s language,” Posobiec said quickly.

“I don’t give a fuck Jack, I’m talking to you,” Moore replied. As the audio of the interview cut in and out, it was clear Moore was taking him to task, as Posobiec hurriedly tried to end the interview. 

“I can, but we can’t, can’t have the language,” Posobiec said. 

“Then walk away, asshole!” Moore shouted.

Posobeic quickly became the troll-ee as opposed to the troller. In another interview clip, inexplicably posted to his show’s account, Posobiec spoke to the person with Moore, an activist who goes by the name Anarchy Princess, who was very plainly messing with him. 

“How many abortions have you had? How many abortions have you had? How many abortions have you had today?” asked Posobiec, ever the deft interviewer. 

“I’m getting paid by George Soros to have an abortion on the stage, with no drugs,” Anarchy Princess replied simply. 

“Which way are you going?” asked Posobiec, another intrepid question.

“What do you mean which way?” she asked. 

“Which type of abortion?” Posobiec responded. 

“What kind of abortions are there, Jack?”

“There’s pills, there’s tools, there’s a number of ways,” Posobiec said, seeming unsure. 

“So, it’s going to be on stage. So, a normal person would think that they would use tools, right? And vacuum it out and do all of that. Like if I took a pill that takes several days, and nothing happens, you won’t see anything. So, you should probably study how female anatomy works,” Anarchy Princess quipped. 

Donald Trump, asked for the millionth time, still won’t commit to accepting election results as legitimate if he loses.

Speaking to CBS News Monday, Trump said, “If I see that we had a fair and free election, which I hope to be able to say, but if I see that, I will be.… You will never see anybody more honorable than me. I am an honorable person.”

The CBS reporter pressed Trump, telling him, “But you didn’t accept the results of the last election.”

“Well, that’s right, because there were many problems with the last election. You know it, so do they, and so does everybody,” Trump replied. The reporter noted that all of the legal cases to challenge the 2020 results were dropped, to which Trump replied that the judges wouldn’t take them.

“I think things have been done over the last four-year period that will make this a free and fair election, and certainly if for some reason I lose, and I think if I lose, this country will go into a tailspin, the likes of which it’s never seen before, the likes of 1929,” Trump added.

Trump’s comments were quickly picked up and posted by Kamala Harris’s campaign to show that the man who famously instigated the “Stop the Steal” movement and the January 6 Capitol riots hasn’t changed much at all. Trump has repeatedly dodged the question of accepting the 2024 election results, even after being asked three times during his debate with President Biden.

The former president and convicted felon’s cronies are making moves to undermine and even sabotage November’s election in Republicans’ favor. Several of them are working as election officials in key states, including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, and they’re looking to Trump and his campaign for direction. Supporters of democracy will have to be vigilant to ensure that the results are free and fair in less than three months.

In a speech at the Democratic National Convention Monday night, Jamie Raskin addressed not only his fellow party members but also Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance.

Raskin, who led Donald Trump’s impeachment over the January 6 insurrection, gave Vance a warning about the former president’s violent supporters. “Remember what the mob chanted as they stormed the Capitol?” Raskin asked. “Hang Mike Pence.”

“J.D. Vance, do you understand why there was a sudden job opening for running mate on the GOP ticket? They tried to kill your predecessor!” Raskin continued. “They tried to kill him because he would not follow Trump’s plan to destroy and nullify the votes of millions of Americans.”

Former Vice President Mike Pence has announced he cannot support Donald Trump after he was threatened by Trump’s fans for refusing to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

“I believe anyone that puts themselves over the Constitution should never be president of the United States, and anyone who asks someone else to put them over the Constitution should never be president of the United States again,” Pence said in March.

In a statement to The Hill, Trump fired back at Raskin over his comments.

“Jamie Raskin is a disgusting piece of trash who has such a severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome, he is willing to politicize talking about assassinations just one month after an attempt was made of President Trump’s life. These are the people Democrats are highlighting at their convention,” a Trump spokesperson said.

While the Democratic National Convention was kicking off in Chicago, Donald Trump was posting to Truth Social, claiming that Vice President Kamala Harris had rejected a debate against him on Fox News on September 4.

“Comrade Kamala Harris has just informed us that she will NOT do the FoxNews Debate on September 4th,” Trump wrote. “I am not surprised by this development because I feel that she knows it is very difficult, at best, for her to defend her record setting Flip-Flopping on absolutely everything she once believed in, including her statements that THERE WILL BE NO FRACKING IN PENNSYLVANIA and her HORRIBLE Performance on the Border, our ‘Border Czar,’ where millions of criminals and people from mental institutions and terrorists, have been allowed to pour into our Country, totally unchecked and unvetted. It’s called, and she LOVES IT, an OPEN BORDER!!!”

But, according to Trump, the show would go on—with or without his Democratic opponent.

“Rather than the debate on September 4th, I have agreed to do a Tele-Town Hall, anchored by Sean Hannity, for Fox,” Trump continued. “It will take place in the Great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania—Details to follow!”

The September 4 debate was not originally in the cards. Traditionally, a presidential cycle has two debates between the presidential candidates, as well as one debate between the potential vice presidents. But during a short-notice press conference at Mar-a-Lago earlier this month, Trump spontaneously announced that he was willing to face off against Harris three times before November: September 4 on Fox News, September 10 on NBC News, and another September 25 debate on ABC News. (Trump mixed up the stations of the last two debates, but got the dates correct.)

Harris’s camp had not initially signed on to the Fox debate, and it’s currently unclear whether she’s actually rejected the date outright, as Trump suggested. The first official debate is scheduled for September 10.

The drama of it all may be an aggressive strategy for Trump to reframe himself as unafraid to show down against the famed prosecutor after he stunningly disappointed some of his fans by backing out of one of the debates earlier this month. (He has since flip-flopped.) Fans were so upset by the supposed strongman’s decision that they got the hashtag “#TrumpIsACoward” trending on Truth Social after the news broke.

Representative Nancy Pelosi isn’t worried about what people are saying regarding her role in President Biden withdrawing from the 2024 presidential election.

The former speaker of the House told CNN Monday morning that “I have my relationship with the president, and I just wanted to win this election. So if they’re upset, I’m sorry for them. But the country is very happy … I don’t know who they are, but, you know, that’s their problem, not mine.”

Pelosi’s public comments were a major factor in Biden’s decision to step away. After Biden had a disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump on June 27, calls for him to drop out of the race began, and Pelosi refused to reject those calls, cryptically saying that the decision was up to the president.

Pelosi and Biden have reportedly not spoken since the president made the decision to step down, with Biden upset with the former speaker. Other Democratic leaders, including Senator Chuck Schumer, Representative Hakeem Jeffries, and former president Barack Obama were also in favor of Biden stepping down.

The move was attacked by Republicans as a “coup,” and Harris’s entry into the presidential race has led to them spiraling further and further into conspiracy theories as the new Democratic ticket continues to rise in the polls. Pelosi, meanwhile, has recently published a memoir about her time in politics, called The Art of Power.

Pelosi may have even played a role in selecting Harris’s running mate, reportedly speaking favorably about “her former House colleagues” whenever she was asked about V.P. prospects before the Harris campaign’s announcement, a nod to Minnesota Governor Tim Walz’s time in the House. Based on the results of her actions, her comments on Monday seem like she has no regrets.

Donald Trump delivered a strangely low-energy speech on Monday at a factory in York, Pennsylvania.

While the crowd at Precision Custom Components started off cheering at the former president’s compliments about Pennsylvania and promises to bolster American manufacturing, any initial enthusiasm appeared to wane as Trump proceeded through his remarks in a monotone reading voice.

“Kamala puts America last, I put America first,” Trump said, sounding completely dejected. He frowned as the crowd cheered.

For once, the former president was actually able to stay more or less on topic (although his talking points were still devoid of facts or actual policy ideas). He just seemed to hate every second of it, and the crowd responded in kind.

Trump’s claim that “caravans” of immigrants coming to the U.S. for free healthcare was met only by the echoes of his own remarks. Laments over “reckless spending” on healthcare, complaints that the supposed electric vehicle mandate is “absolutely so crazy,” and promises to clean up a supposedly graffiti-covered Washington, D.C., were met with total silence. Even promises to “liberate our workers with the largest regulatory cuts” did not evoke a single clap.

While his dulled speaking style didn’t prevent him from flying through topics, it did prevent him from getting any responses from the crowd for several minutes at a time. His awkward delivery made it unclear when the audience, or the people standing behind him, should clap, and pauses didn’t come easily or often in the Republican nominee’s speech.

In one particularly outrageous moment, Trump said, “The union—the United Auto Workers, I think the people in that union are going to vote for me overwhelmingly because I’m going to bring car industry back.”

Just last week Trump said he would fire striking workers during a conversation with billionaire technocrat Elon Musk. The next day, the United Auto Workers filed federal labor charges against Trump and Musk, accusing them of “illegal attempts to threaten and intimidate workers who stand up for themselves by engaging in protected concerted activity, such as strikes.”

Shawn Fain, the president of the UAW, is scheduled to speak Monday night at the Democratic National Convention. “He doesn’t have a clue, it’s sad,” Trump said about Fain, blaming him for a decline in U.S. car manufacturing. As he started to compliment military industrial manufacturers, such as the factory where he stood, he took off on another tangent.

“What would happen if we had a war? We won’t, with me. But you will have World War III, I believe, without me. But we won’t have—but what would happen if we did? And let’s say it was with China, but they give us all of our steel. So we’ll have to call China for steel so we can fight a war with them. How stupid are these people?” Trump rambled.