Trump Is Now Targeting Reliable GOP Donors, the Koch Brothers

Is this the battle Donald Trump wants to begin now?

I get President Trump’s flailing and gasping over the last couple of days. The trial of his former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort begins today. The world will soon see just how much this association may have stained the Trump campaign in 2016.

Then, of course, there’s the news from last week that his former personal attorney and “fixer,” Michael Cohen, is willing to roll completely over on his old boss. He’s put out there that the infamous June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower between Trump team members and several Kremlin-connected Russians was known about by then-candidate Trump beforehand, and that he approved.

If it’s proven to be true, at the very least, he’s looking at his oldest child, Donald Trump Jr, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, possibly facing prison time for giving false statements to federal authorities.

Then there’s also the news of North Korea’s continued building up of their nuclear missile capabilities, in spite of the June summit between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Trump emerged from that meaning with a mouth full of praise for a man who has his own people starved and enslaved.

As a matter of fact, On Friday Trump once again praised Kim for “keeping his promise,” but every indication is that he has not.

It makes Trump look like a completely gullible rube.

Things just aren’t working out, and there will come a day when the people of this nation look back at the Trump presidency with a shudder.

So, yeah. President Trump is seeing things on the verge of coming apart at the seams for him, and his ego is so fragile.

Let’s be clear. Everything Trump does is ego driven. His over the top, disconnected-from-reality boasting is ample proof.

The war he has waged against Jeff Bezos and his company, Amazon, has everything to do with the fact that Bezos is the wealthiest man in the world. He is a self-made success story, who came from very little, worked hard, innovated, and created a booming business.

Trump is a trust fund baby, whose wealthy father set him up for success, but he squandered and philandered his way through multiple marriages, bankruptcies, and failed business ventures.

Today, he may be wealthier than you and me reading this (maybe), but Jeff Bezos’ gardener probably has a greater net worth than Donald Trump.

To a man with the twisted moral vacuum of Trump, wealth equals worth, so of course knowing there are men like Jeff Bezos out there sets him off.

And speaking of men like Jeff Bezos, it appears Trump has now zeroed in the new target for his ego-rage: the Koch brothers.

The net worth of the Koch brothers is around $50 billion – at least 5 times Trump’s net worth.

That, combined with the fact that they’re reliable Republican backers who have balked and withdrawn in the age of Trump is just the fertile ground needed to seed a new spittle-flecked tirade from the president.

With his insecurity laid bare, Trump took to Twitter to lash out at Charles and David Koch, as well as the free-market political advocacy group they fund, Americans for Prosperity, calling it a “joke” in “real Republican circles.”

Yeah. I think the fact that Trump has spent most of his adult life supporting liberal Democrats has skewed his view of what are “real Republican circles.”

Americans for Prosperity has done much to promote the free market, lowered taxes, less regulation and smaller government.

Pretty much all those things the Trump legacy will be against.

“I never sought their support because I don’t need their money or bad ideas. They love my Tax & Regulation Cuts, Judicial picks & more,” Trump tweeted, claiming he “made them richer.”

He then said, “Their network is highly overrated, I have beaten them at every turn,” and accused them of wanting to protect their companies abroad from being taxed.

Maybe the real issue is that they understand that tariffs are a tax against the American people and they ruin the free market.

Just as he tends to be wrong about everything, Trump is absolutely wrong about the Koch brothers, who have been reliable backers for Republican candidates and conservative policies for many years – unlike Trump, who still thinks conservatism is about saving stuff.

Besides the fact that they’re much wealthier than the badly coiffed reality TV punchline, the latest irritant occurred on Monday, when Americans for Prosperity President Tim Phillips announced at the annual Koch donor conference that they would not be supporting North Dakota Representative Kevin Cramer.

Kramer is looking to unseat incumbent Senator Heidi Heitkamp.

Phillips told donors that Cramer is “inconsistent across the board” on trade and spending issues important to the Koch network.

“We can’t support him at this time,” Phillips said.

The Kochs, in fact, have tightened up their purse strings and withdrawn from supporting quite a few Republican candidates, due to the stain of Trumpism.

They’re not alone. I’m not saying I’ll never support another Republican and will, instead, vote for Democrats, just to get Republicans out and to press Trump to a wall.

What I’m saying is that I have made a decision that any candidate that runs as a “Trump Republican,” I will reject.

I’m not voting to send anyone to Washington to act as a rubber stamp on everything Trump says or does. I want to know that our three, co-equal branches of this republic understand their roles, and that if Trump screws up, whoever I send will hold him accountable, not cover for him.

We’ll have to see how this new feud front works out for Trump. With Bezos and everything else, it was just lashing outward. With his attack on the Koch brothers, it’s like punching directly through the pockets of the Republican party.

That could be enough to get the spineless GOP to sit up.