Unafraid to tout his several-billion-or-so dollars net worth, Donald Trump takes any opportunity he can get to remind voters how much money he has and how successful he is. Sure, it’s his massive ego, but it’s also essential to his appeal among GOP primary voters: Trump’s the guy who “can’t be bought.”
Donald Trump takes any chance he can get to remind voters that he, unlike the rest of his primary opponents, isn’t bought-and-paid for by billionaires — and he’s getting through to them: “He doesn’t owe anybody anything,” a Trump supporter told GOP pollster Frank Luntz at a focus group this week. “He’s not a special interest,” said another, according to NPR.
The perception of Trump as untouchable presents a challenge for his GOP opponents. Voters aren’t eager to support someone they see as beholden to and controlled by billionaire donors like the Koch brothers.
Bridge Project saw that very phenomenon with voters’ responses during the Koch brothers-centric focus groups we conducted earlier this year: “Anyone who spends that much money to get somebody elected wants something back when that person is elected,” noted one participant, as reported by National Journal. Charles Koch himself admitted as much last month: “I expect something in return.”
It’s a real problem for the rest of the GOP field that one of Donald Trump’s greatest strengths is for each of them a glaring weakness. The NRSC outright admits it. And there’s no question it’s keeping Charles and David up at night.
That brings us to this morning, and two tweets telegraphing Donald Trump’s next target:
Trump, who maintains that he never attacks unprovoked, seems eager for the opportunity provided by Ted Cruz’s leaked remarks calling Trump’s “judgement” into question.
As far as Donald Trump is concerned, such an affront constitutes an attack. And if Trump continues to use the same big-donor-puppet attacks that have worked so effectively thus far, Ted Cruz — who’s as much a puppet of billionaire donors like the Kochs as anyone else in the field — appears ripe to “fall like all others.”