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Hi, I'm Tara Palmieri. I'm Puck's senior political correspondent, and this is Somebody's Gotta Win. So yesterday, I was flying back from Los Angeles. I was on the Bill Maher show this weekend. Definitely check it out if you have a chance, or you can check the overtime out on YouTube. It's a link to like the last 15 minutes of the show, and it was really fun.
And I realized that I did not have a guest yet for Tuesday. And then I thought, I need to call my very own cousin, Sal, Teddy Schleifer, who is brilliant. And he just...
has his finger on the pulse of the, I guess you could say, the billionaire class, the elite class that really funds the political operations and machines on both the Democratic side and the Republican side. And money has become the topic du jour for the past week or so because of the fact that the campaigns have both really launched, the Trump campaign and Biden campaign, and there's just such a large
cash disadvantage for Donald Trump, and there's still a lot of donors sitting on the sidelines wondering if they are going to jump in or not. So I brought Teddy in, and you would think that his sourcing, you would think he is the son of a billionaire, but he says he's actually a scholarship student at Princeton. And we'll see. I've got to do a little bit more digging on that.
Glad to be a poor backup for anyone who needs a last minute guest for any podcast. You're not a backup, Teddy. Across the board. I'll do anything for a pension. I wish that was true. It would be easier to get you. I had to beg you. So I want to start with the cash crunch that Trump has right now. Sure. He has $41 million.
less than the DNC and Biden campaign combined. He spent $50 million last year in legal fees, and he owes about half a billion dollars in taxes
civil penalties between the defamation suit with E. Jean Carroll and the case in New York State for over-inflating his assets. I think it was like a $355 million fine plus interest every single day. So he's got some money issues. He can't obviously use his campaign donations for a bond on either of these, but
At the end of the day, he needs lawyers and lawyers are expensive. And that's where a lot of these legal fees are going. And a lot of these, you know, big name GOP donors, they've been sitting on the sidelines or they've been supporting Nikki Haley, who they, you know, has more appeal to a Republican normie GOP donor. So, Teddy, like, who are some of these big fish that have been supporting Haley that you...
you think might come over to Trump? Well, I mean, I think we should begin by noting that they were supporting Haley well past her expiration date. So it's not as if, you know, they woke up
up on Tuesday of last week or Wednesday after Super Tuesday and were saying, oh, shit, I didn't realize she wasn't going to be the Republican nominee. Yeah, right. Like, oh, no, what are we going to do? Right. You know, they're now five days into this come to Jesus experience. I mean, this has been clear for six weeks. So do you think that they were just supporting her to soften up Trump? I don't know. I mean, when I talked with people late into the game, it was, you know, a reflection of...
and, you know, a belief they were doing the right thing and who knows what's going to happen. It wasn't, it wasn't really a strategy. And you could say the same thing about the Haley campaign itself. But the point there is that they, the forces who were behind her had time to think about this. And, you know, to some extent, you know, there's, there's denial. Um, there might even be denial for Republicans until the balloons drop at the convention. Um,
You know, you never know what's going to happen legally. You never I mean, you could you could twist yourself into a pretzel with with possible reasons why Trump is not the Republican nominee. Sometimes I hear people talk about him just dying. And I'm like, yeah, you know, I mean, sure, we could all die. But he looks pretty healthy to me. So the donor universe has had plenty of time to think this through.
And now there's no excuse, right? The Trump bundling operation and kind of mega donor recruitment operation has definitely ratcheted up their aggression on securing commitments over the last month, I'll say. They believe that, fairly, that they're the Republican nominee. And if you want to support the Republican nominee, then, you know,
doors open. Right. And if you don't come through, don't try to bring your business interests before us. Right. If you don't like, right. If you don't like, you know, implied threat, I'm sure. If you're waiting until, you know, May or June, like, well, you know, what's the, what's the point is sort of the, the Trump people's argument. So the, he's now going to be the presumptive Republican
nominee he's now going to have access to um larger and larger limits on campaign contributions because he can kind of share contributions alongside uh the rnc just as as biden can with the dnc um you're beginning to see more and more uh establishment friendly or or major donor friendly committees get get born um to kind of take in uh the largest of people who are not like
excited about kind of the Trump primary operations or committees. So the door is being opened as wide as possible for these people by the Trump camp. And it's up to kind of the holdouts decide if they want to continue to be holdouts. To cast a broad brush, I mean, there are some of these people who obviously
never support Trump until the end of time. And, you know, maybe they never supported Trump in 2016 either, right? I mean, like some of these people who were calling Republican donors really have been Democratic donors until 2016 to 2024 and just happened to support Nikki Haley because they, you know, thought that she was the only chance to beat back Trumpism. But like, these are people who are not going to be involved at all. Yeah, no, I think it's interesting because
The Trump team is looking for white whales, right? They need 10 white whales. They need people like Sheldon Adelson, who gave $100 million in 2016. Not getting Sheldon, that's for sure. Well, yeah, he's dead. But his wife, his widow, Miriam, maybe they think she'll give $50 million. But who knows? I mean, she had a big crush on Mike Pence, and Trump tried to hang him or incited that. But I've heard from my reporting that
because money is on their mind with literally everything, that they're also thinking about their VP candidates that way.
and possibly announcing even earlier, you know, than... How early? I don't know exactly when, but the Republican National Convention is in August, and it would be way too far for a candidate who has such a cash deficit. But it's funny because on Thursday night, before the State of the Union and the rebuttal, I reported that, you know, the donor darling du jour was Katie Britt, right? You had the
American Opportunity Alliance, Paul Singer, Ken Griffin, big, big names. They were all in for Katie. They really liked her. The Ricketts family, billionaire family, love Katie, Warren Stevens. And she was looked at as a possible VP, not just because she's a younger woman, which might help with suburban moderate swing voters that Trump is obviously soft with, right, with women. But that
you know, she could bring along some big hitters as well. And I don't think that she's on the table anymore based on her performance. That's what I've heard. Maga World was not impressed. You know, you got to be able to sell. That's a big deal to Trump. But I mean, all of these VP candidates, like they have something they can bring. It's not really clear which one of them has the donor connections that they can bring over those GOP normies. I mean, maybe, I don't know, maybe Elise Stefanik. Tim Scott, yeah. Tim Scott, yeah. But then again, like,
And that's something I wrote about, too, that like the Trump campaign is so set on getting, you know, some big fish like Larry Ellison, who is supporting Tim Scott. But at the end of the day, Tim Scott's not a great fundraiser and he wasn't able to get Larry Ellison to give him seven figures in the end. Right. Yeah. I mean, look, I mean, the the this this is very similar to 2016. Right. Where Mike Pence.
you know, at the time, what was seen as an olive branch to the establishment, right? And the olive branch to, you know, the Christian community. Right. That wasn't crazy about 2016 primary candidate Donald Trump, right? So, I mean, this is just like basic, you know, work of addition and subtraction here, right? But it's not in the same way that usually it's about voter base, and this is more about donor base.
Do you know what I mean? Yeah, I mean, with Pence, though, I feel like part of that was donor-based. At least my recollection of that was that there was a sense that, like, you know, there was a type of Republican donor who was incensed by Trump, more incensed by Trump in 2016 than they are today. Like, the anti-Trump wing of the Republican Party
was more anti-Trump in 2016 than they are at this juncture in 2016 than they are at this juncture in 2024. Well, they know what they're getting, right? They know what they're getting. Part of it was, you know, the inevitability of, you know, I mean, even this time, right? I mean, the anti-Trump forces didn't really fight Trump that hard.
And they also thought he wasn't going to win. Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly. And then he did. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. He did. And this time, you know, Trump is at least pulling competitively. Right. So I feel like, you know, for a lot of reasons, the anti-Trump wing this time around is smaller and, you know, and more in a feeble and less competitive.
compelling as a storyline. It's like, okay, whatever, a couple of, you know, rich Wall Street people are still mad. I mean, and, you know, and the GOP primary kind of proved it, right? That Nikki Haley might have had 75% of, you know, major Wall Street donors supporting her at the end. But like, you know,
No other Americans outside of Wall Street seem to share that opinion. A very small percentage, a much smaller percentage. Yeah, and the truth is those Wall Street donors will probably end up giving money to the RNC.
And that's a way for them to like have a little distance between themselves and Trump. So they can't say, I actually donated to Trump. They gave to the RNC, right? Yeah. Or there's always, you know, creative psychological workarounds that you can use to, to, to justify it. You think it's a psychological workaround? I didn't donate to Trump. I feel like donating to the RNC, it's a pretty thin line between that and, and,
and donating to Trump, given that like the RNC's purpose, RNC has now said it's, you know, number one purpose is to elect Trump. But like, I mean, there's other entities, you know, if you're donating to like Americans for Prosperity, right, which is going to do some work for lots of people or, you know, you're donating to just Republican turnout groups that will help up and down the ticket. We'll see. But I mean, you know, a huge storyline is going to be how many of these people just kind of focus down ballot. If you're someone like Ken Griffin, you know, who does not want to get involved with Trump stuff at all, then you're happy to just support
anybody else. And that's like 2016 as well. But, you know, what's different in 2016 is Trump is clearly going to have, you know,
you know, some serious cash issues because of the legal situation. You know, I wonder if he'll self-fund at all. Doubtful. Huge storyline in 2016 was whether or not he was going to actually put it in his own money. No, he'll never do it. I mean, this time he's got, you know, I mean, as you're pointing out with the legal cases, I mean, he's got, you know, serious cash issues with regards to his personal liquidity and his personal liabilities. So, I think that the types of major donors to Trump
are going to continue to be sort of the gadflies, the people who are known for Mar-a-Lago or, you know, were involved with Trump stuff in '16 and just, you know, were ambassador at some point somewhere. It's not like the household names. It's like, you know, Howard Lorber, right? And, you know, people like that. Well, actually, speaking of like pseudo household names, John Paulson, I heard he's throwing a big party for Trump in a dinner for him in Palm Beach.
He wants to be, I think, Treasury Secretary is what I was told. And he's going to be very actively involved. And he'll bring his friends in because he was fundraising for Ron DeSantis for a while. You know, he's a billionaire hedge fund manager. This is the kind of guy who can bring other people in. You said that a lot of people around Trump are surprised by how unwilling he is to travel to fundraise. Yeah, I do feel like the Trump bundling operation is...
certainly not built out. Um, and you know, this, he's not going, you know, to, to Milwaukee to meet the 15 richest people in Milwaukee. Um, you know, a lot of his fundraising events to date have been in, in Florida, um, in, in South Florida. Um,
at Trump properties. Sometimes, you know, both those things are true at the same time. Like he's, you know, he had a lunch at, you know, Doral later this, Doral, how do you pronounce it? Doral, whatever. Later this month. It's in Miami. Or he does these like, you know, fundraisers that are like VIP receptions before public events that he does. Like the Super Tuesday party that I was at last week. I went to Mar-a-Lago last week, as listeners would know. Right. And so it's like, you know, it's just lazy, right?
I'm not saying that in a judgmental way. It's just like, you know, he's doing a public event in Raleigh, right? And I'll just like do a VIP reception before in Raleigh. He won't go to a billionaire's house in Raleigh and try to shake hands. Or you won't, for instance, you know, go to a place or I'll say rarely will he travel to a place explicitly for fundraising purposes, which is sort of like the bread and butter of at least
how presidential bundling typically happens, which is, you know, you kind of build out an infrastructure of major donors in every city and they report to, you know, the state co-chair of the fundraising operation who then, you know, reports to a, you know, regional finance chief who reports to a finance director and that, you know, a lot of that
is organized around events, right? Event fundraising. So it's like Trump is going to Phoenix. You know, Trump will then get, you know, everybody from Phoenix is working on this for two months. And then, you know, there's an Arizona finance chair and the Arizona finance chair is whipping all their people for the event. And then Trump shows up and he's there for two and a half hours and you can compute the ROI where, you know, he spent this much time and raised this much money. Like that has not certainly happened yet. You know, it's only March and I'm sure the RNC will build out some more
you know, kind of traditional bundling operation like he did in 16 after he became the nominee. But as of now, right, it's just like when you get sent Trump fundraising invites, it's like, which Trump property do you want to go to this month? It's sort of the general, that's the menu of choices before you. He'll go to Paulson's house because it's in Palm Beach. He'll go to Will Ross's house because it's in Palm Beach. He's not going to, you know, he's not going to Oregon to,
do the rich people of Portland, Oregon. And frankly, you could say that makes sense because campaign fundraising takes a ton of time and Trump is obviously going to raise a lot online and he'll raise a lot of super PAC checks and maybe there's too much attention paid to bundling. I'm actually pretty open to that argument. Do you think that Biden is doing the same sort of movement around donors? Because I don't think so. He goes to California from time to time. They come to Washington. He even has meetings with donors at the White House complex. There's some limitations on what
rooms they can go in. Actually, Jeffrey Katzenberg, the famous entertainment executive, is on his DNC co-chair committee, and he's been arranging these meetings with donors and Biden. And there are workarounds for him, too. I mean, but he is the sitting president of
So you could argue he doesn't really have quite the time to be shaking hands. Right, right, right, right. I mean, and Trump's not going to have the time either because of the legal situation. I mean, I feel like that's going to be a huge issue. I haven't reported this, but it's been reported that he's going to be spending multiple days a week for the next, up until the trials are over.
Dealing with legal shit, right? So Biden's going to have maybe more time than Trump, believe it or not, as leader of the free world to focus on his own presidential campaign. I mean, his bundling operation is, strikes me as pretty conventional. You know, they have, I believe, a quarterly meeting of the National Finance Committee. You know, there are several hundred people on that. You know, they get briefings from
senior white house people and senior campaign people all the time. Um, you know, Jeffrey Katzenberg is the co-chair of the entire campaign. Uh, Rufus Gifford, who, you know, is a big Obama bundler, um, is leading fundraising this time around. They're obviously very coordinated with the DNC. You know, Biden does do some to your point does do some travel for fundraising. Um,
You know, he did go to California, for instance, last month. He'll go to New York to do stuff. You know, they'll send the surrogates to do things as well. It's certainly not a excited or exuberant bundling.
I mean, I do think that lots of major bundlers for Biden are really just running anti-Trump campaigns, essentially. You know, it's not necessarily about pitching Joe Biden. It's about lighting the match that is Donald Trump and, you know, making people fear everything he'll do. So it's been good for Democratic bundlers that Trump...
has won the nomination early. Because we were talking about how anti-Trump donors don't believe Trump is the nominee until the balloons fall down. Democratic donors might not feel that Trump is the nominee until the balloons fall down. So the earlier that they can kind of argue this is really a Trump, Trump, Trump campaign,
the better it is for democratic fundraising. Okay, let's go into the RNC for a minute. I've been reporting on that for a while about how the Trump campaign was set to swallow it. They even got rid of Ronna Romney McDaniel, who dropped her middle name Romney in fidelity to Trump. All for what? All for what? All for what? She was the longest standing.
Branding RNC chairwoman. She broke a lot of records in her role, but one record she didn't break was in fundraising. Towards the end, she had about $8 million to $9 million on hand. Granted, they had a lot of work to do reversing Trump's messaging that don't mail-in vote ahead of the election. That, in fact, probably cost him the election in 2020. And so, yeah, they were also spending a lot of time on, what did they call it, election issues.
not interference, but election integrity programs, right? So it was like kind of a lot of wasted money on both convincing people to use mail-in ballots and then, you know, trying to investigate examples of election integrity, which were not really there. There really weren't that many issues. So money wasted, et cetera. Here she is. But now the Trump family's come through. He's put in Lara Trump, his daughter-in-law at the top. She was just voted last week as co-chair, right?
And his campaign manager or his former co-campaign manager, Chris LaCivita, is now the COO running operations. And in fairness, the RNC was pretty anemic. The state level programs were just a mess. They were all, you know, out of cash and stuff.
just a lot of dysfunction inside. I don't know if the Trump camp is going to be able to turn it around. I don't know what your thoughts are on that, Teddy. Do you think they will be able to? Yeah, I mean, look, the RNC is having the same issues that, to some extent, you know, Trump was having himself, which is like, you know, the operation was very closely associated with him even before Rana was ousted. So now they're kind of very much
making this explicit what was implicit before, which is this is the Trump show. And they'll have the ability to kind of collect Trumpy donors. But the National Party Committee is always closely aligned with the incumbent. And I don't think the personnel they have there really matters that much for fundraising. Were there donors out there that were saying, we weren't going to donate to Ron Romney McDaniel, but we are going to donate to
to Lara Trump or to Suzy or to, you know, Chris LaCivita or whomever. I don't think this changes much from a fundraising perspective. And I'm sure there are a lot of people, because at one point they were helping Trump out with their legal fees, but then they couldn't do it anymore after he announced he was running for president. And so there were a lot of donors that just like didn't want to have anything to do with the RNC because of that. Yeah, I just feel like it was, you know,
it was tainted by the Trump connections or, or advantage by the Trump connections, depending on your perspective, even before, you know, they had someone with Trump at the head of it. So, um, yeah, we'll see. It's a big hole. This episode is brought to you by vitamin water, food, entertainment, sports,
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All right, another topic I want to transition to: the spoilers. A lot of people say the spoiler decides the election. Ross Perot, Nader, some might say Jill Stein in 2016. We got a few spoilers in the mix right now, some pretty prominent ones. The latest one, no labels on Friday decided that they are going to go for and run a unity candidate against Trump
and Biden. They had about 800 of their delegates meet digitally over Zoom, and they decided to go forward with it. Washington has been in freak-out mode about no labels for a very long time. They were hoping to get someone more prominent on their unity ticket, like Joe Manchin or Larry Hogan, but both of them said they don't want to have anything to do with it.
They actually had a lot of influence in Washington at one point, no labels, because they helped fund the Problem Solvers Caucus, which is a more moderate group of both Republicans and Democrats who often vote against their party lines to support more moderate legislation. You know, they had people on the board like John Huntsman, Mitt Romney. Joe Lieberman is still on the board. And this whole adventure in third-partyism has caused them to have a lot of enemies in town.
Specifically, Democrats are terrified about what this unity ticket could do. They have said that through polling, they have found that they think it would be more effective to have a Republican at the top of the ticket. And they don't want to hand the election to Trump. That's what they say. But Democrats think that they are by way of running any sort of moderate campaign.
Because then it doesn't become an option between Trump and Biden anymore. The question is, can they actually get a candidate that has any name ID? And so far, they've been working on just getting their name on the ballot in 50 states. They've got it on 20. They raised about $70 million for this initiative. They've said they want to raise $70 million. It has not been actually reported how much they've actually raised, which I've been curious about that. Fair enough. I feel like lots of people buy that.
But we don't actually know because it's a 501c4 and they will know if they raised $70 million in like 2020. It's about 25 when a tax return is released. Yeah. So it's a dark money group, meaning they don't have to report who their donors are. Even though we know that their donors in the past have been Nelson Peltz, Steve Schwarzman, Harlan Crowe, a mix of Republicans and Democrats. And their latest person that they've decided they want to be on their ticket, by the way,
The names that they've thrown out there, they've literally just thrown names out the wall. See which six. Chris Christie. Nikki Haley, who has said, no way. Actually, Chris Christie sort of left the door open. As of Friday, someone told me Paul Ryan. I messaged Paul Ryan about it, and he said, hell no, basically. Deval Patrick.
The latest is Lieutenant Governor of Georgia, Jeff Duncan. Who have you heard? Just tell me. I mean, there's like every name I've heard. The well that you can, you know, you can draw from here is endless, you know. I mean, whether, you know. I heard they were going to name you, Teddy. Or random business leaders. You know, it's very clear the approach, the best case scenario here is, you know, as if you are,
throwing a party and, you know, want people to show up. You just want to get, get the biggest name possible. Right. Right. But I have not heard of Jeff Duncan. Had you? Yeah. Very, very vaguely. I've seen him on TV a couple of times. Um, but do you look, I mean, the fact that you and I actually, I do, I've spoken to him before. Okay. Jeff Duncan will not, it will not be, do not come after Tara for, uh, do not hurt your lack of remembering you. But look, the fact that you and I are like, you know, saying, huh, tells us that, um, uh, that's a problem, right? Because, you know, this is a person who, uh,
Whoever they nominate is going to need to spend a ton of money to make this person break through the two-party duopoly that folks are used to voting for. And the less well-known this person is at the outset, the harder it is to both...
raise the money that that person needs to then make them more and more well-known. And the harder it is to, you know, just boost this person's name ID, right? If you're, if you've had Mitt Romney, you know, or Joe Manchin or, you know, any of the people you just named. I don't know that Joe Manchin has that great of a name ID either. I feel like Joe Manchin is a big enough name ID. Really? I feel like, I feel, I feel like, yeah, I feel like he's like, you know,
The US Senator is in the news all the time. I don't know. There's a lot of... A lot of Jeff Duncans add up to Joe Manchin. Okay, fair enough. So the challenge for No Labels is... If that's where you're starting from...
Like this effort is doomed, right? But does it just throw the election in Georgia? Like if he's so popular, do they think he can get the votes? I have no idea if he's even popular in Georgia. I don't know. I mean, like. It sounds like Trump's going to have a hard time in Georgia anyway, regardless if they run Jeff Duncan against him. Yeah. I mean, he's had a hard time in Georgia since, you know, he couldn't find the votes. Where are they, Teddy? Have you found them? The problem is that if you already know, to be clear, they don't even have Jeff Duncan yet. So like we're talking about, we're talking about, you know, someone they don't even have yet.
But, you know, this is an amazing self-own, you know, given that the stars really aligned for them. You know, they said they were only going to do it if it was Biden versus Trump. It was an insurance policy against Biden versus Trump running against each other. And a lot of people want that. Yeah, sure. I mean, like, you know, we're ridiculing this as like, you know, some product of, you know, elite out of touch, you know, billion, billionaire sympathizers. But like,
They are representing, you know, the 70% of Americans who are unhappy with the two-party system. So, like, to some extent, they are more in touch with regular people than the actual parties themselves are. Now, that 70% stack gets bastardized in various ways because, like, you know, that's the sum of people who are unhappy with one of the two. If they run Jeff Duncan or whomever, that is not going to...
you know, that is not the next president of the United States. No, but it can spoil. It's a spoiler. I just, I think, I think, I think the spoiler option is, is RFK. I think that RFK is going to be a more significant player in the presidential election than no labels. I think that RFK will, I think RFK will raise a ton of money. I think that he will, you know, appeal to,
an eclectic mix of, you know, burners and tech people and anti-vax people. And, you know, the 70% of people who just don't like either option kind of vaguely and see someone else. A lot of Democrats will think he's a Democrat because of his name is Kennedy. So low, he might appeal to some low information voters who go to the, go to vote and they see his name and they're like, sure. Yeah.
Yeah, right. I mean, I think he is a huge story this cycle, still underrated as a storyline, more so than No Labels. Although the Libertarians, they weren't so into him, according to our colleague Peter Hamby, who went to the Libertarian festival. I don't know how exactly it's going to work out for, you know, on which party lines or...
Whatever. I mean, it's only March. We'll see what happens. That's the big hurdle for RFK is to get on the ballot and whether to get on a party line. It sounds like that's what he's going to do rather than start his own party. But so far, he is on the ballot in Georgia and Arizona. Isn't that right?
American Values 2024 said they have gathered the necessary signatures to secure ballot access for Kennedy in Arizona and Georgia, two states that helped President Biden defeat former President Trump in 2020 by a very narrow margin. So, yeah, I do believe in the case of RFK.
could decide the election. Yes, I feel that he is the person to watch when we talk about spoilers. You know a little bit about American values. Tell me about that. Yeah, sure. I mean, the Kennedy super PAC operation is a...
a band of misfit toys all around. I'm not saying that specific group. I'm just saying the, the types of kind of operatives who have surrounded RFK on the campaign as well are like shocker, don't have a ton of standard political experience. Well, they wouldn't do it if they were like so ingrained in the party, they would be abandoning, you know, the democratic or Republican party and they wouldn't be allowed back in essentially. Right. They have to be kind of outliers. Right. So, you know, it's people who,
as I've kind of reported on the donor universe around RFK, it's a bunch of kind of random people. Folks who are personal friends of his or people who are definitely true believers, definitely think that RFK would be president of the United States, but it's like any insurgent
unusual campaign. It's not people who were partners at SKDK before this. So yeah, I mean, his super PAC has raised a lot of money from Tim Mellon, who is kind of a Republican mega donor. Who gave to Trump. Right, right. He gave $5 million to Trump. He's been on the scene for a few years now, kind of doing a lot of out there things in right-wing politics. Like, you know, he's at one point trying to privately finance
construction of a wall between Texas and Mexico a couple years ago. He's getting a lot of attention from Democrats. I mean, I know that the DNC is very interested in kind of the money universe that's surrounding RFK, including Timothy Mellon. They've also been looking at a guy named Gavin DeBecker, who...
in one of the probably most strangest things I've ever seen in campaign finance, has put $10 million into a super PAC, into the super PAC behind Bobby Kennedy, and has gotten back like 9.8 million of those 10 million as part of a loan, which has also drawn a DNC complaint last week based on the argument that
You know, you can't just like make contributions and then get the money back and call it a loan. Is this an FEC complaint that will like never be actually litigated? I don't know. It's just, it's, you know, primarily for earned media. But, you know, we're talking about right now on the podcast. So there you go. You brought it up, Teddy. Yeah. I mean, look, it is legitimately strange. And I was aware it was legitimately strange before the DNC said so. But it is legitimately weird and just sort of shows, you know,
the oddities of kind of the money world around rfk but um i do think that there will be like significant money that that piles into him because if you're a wealthy person in silicon valley say who feels that you know the game is rigged by trump and biden and all the options suck um i think he's going to be the candidate who's seen as the only real other option so i think co-raises raise plenty
Jack Dorsey? Jack Dorsey, I reported last week, is currently not donating to Bobby Kennedy, the Twitter founder who is obsessed with Bobby Kennedy and obsessed with Bitcoin.
and obsessed with Bobby Kennedy's position on Bitcoin, was trying to make over the last couple of months a major donation to support Bobby Kennedy, $5 million in Bitcoin. And I wrote a story
Sort of looking at how Jack believes, at least, that he was throttled by his own board of directors. Not at Twitter, because he's no longer at Twitter, obviously, but by the board of directors at Square, which is now called Block, which is the payments company that began as the way that you could pay for a taco at a food truck with your credit card. And Jack has basically been
you know, fighting or navigating tensions, whatever euphemism you want to use, with his own board of directors who, some of whom feel that, you know, why is our public company CEO and founder like this?
tweeting incessantly about Bobby Kennedy. This is a brand risk for us. But he's the controlling board member at the end of the day. Yeah, he owns, he can do whatever he wants. He's the CEO of the company. I guess he could be fired by the board or replaced in shareholder vote, blah, blah, blah. But he had decided to not do it, I think partially for reasons having to do with the concerns he was getting from his own board of directors about not wanting to piss them off too much.
So we have a story at Puck called The Rise and Fall of Jack and Bobby about Jack Dorsey and Bobby Kennedy. So many reasons to join Puck. Teddy's reporting, my reporting, Hollywood, media, all of it, Washington, Wall Street. Thanks so much for joining. And...
bailing me out on this Monday. Hope you'll come back again. Sure, make me the first choice next time. You're always my first choice, like of my people that can bail me out. Okay, okay. First choice of the backups, great. Well, yeah. Put it on the t-shirt. No, I mean, listen, I want to make you a regular. Let's just do it. Let's just make, like, how about this? Write to me, Tara at puck.news.
when you want Teddy to come, how frequently you want him, what topics do you want to talk about? He obviously talks about dark money, billionaires, the puppet masters, the people who decide. Yeah, so if you want, check out our reporting at puck.news.
I write a newsletter called The Best and the Brightest, and Teddy has a newsletter called The Stratosphere. And you can use my discount code Tara20 for 20% off. I want to thank my producers, Christopher Sutton and Connor Nevins, and I'll be back on Thursday. ♪
