In June 2015, former President Donald Trump infamously came down a golden escalator and declared himself the man who couldn’t be bought.
“I’m using my own money,” Trump said in the opening speech of his presidential election campaign. “I’m not using the lobbyists. I’m not using donors. I don’t care. I’m really rich.”
Trump, who did self-fund large portions of his 2016 primary campaign, would return to this theme again and again. He would run against a field of more mainstream GOP politicians, each backed by super PACs filled with million-dollar checks from wealthy donors, and then against Democrat Hillary Clinton, who many voters saw as the embodiment of a moneyed class of Washington insiders.
Now, almost a decade later, he is running as a candidate who is openly for sale. He has said he’ll offer plum jobs to major donors like Elon Musk, promised favors to oil executives, bragged to the wealthy about the tax cuts he can deliver and has even taken time away from…