How Trump Has Explicitly Described the Pay to Play Politics He Now Denies
For months, Donald Trump has gloated about being on the winning end of a political system where elected officials owe their major donors favors. But now Trump is distancing himself from the pay-to-play world as he faces scrutiny over a major donation he made in support of Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi as her office was weighing whether to sue Trump University.
Since embarking on his presidential campaign, Trump has boasted about his history of making major contributions to politicians of both parties — contributions he said are part of a “game” that he has been on the “other side all of my life.”
“As a businessman and a very substantial donor to very important people, when you give, they do whatever the hell you want them to do,” Trump told the Wall Street Journal last year. He alleged at a GOP debate that only he can fix this “broken” system because he knows it so well.
The claim that he was a player on the winning side allowed Trump to defend himself from attacks from his Republican rivals who criticized his donations to Hillary Clinton and other Democrats. He also used the idea of buying political influence to brag about his (allegedly) self-funded primary campaign, while throwing it back at his opponents by suggesting that they were in fact the “puppets” of donors who had “control over them.”
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