We already know that Donald Trump is facing some headwinds in his bid to return to the oval office, despite is growing lead in many polls. He’s facing multiple court dates dealing with indictments in four different civil and criminal cases. None of them look to me like they would survive the appeals process even if a conviction is obtained, but it’s still at least an optics problem in terms of the politics involved. And the legacy media remains nearly universally arrayed against him, making effective messaging more challenging. But he may have one other problem that isn’t being discussed as much. It costs a lot of money to run for the presidency, and Trump is burning through it at a furious rate because of the legal fees associated with his trial dates. Here’s a detail that showed up on Thursday.

After two delays, Trump was scheduled to testify Monday in his $500 million case against Michael Cohen. But with 4 pending indictments and an ongoing trial that could cost him hundreds of millions & control of his real estate portfolio, he can’t afford another video deposition. https://t.co/L9A8y5idxg

— Lisa Rubin (@lawofruby) October 6, 2023

At her substack, Liz Mair has been sounding the alarm about this for a while now and she did so again this week. She also offers some suggestions in terms of alternative solutions.

OK, so I posted the other day about the biggest threat Donald Trump actually poses to downballot Republicans in terms of election losses— the guy is going to have to blow through every bit of money he is raising to pay his lawyers. He will scarcely be able to pay for a single meaningful ad buy targeting swing states at the rate he is going. Maybe “scarcely” doesn’t even belong in that sentence.

I don’t want to have to rename this Substack “Broken Record Liz,” but I think it’s super important that everyone keep paying attention to this. More specifically, I think it’s super important that Mitch McConnell and whoever ends up leading House Republicans plus the NRSC, NRCC and RGA heads start paying attention to this.

Daily, new kernels are dropping that suggest Trump’s financial situation is becoming more dire— except as seen from the perspective of his lawyers, who are happily cashing the checks paid for by a bunch of red state grandmothers’ Social Security.

Liz argues that a cash flow problem for Trump can translate to similar challenges for Republicans in down-ballot races that they normally wouldn’t face with a well-funded candidate at the top of the ticket. I don’t know if Lisa Rubin’s claim that Trump dropped his suit against Michael Cohen because “he can’t afford another video deposition” is true. (It sounds like a very big stretch.) But it’s hard to deny that Trump’s lawyers are running up some massive bills. But how big of a problem is that for him actually, and what realistic alternatives are available in the current election landscape?

In terms of the first question, I’m not sure how grave Trump’s financial situation really is. His donors have proven loyal to a fault and if he’s running short of money, many of them will just dig a little deeper. I would also argue that Trump doesn’t need as much paid media to win an election as most lesser-known hopefuls. He’s a household name who gets so much earned-media for free from the legacy news outlets that he should almost be paying them. Yes, most of them describe him in horrible terms, but Donald Trump’s army of loyalists aren’t put off by any of that. As the old saying goes, all publicity is good publicity as long as they spell your name right.

With all of that said, it’s worth keeping an eye on Trump’s campaign coffers. We’ll need to see where he stands after the next FEC reporting period. Yet, even if you do consider this to be a major problem, what can be done about it at this point? Liz correctly points out that it’s inconceivable that Donald Trump would voluntarily remove himself from the race. All of the current contenders have thus far failed to put a significant dent in his numbers, so Trump appears poised to cross the finish line first unless he gets hit by a bus.

If the current crew can’t manage it, Liz speculates about dragging someone into the race who might be able to pull it off, but that would need to happen very, very soon. Her first thought was to try to tempt Glenn Youngkin into running, but he’s been asked about it directly and doesn’t appear interested. She then offers one more choice out of left field. (Well… right field, actually.) The Hail Mary pass she suggests is recruiting Brian Kemp to run. She argues that Kemp has beaten Trump before, albeit in a proxy race against one of Trump’s endorsees. And he has a great story to tell about his successes in the critical state of Georgia, where he remains very popular, with an approval rating in the sixties.

But she also notes the obvious problem with this strategy. Liz says she has no idea if Kemp would actually want to run for president, let alone be the president. That’s a pretty important point to ignore if you ask me. The primaries are starting in less than three months. If Brian Kemp had any interest in jumping into this dogfight, don’t you suppose we’d have heard from him by now? And if he’s not secretly dreaming about it, how would anyone twist his arm and get him to do it? I’m just not seeing it.

As far as I can see, anyone looking for other non-Trump options is bailing water out of the boat without plugging the leaks first. This is Trump’s ace to win or lose at this point. And whether you love him or hate him, conservatives’ hopes of evicting Joe Biden and plundering the Democrats’ majority in the Senate are riding on his shoulders for better or worse. Not everyone needs to jump on the bandwagon right at this exact moment, but it definitely looks like that wagon will be pulling out of the station before very long.