Who can resist such an easy target? The answer turned out to be MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, a performance artist himself, who explained Trump’s appeal—and possible impact on the 2016 presidential race. “If he’s on the debate stage,” Scarborough said, “and he turns to Scott Walker or Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush and hits them with something, not mean-spirited, but searing and truthful that nobody else in polite political society would say, it can shape a race.”

Scarborough’s prediction may have come true instantly, even before the first debate. As he mentioned on “Morning Joe,” one of the organizations bashing Trump was the fiscally conservative Club for Growth. Last week, it issued a dismissive press release saying it wouldn’t bother to issue a white paper on his policies because Trump is “not a serious Republican candidate.”

But as Trump revealed Thursday, the Club for Growth had recently hit him up in writing—and in person—for a $1 million contribution, which he declined to give. Was this a pay-for-play offer, as Trump hinted, or just business as usual in the nation’s capital? Either way, Trump wins.

“The Club for Growth is the worst of the two-faced hypocrisy of Washington,” said Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. “This unfortunate incident is representative of the corruption that persists in Washington, D.C., and politics in general, in the United States.”

That’s a message that might sell.