Has anyone brought up the possibility that the $500,000 from Cruz’s PAC to Fiorina’s PAC was actually a bribe to BUY CARLY’S ENDORSEMENT ??
These Super PACs aren’t required to give the money back when the candidate drops out. The principals involved in the PACs KEEP THE MONEY.
Anyone with half a brain could see that Fiorina wasn’t going to win the nomination, so why would anyone — specifically an opponent — give her PAC $500,000 ?
Two options come to mind: Bribe for Carly’s endorsement when she dropped out, or hush-money for Cruz mistress.
What other motives are realistic?
good grief, you Trumpettes aren’t even based in reality. Always resorting to what-ifs and maybe’s. All while ignoring the decades of liberal support Trump has.
We truly live in an upside down world.
I don’t know all that much election law, but I’m thinking there are only a few cases where one campaign can ‘give’ another campaign money from their own funds.
I’d think that on the surface, ‘buying endorsements’ is illegal, particularly from one official campaign to another. Perhaps this was weaseled through a PAC to PAC deal and somewhere in there is a newly formed Carly nonprofit separate from her still-official ‘suspended’ campaign. I don’t know, really.
All I know is that this whole sh!t stinks to high heaven and Carly up on a stage deflecting adultery questions for a silent Ted instead of his wife there with him answering the questions smells like dead fish to me.’
Everyone can take their own impression from all this but my daddy didn’t raise no damned fool......and my wife sure as hell wouldn’t buy all this bullshit either.
Many times.
Carly’s endorsement is worthless. The money for the Melania nude photo....worth half-a-million in my humble opinion. It would be curious at the next press conference for someone to ask Cruz why he gave big money to Carly...maybe he’s have a good answer, but I doubt it.
The timing of the contribution (which was PAC to PAC rather than involving the official campaigns) was at a point when Carly was in danger of having to quit.
Cruz supporters were flush with cash, and then more confident of Cruz’ nomination. They wanted Carly to stay in to keep up her trashing of Hillary without a sexism charge. This same strategy was suggested by FReepers numerous times.
Fiorina did go on to receive wide acclaim after a couple of the GOP debates.
That’s the legitimate plausible explanation, not a judgment on the ultimate reality.
You mentioned the only two possibilities that make any sense. Could be one or the other, but it could be a package deal for both. Like that old Certs commercial, paraphrased...
“Two, two, two crimes in one”
The one I figured at the time was that Cruz wanted Trump hit hard in that debate, but didn’t want to be seen doing it. We all knew Carly was going nowhere but it was far from certain that Cruz was, so promises of administration positions wouldn’t mean much at the time.
The rumors have been swirling about hush money, but usually those guys are a lot smarter than to leave a paper trail. Cruz is a lot of unflattering things, but stupid isn’t one of them!
Campaign finance reports out this month show the elder Mercer playing the field. He gave $250,000 to Believe Again PAC, a super-PAC supporting another Republican presidential contender, Bobby Jindal. He also donated to Fiorina's presidential campaign committee, which can accept much less money ($5,400 per individual per election cycle) than super-PACs.
Cruz is not the first presidential candidate to experience the fickleness of super-PACs. During the last presidential campaign, a super-PAC that was widely reported to be set to back then-Minnesota Representative Michele Bachmann's quest for the Republican presidential nomination ended up supporting Mitt Romney instead.
It is neither illegal nor completely unique for a super PAC to make donations to other PACs or to other campaigns.
IIRC, the possible reason for this rather large donation from the PAC that Robert Mercer started and largely funded was at the time was that Carly was very well positioned, as a woman to attack Hillary and also Trump.