Republican Party Chairwoman Ronna Not-Romney McDaniel has warned disgraced former President Trump the party’s donors will stop paying his legal bills for shit he did that has literally nothing to do with his time as president or as candidate if he announces his comeback run for the White House before the 2022 midterms, the Washington Post reports.

The threat is about the best she can come up with to dissuade the would-be dictator from officially launching his campaign, which sources tell the Washington Post is coming in September at the latest. While we’ve been suckered into relaying these reports of an imminent announcement at least twice over the past few months only for nothing to happen, the fact remains that it’s the best way for the fat bastard to get ahead of Ron DeSantis, who realistically cannot launch his own campaign while running for reelection in Florida. As such, we still think it’s significantly more likely than not it happens before the midterms, something Republicans are terrified will take even more momentum out of their already downgraded forecast of a “Red Wave” after the Roe v Wade decision.

“Of all the selfish things he does every minute of every day, it would probably be the most. Everything we are doing that is not talking about the economy is going to be a disaster,” one “prominent Republican strategist” told the Post, “speaking on the condition of anonymity to offer a candid assessment,” because he’s afraid of his angry, vengeful Orange God Emperor’s wrath. Others tried to find a silver lining. “You might as well get the benefit if you’re going to take the lashes too. If you want to energize the base and get the base out, no one does it better than Trump,” said GOP pollster Tony Fabrizio, resigned to the fact that there’s nothing the party can do.

Non-Correction 7/14/2022 9:05 AM EST: The original Washington Post article describes this warning as “McDaniel has told others that the party will stop paying his legal bills if [Trump] becomes the nominee,” and rather than if he announces his run early as we described in the headline and lede. However, this doesn’t actually make sense as a warning, because the whole point for Trump is to become the nominee irrespective of whether the RNC would still paying his legal bills afterward. We messed up by misreading this, but it seems more likely than not that the Post themselves messed up and put “becomes the nominee” where they meant “announces before the midterms.” As such we will leave this as is for now and update if the Post issues a clarification.