On Monday we picked up a report that convicted felon former President Trump’s 2024 campaign have been buying up ad spots in the West Palm Beach media market, a situation we found strikingly similar to the 2020 operation having done so in the DC-Maryland-Virginia market just by the fact that neither region is up for grabs in the electoral college. Back then anonymous sources had confirmed to the Daily Beast they were spending simply because they needed to boost Donald’s confidence when he was worried about losing, making it pretty easy to infer the same reasons apply this year. But we didn’t have any upstream insider reporting, nor did we have a “cover story” like the one then-Trump 2020 comms director Tim Murtaugh told the Beast in an email that year.

“We want members of Congress and our DC-based surrogates to see the ads so they know our strong arguments for President Trump and against Joe Biden,” Murtaugh wrote, evidently trying to shift the very easily perceived feelings of anxiety away from Trump and onto Hill Republicans. Not really a great look to be admitting that they were pissing away money because the rest of the party was nervous, but still better than saying outright it was all for the Orange Tyrant’s emotional needs.

Thanks to the Bulwark we now have the “official” 2024 limited hangout/blame shift: “This is more about keeping the donors happy than the principal. There’s a lot of donors in Palm Beach. If spending $50,000 gets us $5 million, that’s good ROI. If it makes the boss happy, too, then good,” said a person the Bulwark describes as a “campaign insider, who noted that Trump himself would not be in Palm Beach much this week.” Damn… Might as well say “Suck it you lib hyenas! It’s all ROI!”