Hi, I’m Mary Trump, and unfortunately my uncle is president of the United States. I’m a writer, activist, and clinical psychologist, and I started Mary Trump Media in part to call out the damage Donald and his enablers continue to do to our country.
Let us take a look at dark money. In 2013 Obama had this to say:
Reporter: You mentioned the Supreme Court and the term started today with the campaign finance case that sort of picks up where Citizens United left off.
Obama: We’ve called Citizens United devastating to the public interest.
Reporter:So I wonder if you could weigh in on this latest case.
Obama: Well, the latest case would go even further than Citizens United. I mean, essentially it would say anything goes.
There are no rules in terms of how to finance campaigns. There aren’t a lot of functioning democracies around the world that work this way, where you can basically have millionaires and billionaires bankrolling whoever they want, however they want, in some cases undisclosed. And what it means is ordinary Americans are shut out of the process.
The key phrase there, of course, is functioning democracy. In large part because of the egregious Citizens United versus Federal Election Commission decision in 2010, we are a failing democracy. We’re on the brink of autocracy, and it led us directly to incompetent, corrupt, traitorous people like Donald Trump running our government.
This was a five-four ruling for which I hold Chief Justice John Roberts responsible. As Obama said:
It allows corporations and unions to spend unlimited amounts of their own money trying to influence elections as long as that spending remained independent of candidates.
Sixteen years later, the amount of political money his original source voters cannot identify has reached record levels. That would be the dark money groups. The Brennan Center for Justice points out that they have spent at least $1.9 billion influencing federal races in 2024. That’s nearly double the previous record. This is a perfect storm of those dark money groups, nonprofits, and shell companies that are in it to reshape the United States of America in their image, because essentially what John Roberts and his corrupt illegitimate majority on that court have done is equate corporations with people and say that money is speech.
Therefore, the more money you have, the more speech you are allowed to engage in.
It was obscene when this ruling was made, but the poisonous fruits of that decision are increasingly obvious, and it increases the urgency of getting money out of politics. But of course, after all of this time, after over fifteen years, money is the most important thing about American politics these days.
People get into politics to make money. People with massive amounts of money use it to influence elections so that the people getting into office are perfectly comfortable with having so much illicit money in politics because it enriches them too. This is not any way to run a government, especially one that is ostensibly a democracy, because, as Obama said:
It gives much more power to the people who already have more power than the rest of us do anyway.
Remember, Elon Musk spent over $200 million, I believe, in the 2024 election, and make no mistake, he will spend even more the next time.
On June 30, 2026, the rules governing political money loosened yet again. The corrupt illegitimate super majority of the Supreme Court ruled, not surprisingly, six to three, in National Republican Senatorial Committee versus FEC, that political parties can spend unlimited amounts in coordination with their federal candidates, which was the only thing about Citizens United, making sure there was a separation between the spending and the candidates that made it slightly less egregious. This case was brought by Republican political committees and politicians, including, of course, baby JD Vance.
At the same time, the agency responsible for enforcing federal campaign finance laws can’t fully function. The Federal Election Commission has been hobbled, lacking the four commissioners required for a quorum since May 1, 2025. Without a quorum, the FEC cannot make any significant enforcement or rulemaking actions. In fact, after the Supreme Court’s June ruling, the FEC posted a notice saying some of its own guidance is now outdated and won’t be revised until the commission regains a quorum. On August 11, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, also known as CREW, published an investigation tracing one network of thirteen interconnected nonprofits that do not disclose their donors.
Those thirteen groups have already moved more than $33.1 million into thirty-one federal super PACs during the 2026 election cycle, more than the same network moved into federal super PACs during the entirety of the 2024 election. Most of that money has gone towards supporting Republican Senate candidates. And looking at the broader congressional races, Issue One found that between January 25 and June 26, the four major super PACs fighting for control of the House and Senate received $197.7 million from affiliated nonprofits that don’t disclose their donors. That’s more than one out of every four those super PACs raised. Republican-aligned groups received about 58 percent of the nearly $198 million identified by Issue One. All Democratic-aligned groups received about 42 percent. Private money is also flowing into projects connected directly to the Trump regime.
Take, for example, America’s 250th birthday. Congress created the bipartisan America 250 Commission in 2016 to organize the country’s semiconcentennial, that’s when Obama was still president.
Then, shocking, in December 2025, Donald announced a separate initiative called Freedom 250, working with the White House and the National Park Foundation on anniversary events. Donald promoted Freedom 250 throughout the celebration, including at the so-called Great American State Fair in June.
Freedom 250 solicited millions of dollars from corporate sponsors. Sponsorship packages reportedly ranged from $500,000 to more than $10 million with benefits that could include branding, VIP access, and at the highest levels, invitations to a private reception hosted by Donald. And I’m sure that was all to benefit the American people, right? No. It was to gain influence over the only president in American history who has been so openly and egregiously for sale. But Freedom 250 has also faced questions about how that money was raised. On July 2, Democrats on the House Natural Resources Committee released a report alleging that some donors intended to contribute to the bipartisan America 250 organization were instead giving banking information for Freedom 250 and that others were pressured to redirect contributions. Freedom 250 called the allegations categorically false and a partisan smear, which means that the allegations are true almost certainly, and private donations aren’t the only money involved.
On July 29, the Interior Department asked Congress for another $10 million to reimburse the National Park Service for costs associated with three Freedom 250 events, including Donald’s July 4 celebration. And here’s what part of that looked like.
Yes, I am sure that all of the hundreds of millions of dollars raised were needed to build that stage and pay that group of musicians. Yes, our tax dollars at work. So I don’t know what’s happening now. The hundreds of millions of dollars raised for these absurd events, which were merely celebrations of Donald’s inflated ego and had nothing to do with the founding of our country, certainly were not spent appropriately. These events were as tawdry and pathetic as everything else he organizes.
It is impossible to overstate the damage John Roberts has done to this country across the board, but Citizens United will go down in history as one of the most corrupt, democracy-destroying decisions he was a part of.
It should go without saying, but there are many reasons Citizens United needs to be overturned. There are many reasons we need to take money out of politics and have publicly funded elections. One is what I alluded to earlier, that people get into politics now to get rich. It is a serious problem that many people are much wealthier when they leave office than they were when they ran for office. Also, we have far too many scam PACs out there and people who are getting rich simply by raising money for candidates, that should not be a thing that happens. But mostly because having as much dark money in politics as we do gives an outsize, which is to say an overwhelming voice to those who already have more power than they should.
Yes, Scalia doomed our country with that decision in the Roberts court. We need to change our SCOTUS to get balance in our country reflecting the wishes of most Americans.
Well explained- thank you☮️