Jonathan V. Last of The Bulwark explained why Trump’s $1.776 billion slush is such a powerful tool for a crafty mob/boss.

Last wrote:

We’ve been thinking too narrowly about the $1.776 billion pot of taxpayer money that Donald Trump will soon control.

Most people assumed Trump would use it to pay off meathead insurrectionists, sort of a . . . treason stimulus.

Absolute gold.

Others believed that while Dummkopf MAGA might get a couple bucks here and there, the real money would be funneled to Trump family members and organizations.

But the Slush Fund from Hell—or whatever we’re calling it—is much more useful than any of that. It’s a multitool for corruption and maintaining MAGA discipline. Let me explain.

You have to respect Trump as an innovator. He saw that private lawsuits could be used as a way to legalize bribery and extortion—that’s what his defamation suits against CBS and ABC were.¹

Trump understood that while it might be illegal to go to CBS and ABC and demand that they pay him protection money, he could use a civil lawsuit as justification for creating a private legal contract that amounted to the same thing.

He further understood that if he filed a civil suit against the U.S. government and then became president, he could direct the government to settle with him on whatever terms he desired.

These are ideas which seem to have occurred to no one in American history prior to Trump. When it comes to corruption, the man knows how to think laterally.

So what sort of lateral uses could he make of a $1.776 billion fund which he controls completely? There are two big ones.

The obvious one is bribery. As we discussed last week, Trump can turn the fund into fee-for-service. You give him a thing he wants—a vote, a certification, a report—and then you get compensated at a later date.

But the subtle one is something else altogether. It’s about holding people on side.

One of the striking design details about the fund is that it disappears just before Trump leaves office. It is sunset so that it can never be directed by anyone other than Trump.

Think about how this is likely to work in practice.

If you were Trump, would you pay out money before your last days in office? 

Because I would not.

The optimum strategy is for Trump to pay a couple people early, just to validate the fund’s existence. After that he should encourage anyone and everyone to apply for compensation. And then he should wait.

Because open applications give him leverage over people.

As a for-instance: Two days ago Mike Flynn almost criticized Trump about making a deal with Iran. Do you think people will be willing to do even that much if they have compensation applications pending that could be worth millions of dollars?

Another reason Trump should wait to disburse funds is that he can implicitly promise to pay more than $1.776 billion. Think about it: $1.776 billion is a lot of money, but it’s only 1,700 million-dollar portions. If Trump starts paying people right away, the fund gets drawn down and people start to realize that maybe they won’t get anything from it.

But if the nut is largely intact, everyone in MAGA world can dream. Trump can pass out tens of billions of dollars worth of promises—Don’t worry, we’ll take care of you; you just have to wait a little bit longer—with everyone thinking that, since he’s going to pay up at the very end, there’s enough cash for them to get theirs.

Second-term presidents become politically weak when members of their party realize that their incentives are diverging from the POTUS.

Maybe the POTUS is becoming unpopular, so candidates need to distance themselves from him. Maybe party elites are thinking about the future and how to take over once the old man is gone.

The slush fund is a tool to fix that problem. It’s the promise of a tangible reward for Republicans to stay on his side. Be nice to him. Do what he asks. Don’t freelance. And maybe there’s a pot of gold for you at the end of the rainbow.

The slush fund won’t work on everyone. Some Republicans will be secure enough that they don’t need Trump’s money. Some will be ambitious enough that they’re willing to forgo the uncertain promise of a payout for a shot at the title.

But it’ll work for some of them. It will encourage them to modulate what they say. And within the rest of the Republican ecosystem, having more people on-side than there otherwise would be will have a force-multiplier effect. Seeing people stick with Trump will cause more people to stick with Trump.

Watch what happens in the coming days with the Iran deal. See how many defections there are. And then ask yourself: How many of those people who suddenly get with the program are hoping to apply for some compensation from their president?