"WHERE'S YOUR TAX RETURNS?!"

As so often happens, the big story of the day kinda washed out some smaller — yet equally damning — stories.

There is this story: Clinton campaign outspending Trump on ads $52 million to zero

Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign has now spent $52 million on ads, and pro-Clinton outside groups have chipped in an additional $39 million, according to ad-spending data from Advertising Analytics. By comparison, the Trump campaign itself has spent $0, with pro-Trump outside groups adding $8 million over the airwaves.

Then there is this one from the Washington Post, that I don’t think has gotten the attention that it should.

Donald Trump still hasn’t figured out the ground game

According to a campaign official, it's a function of enthusiastic volunteers -- volunteers filling a vacuum left by the Trump campaign's non-existent outreach operation on the ground in the region. It's not clear where Trump's team is running anything of any scale. The campaign continues to trail Hillary Clinton's staff head-count by a wide margin. Trump has regularly argued that his low spending on staff saves him money, but organizing in battleground states requires staff in those states. The internet allows campaigns to coordinate phone calling remotely, but no one has yet figured out how to knock on a voter's door over the web. Volunteers can run phone banks or precinct walks, but relying on unpaid staff to do that effectively is risky.

What's more, field is not that easy. It takes months of voter targeting and outreach, building up volunteer efforts on the ground and figuring out who you want to talk to, when, and what you want to say. It requires figuring out how you can help seniors to the polls and where and when to offer literature or sales pitches to wavering voters. It's not the sort of thing that you cobble together in a week. It's the sort of thing that professional campaigns looking at November have already started working on.

The whole article is worth a read. It provides insight into what the Trump ground game looked like for the Primaries; and how they were woefully flawed endeavors. Trump has at times disparaged the data-driven field campaign, the focal point in modern elections, notably thanks to Obama’s impeccable data-mining techniques. So I suppose it should not be all that surprising that Trump’s ground gave has yet to reach anything close to rivaling Clinton’s.

Nevertheless, this brings up a compelling issue. After a noteworthy fundraising disadvantage, the Trump campaign has taken great efforts to advertise his fundraising hauls of the last couple months.

Trump campaign hauls $80 million in July, closing gap with Clinton

Trump beats expectations, raises $51 million with GOP in June

The logical question then becomes: If he’s got all this money, and he’s not spending it on Ads, and he’s not spending it on building a field campaign...what is he doing with all that money?

In the first diary, Hunter puts the issue succinctly.

Perhaps he doesn't intend to spend any of those campaign donations on ads—or anything else. Perhaps someone has let him in on the grandest grift of all time: After your supporters willingly give you their money, you don't have to give it back.

I think when it comes to Trump, deep suspicion is warranted. We know from what few FEC filings there have been, that Trump the Presidential candidate has already been a boon for Trump the rentier, to the tune of $6 million.

Through the end of May, Trump’s campaign had plunged at least $6.2 million back into Trump corporate products and services, a review of Federal Election Commission filings shows. That’s about 10% of his total campaign expenditures.

Even $4.7 million the campaign has spent on hats and T-shirts has a tie to Trump. The provider, Ace Specialties, is owned by a board member of son Eric Trump’s charitable foundation.

Last, but not least, to put some sinister icing on this mystery cake…one has to ask. Is any of this American campaign money going to Russia?

So, yes, it’s true that Trump has failed to land a business venture inside Russia. But the real truth is that, as major banks in America stopped lending him money following his many bankruptcies, the Trump organization was forced to seek financing from non-traditional institutions. Several had direct ties to Russian financial interests in ways that have raised eyebrows. What’s more, several of Trump’s senior advisors have business ties to Russia or its satellite politicians. “The Trump-Russia links beneath the surface are even more extensive,” Max Boot wrote in the Los Angeles Times. “Trump has sought and received funding from Russian investors for his business ventures, especially after most American banks stopped lending to him following his multiple bankruptcies.” What’s more, three of Trump’s top advisors all have extensive financial and business ties to Russian financiers, wrote Boot, the former editor of the Op Ed page of the Wall Street Journal and now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

If one buys the idea that Trump owes Russian creditors, either directly or indirectly, then one has to consider the possibility that Trump may be turning to his Presidential coffers to pay some of those debts. Just how much he’s in these Russian-backed financiers for, and how exactly he services the debt, are salient questions. If he would release his tax returns, we would perhaps have a better understanding. But with his refusal to release his returns, the refrain now becomes, what are you hiding?

Now, to back it up a bit. Let’s give Trump the benefit of the doubt. Let’s say that there are no nefarious plots for Trump’s massive untapped funds, and that his campaign is possibly waiting to spend the money at a later, perhaps they think, more opportune moment.

Even if we grant the most generous of interpretations, it comes out to Trump being a completely awful executive, terrible at running his own campaign, seemingly doing more to torpedo his own chances than even his Republican and Democratic detractors have been able to accomplish.

As is brought up in the ground game article, it is awfully late to get a field campaign running. It takes time building up the strength necessary for boots on the ground to translate into electoral success. And yeah, whether Trump or whoever wants to admit it or not, using big data to help you with these efforts is essential, if not required.

Then, there’s the failure to run tv ads of your own. Even if Trump is considering all the free airtime that the news channels give him, as many people speculate, it still leaves a powerful vacuum for Clinton and her allies to shape the message being disseminated to the people. While Trump has to grapple with the middle-men of news pundits, oftentimes with agendas of their own, Clinton gets to directly utilize a directed messaging campaign, likely vetted by focus groups for maximum impact.

Couple that with the fact that TV ads get more expensive the closer we get to elections. That’s why many groups reserve air time well in advance, to lock in the lower rates. Despite the reports that Trump’s campaign has so far spent $0, there is little signal that they have otherwise reserved any airtime. So even if they do have massive money to spend, it is not being utilized most efficiently.

All of this, added together points to a Trump as terrible executive of his Presidential campaign. One can imagine what it translates to as what kind of executive he would be if he actually made it into the White House.

Unfortunately, the way this story is getting out to the public, oftentimes the stories come, much like individual pieces in a Trump jigsaw puzzle. However, taking the time to put what pieces we do have together, the picture that emerges is of a person singularly unfit to be President, at best; and at worst, we are witnessing massive fraud in real-time.