Editor's note: Bradley Blankenship is a Prague-based American journalist, political analyst and freelance reporter. The article reflects the author's opinions, and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

On September 27, The New York Times released a bombshell – information from the long sought-after tax filings of U.S. President Donald Trump that he has long battled to keep secret. They revealed that the president paid no federal income taxes in 11 of 18 years examined by The Times, paying a measly $750 both in 2016, and 2017 after he became president. 

The president also received a $72.9 million tax refund during the Great Recession that is still pending audit, his businesses have long been hemorrhaging so much money that he receives extraordinary tax credits, his adult children have reportedly benefited from questionable "consultation fees" and he's under considerable financial pressure due to hundreds of millions of dollars in loans.

His political opponents will approach this news in several ways. Moderates will probably attack him as a fake billionaire and a terrible businessman, while progressives will laser in on a class line that he is a wealthy bigot that exploits everyone to achieve his own ends; however, both things can be true at the same time given that extreme wealth in America is inherited nearly without exception, as was the case with the president. As Rick Wilson of the Lincoln Project, a political action committee of Republicans aimed at dislodging Trump, tweeted, "An actual billionaire in New York once told me 'Trump isn't rich. Trump isn't a billionaire. He's a clown living on credit.'"

It remains to be seen exactly how these revelations will affect polls in the coming weeks, even as The Times has said it will continue to publish more material, but they will no doubt serve as perfect attack material from his challenger. Perhaps more importantly, these revelations reveal a 2020 re-election bid that is on life support. 

The president has been getting slaughtered in donations and his campaign is in panic mode – tightening up its spending and struggling to field donations from the wealthy class that he so proudly filled his cabinet with and enacted policies for. Many wealthy donors "are jumping ship and timidly supporting [former Vice President Joe Biden] after seeing the president's disastrous coronavirus response that has no doubt affected their revenue."

A new Open Secrets tally shows that the securities and investment industry (Wall Street) has donated nearly five times more for Biden than for the president. While many financial investors see another four years of Trump and a Republican-controlled Congress as the ideal scenario, Biden, who is a long-time friend of the credit card industry and helped push consumer credit legislation on their behalf as a senator, is seen as tolerable and stable by most of the major financial institutions. As such, he is out-fundraising the president from all of America's largest banks, even beating him in fundraising in the broad category of finance, insurance and real estate as CNN noted on September 25, and also fielding record small donations from individuals.

This is all the backdrop for a highly questionable ad blitz being prepared by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that seeks to "defeat despair" about COVID-19, which has become the central issue of the 2020 election. The program, called the "COVID-19 immediate surge public advertising and awareness campaign," was personally demanded from the president.

This ad blitz should be aired before November 3, tagged at over $300 million, and will feature interviews with administration officials and celebrities friendly to the administration that will discuss aspects of the president's coronavirus response. It will "target specific audiences with tailored communications."

The exact content of the ads is unknown at this time, but, as former HHS officials have noted to media outlets, the whole program is highly suspicious. If the administration would have sent out ads aimed at reducing panic and helping to promote good health habits, this should have been done in March – not right before the election.

This probably is an obvious attempt at using taxpayer money to fund the president's re-election bid. While he probably would have liked to fund these ads with his campaign, which would allow them to be much more explicit in their messaging, the fact is that he probably just doesn't have the resources. He is facing an ever-increasing cash advantage that Democrats are piling on as the run-up to the election draws to a close. 

Joe Biden finished the month of August by raising over $150 million more than the president and has a $30 million cash-on-hand advantage. September is probably going to be another record month for Biden and Democrats, which will add more pressure to the Trump campaign. And if things got so bad that he would have to add a heavy cash infusion from his own pocket, as he said he could do multiple times, it looks like he might not be in a personal financial position to do so after examining the tax revelation.

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