Part of the problem appears to be that running a disciplined, functional campaign for an undisciplined, dysfunctional leader might just be impossible. Throw in that the candidate is vain, unfocused, and corrupt at a cellular level, and you have a recipe for campaign grift and graft, both of which point to unprecedented waste. The Trump campaign, for example, paid $11 million to run Super Bowl ads in February. That might not seem like much when you have a billion dollars to throw around, but, by comparison, the two game day ads cost more than Trump would spend through the end of July on local TV ads in four pretty important upper midwest battle ground states combined: Wisconsin ($3.9 million), Michigan ($3.6 million), Iowa ($2 million), and Minnesota ($1.3 million).

As with every campaign ever, it's hard to look good if you're losing--and impossible to look smart if you lose. But the Times data shows the shady decadence of a number of now typical Trump-style expenses has started to add up: more than $1 million in TV ads in the D.C. market solely to flatter the president's ego and millions spent at Trump properties, office space in Trump Tower, lavishly courting donors at Mar-a-Lago in Florida and at the steakhouse at Trump's Washington hotel. And that doesn't even include the hundreds of millions of dollars that have been paid out through the shady limited liability company, American Made Media Consultants, to God knows where. The opaque company is thought to pay the Trump family and assorted hangers-on abnormally high sums for their campaign "services." The campaign even spent nearly a million dollars in ads promoting its now former campaign manager Brad Parscale's Facebook and Instagram pages. Let's not forget, Trump and his clan have never shied away from spending other people's money.