Why the donors are ponying up for him is beyond me given his past history. He routinely walked away from start up projects, companies, entire casinos, and left others holding the bag as he plowed into the next project. That's Trump's entire M.O. wrapped up over his entire life.
Besides being suckers, which I'm sure a lot are, there are also the people who probably understand he is very likely to walk away with the money but still want access and know giving to Trump right now is the best way to get it at some point over the next few years.
If Trump plans to not run for reelection and is indeed running a scam, he would surely limit access to people who don't donate before 2020, and maybe even go out of his way to damage them in some form or another, so as to effectively extort donations.
On a side note it's so weird how we can all openly theorize about POTUS grifting people like this so brazenly and know without a doubt that it's not only completely plausible but probably more likely than not. That is the kind of man we have as our president now - a man who is literally running the country from his club like a mob boss.
The problem is that the whole argument doesn't make sense at face value. If Trump's entire general election campaign in 2016 was a 'grift' (money being spent at his hotels, etc.), why wouldn't he just do the same in 2020? He'd raise more money and therefore logically have more opportunity to grift if he actually ran.
So, in terms of grifting opportunities, it makes more financial sense for Trump to run again.
