"He estimated that he was roughly 60 feet away from Trump on Tuesday and that the president could hear him 'very, very, very clearly...' 'I don’t feel as though fate looks upon you often, and when it does, you better be ready to seize the opportunity,' Sabula said. 'And today I think I did that.'”

This is how the mob dynamic of social media brainwashes people. They won’t speak up if it’ll put them in the minority because they know it’ll instantly destroy them reputationally; many will go one further and engineer some wild rationale for why the bigger side is always correct, actually

This also ignores that plenty of campaigns do in fact give money to charity. Every Dem group I've ever joined has community service days. Her campaign has a lot of "Silicon Valley invents big thing, wait, it's actually just a bus but worse," energy.

I also think it was malpractice of any ambitious officeholders in the area to not circulate in case he retired. It would not be unheard of for an Illinois politician to circulate and then drop out on the drop out deadline to explicitly make sure no one could do this trick.