Mark Sanford has not yet fulfilled his destiny of being elected president, but his face is already appearing on U.S. currency — albeit the fake stuff.

For his next trick, PR mastermind and former Gov. Mark Sanford is giving out money with his face right there where George Washington usually is.

As part of his latest attempt to relate a complicated public policy to The Average Joe, Sanford is passing out fake $1 trillion bills to raise awareness of the nation’s $23 trillion deficit and runaway government spending.

Sanford has mounted an uphill fight to snatch the Republican nomination for president from Donald Trump’s big boy hands.

“Sanford knows a thing or two about passing bills in Congress,” said a press release on Thursday to roll out the fake money. But in reality, over Sanford’s two stints in the U.S. House, Library of Congress records do not show any Sanford legislation being passed into law and just one bill passed out of the House. As a testament to the former S.C. governor’s undeniable PR savvy, Sanford’s fake-money-to-talk-about-real-money stunt comes on the heels of a cross-country he trip snappily named the “Kids, We’re Bankrupt and We Didn’t Even Know It” tour, and a series of debates with a cardboard cutout of Trump. The “play money” is described as an “engagement tool” in a press release, if that helps you understand it any better.

“Legal tender for unsustainable political promises guaranteed to hurt everyone [sic] of us,” is written on the reverse of the bill. Catchy, huh??

It’s all very funny, right? Right? Well, in 361 days, voters will head to the polls for the 2020 presidential election and there’s a 99.9 percent chance that the money man or the cardboard cutout will be on the ballot.


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