DNC Boss Threw His Phone at a Junior Aide’s Desk in Fit of Frustration, Wild NYT Report Reveals

(AP Photo/Rod Lamkey, Jr.)

Despite polls indicating promising news on the horizon for Democrats, the party’s infrastructure is reportedly in complete turmoil.

A wild report in The New York Times Sunday painted a picture of a Democratic National Committee (DNC) in total chaos — with the DNC fending off creditors and its boss feeling so stressed he chucked a phone at a staffer’s desk.

According to the piece by the Times’ Shane Goldmacher and Reid J. Epstein, the DNC is so cash-strapped that it is asking its vendors to hold off on invoicing them until after the midterms. The Times reports the DNC is $2 million in debt, while the Republican National Committee (RNC) has $128.5 million on hand. And the pressure has gotten so heavy on DNC Chairman Ken Martin that he appears to be cracking.

“Mr. Martin’s fraying nerves are showing,” Goldmacher and Epstein wrote. “In a pique of frustration in early July, he threw his phone at the desk of a junior aide while upbraiding the person. The phone-tossing incident resulted in a formal complaint to the DNC’s human resources department.”

Martin has felt a “growing sense of paranoia,” according to the report, about a potential move to oust him. The reporters said Martin has also become “paralyzed by the idea of leaks” — although that hasn’t stopped them from happening.

As to his handling the organization’s finances, Martin has been called out for a number of moves which have put the cash-strapped party apparatus in a further bind. On his watch, the DNC paid $7.3 million for the remnants of former Vice President Kamala Harris’s 2024 campaign list — money which was used to cover Harris campaign debts. And the DNC has dropped $840,000 on territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam — which, Goldmacher and Epstein note, will not have “any impact on control of Congress.”

The DNC is maintaining a nothing-to-see-here posture regarding their finances. Martin penned a Substack essay on Monday defending his fundraising and spending strategy. And Roger Lau, the executive director of the DNC, told the Times in a statement that the request to vendors to hold off on sending their invoices for months is “nothing more than standard negotiations with vendors over contracts and payment processes.”

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