I couldn’t find anything in your source supporting your claim, did I miss it somehow? It did say they planned to use trump by “pumping him up” but not financially, and not encouraging him to run in the first place. It was a plan to make the less likely to win Republican candidates (there were several on their list) seem more likely to win to split the Republican vote. I also couldn’t find any other article supporting your claim when I googled it but I might need better search terms.

I understand what you mean about it being a bad plan that backfired horribly. But blaming any single person (other than trump) for his run for presidency and win is disingenuous. She had a bad campaign, and the media spent too much time following his antics, and millions of Americans messed up by voting for a clown.