The Criminal Trump Syndicate currently in the White House has a history of screwing people over—investors, contractors, friends—none of them matter. If there’s a buck to be made at the expense of someone, Donald Trump and his family will make it. Even Steve Bannon figured this out, “This is where it isn't a witch hunt—even for the hard core, this is where he turns into just a crooked business guy, and one worth $50 million instead of $10 billion. Not the billionaire he said he was, just another scumbag.”
So question is, do Trump campaign donors know this? Do they care? All that money isn’t going to re-elect Trump, it’s going to line his pockets and those of his lawyers. “With commercial tenants fleeing his Trump Tower, President Donald Trump continues to spend $37,500 a month of campaign money for office space there—with some of that cash destined for his own wallet―even as thousands of square feet go unused at a newly opened office in northern Virginia,” reported the Huffington Post. And how many people are using that Trump Tower campaign space? The Trump campaign refused to say; It even refused to let the HuffPost tour the space. But the circumstantial evidence is that no one uses the space regularly, and it’s being leased at far higher than the going commercial rates for that space.
Meanwhile, donor money is also being spent on Trump’s legal bills. A lot of it. “Since President Donald Trump took office in 2017, his re-election campaign has spent more than $8 million in legal fees, according to ABC News's analysis of campaign finance records through last month, with record-breaking quarterly expenditures doled out in the last three months of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian meddling during the 2016 presidential campaign.”
That’s not all! “From Jan. 1 to March 31, Trump’s re-election campaign spent more than $168,000 at Trump companies that he still owns. Among them: the Trump Corporation, Trump Grill, Trump Hotels, Trump Plaza, Trump Restaurants and Trump Tower Commercial,” reported the Center for Public Integrity. “Such spending continues a years-long trend of the president frequenting his own properties for dinners, events or for office use. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Trump’s campaign has spent more than $14 million on Trump-branded companies since he first began running for president.”
Trump always saw his presidential bid as a transfer of wealth from his contributors to himself, and nothing else. He ended up winning, which just extended the grift for another four years.
There are some questions as to the legality of all the campaign self-dealing, but … who cares? If conservative donors are stupid enough to want to line Trump’s pockets, who are we to stop them? It’s not as if Trump is duping them at this point. If donors don’t know Trump’s priorities (himself) by now, it is out of willful ignorance.
Much more troubling is stuff like this: “El Paso also billed Donald J. Trump for President Inc. for his ‘Make America Great Again’ rally—for nearly half a million dollars,” reported ABC News. “The invoice was sent to the campaign's Fifth Avenue offices in New York on March 27. It was due April 26, and El Paso has yet to see a dime.” El Paso won’t ever see a dime until they go to court to collect.
Can cities keep Trump from hosting campaign events unless they pay for costs up front? Would be an interesting question, and one that the courts might eventually have to address.
