Trump made a big deal about self funding his own campaign, but maybe he was using an alternative meaning of the term “self fund”. It looks like he meant that he would be using his campaign funds to enrich himself.
Now that Trump is raking in money from donors, his campaign quadrupled the rent that they are paying the Trump Tower (owned by Donald J Trump). The Trump campaign tried to explain that they still pay somewhat less in rent than Clinton’s campaign, but that ignores the fact that Clinton’s campaign has more than 700 paid staff, while Trump only has 170. That works out to the Trump campaign paying $1000/month in rent per employee, while Clinton is paying $300/month per employee.
It also doesn’t explain why Trump doesn’t actually, you know, fund his own campaign and donate the rent in his own building (which obviously had the space) to his own campaign. After all, he claims to be really rich, right?
And this is not the only example. Federal records show that almost a fifth of Trump’s campaign cash has gone to companies to which he is linked.
3 Comments
I’ve received four robo calls asking me to donate to the Trump campaign. I’ve never voted for a republican for president, and have voted every election since 1980. Perhaps because I made a small contribution to Sanders they are guessing that I might not support Hillary. Either that or the campaign is just incompetent. That’s my hope!
The way Trump does business is really very American… if your business (or political campaign, as the case may be) is going to need transportation or equipment or real estate, whether to farm or house offices or machinery or just store things, then why not be sure to have that business lease what it needs, assuming what is paid is not so transparently outlandish as to raise eyebrows at the underfunded and understaffed IRS, from other companies in which you or your family are major shareholders?
How many sole proprietorships lease space in buildings owned by the same people/persons under different corporate umbrellas… thereby deducting first the cost of the rent from the profits of the business that leases, and again in a different way the costs of the mortgage and upkeep, etc. from the profits made by renting the building to the business?
And can leverage the rent paid in order to speculate in real estate which will later be flipped as a side-business?
Same with automobiles, and equipment depreciation… How many times can how many umbrella companies depreciate the same piece of machinery before it becomes economical for that piece of equipment to change hands again so it can be depreciated again?
Trump may be a lot of things, but he’s no idiot and is likely surrounded by first-class accounting people and tax lawyers.
William, I have gotten the robocalls too and I’ve never voted Republican. I have stayed on the line, pressed one, etc, to get through to the people taking donations and told them there was no way in hell I was voting for Trump and to please remove me from their call list and the calls keep coming. Incompetent or just don’t care.