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Trump raises rent on own Campaign HQ from $35,000 to 170,000 using Campaign Donations

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Korey

Member
So at worst he gets a shitload of money.

At best he becomes President of the United States.

Trump is smart as fuck tbh.


Drastically raising the rent on your ratty campaign offices, paid by your Presidential campaign fund, in a building you own, is like supervillain levels of treachery holy shit.
 

BobLoblaw

Banned
So at worst he gets a shitload of money.

At best he becomes President of the United States.

Trump is smart as fuck tbh.


Drastically raising the rent on your ratty campaign offices, paid by your Presidential campaign fund, in a building you own, is like supervillain levels of treachery holy shit.
He reached supervillain status back when he said he could shoot someone and not pay a political price...or maybe it was when he railed against the "Central Park Five"...or maybe when he hired his Pro-Russian campaign manager... It's really hard to tell when, but he's already there.
 

AxelFoley

Member
L7cM-VMh.png
 

Neo C.

Member
He's been using campaign money for his own gains since the beginning. I hope that someone would put the numbers together, so we can see how much money went into his pocket, directly and indirectly.
 

AstroLad

Hail to the KING baby
And keep in mind this is just what his campaign disclosed, so basically tip of the iceberg. Is it still impossible to cancel recurring donations on his site?
 

BorkBork

The Legend of BorkBork: BorkBorkity Borking
I just came from the Star Wars sands thread and that image made me laugh harder than anything I saw over there.
 

Staccat0

Fail out bailed
Yeah, like it's fascinating how huge the double standards is in regards to coverage of this stuff. Like, with the Clinton Foundation, there's some e-mails that indicate the POSSIBILITY that some shady stuff went down. No evidence that any quid pro quo ever actually happened, just that people talked, but whether or not anything actually happened... no evidence.

But meanwhile, we have concrete evidence of Trump pulling some shady stuff here and... well, no one cares. They maybe cover it for a second or two on CNN and whatever, and then spend like 10 minutes talking about the Clinton Foundation again. One's hypothetical, and the other's concrete... and the one we apparently need to spend time talking about is the hypothetical one? And that's without even touching the Trump Organization and what the implications for that would be if Trump actually were elected President, which is like never talked about ever, but the implications of the Clinton Foundation? All over the place!

And to be clear, it's absolutely fair to have concerns about the Clinton Foundation. I absolutely don't blame people for having questions about it (especially since the media often makes the issue as confusing as possible as to what we actually have evidence for what occurred and what didn't, and what the Clinton Foundation even actually is). That's fair! That's definitely a discussion that people can have, and are having. But if we're going to do that, it has to go both ways, and stuff like this should be talked about as well. But the media just doesn't care and keeps giving Trump a free pass on stuff like this for some reason, while spending hours talking about the Clinton foundation and her e-mails. The double-standards that have surrounded Clinton for her entire political career are equal parts fascinating, baffling, and frustrating.

I honestly think the media has done a fine job reporting this election. Maybe it's just because I don't get my news from cable tv, but mostly I just see both sides are bitching that the media isn't reporting stuff that I definitely have seen/heard reported by the media and I'm not even terribly informed.
Like, this morning NPR talked about the Clinton Foundation stuff for about 5 to 10 minutes total and it was pretty fair and honest. I'm guessing they'll cover this tomorrow.
 

antonz

Member
The biggest problem with all of this is the fact it is legal according to election laws etc. Laws need to be written to outlaw the usage of ones own property etc. unless an independent group is tasked with determining fair value compensation etc.

The Basement of Trump Tower is not worth 170 grand a month. Shit it wasn't worth 30 grand a month.
 

numble

Member
How the fuck is this legal? Someone explain this to me.

The Trump corporations are required to charge the Trump campaign for his use of their facilities, otherwise any discount or free use would amount to a political donation from the corporation to Trump.

Imagine if Bloomberg ran for President and he wanted to run a political ad on Bloomberg TV--Bloomberg TV would need to charge the Bloomberg campaign a market price for the ad time.
 

mo60

Member
Most people. All people?

Michael Cohen must be fuming right now because what he said in reply to a question asked when he went on CNN a few days ago is literally becoming a meme now.

Anyway is what trump doing here legal. He's been doing stuff like this for months now even though some of the things he done in terms of campaign spending have been worse than this.
 

[boots]

Member
Basically became a nobody after SNL (unless you count Bordello of Blood), but after coming out as a conservative, he became this weird pseudo celebrity mouthpiece that was always invited onto political talk shows for a while.

And social-wise the dude was pretty much a liberal in every way.
 
[boots];214682781 said:
Basically became a nobody after SNL (unless you count Bordello of Blood)

?? He had an HBO show for a pretty long time after SNL, and even hosted Monday Night Football for a (small) spell.

Also The Net lol.
 

Mully

Member
Who did this poor bastard piss off to be sent to demolition zone. Those wires are a safety concern for sure.

The wires aren't a safety concern. They're all low voltage data cables. The only concern I have as an electrician, is how careless the person was when laying the cables. When I see a jumbled mess like that, I know that whoever did that, fucked up or cut corners somewhere else.
 

Auto_aim1

MeisaMcCaffrey
I feel sorry for the Republican voters. Imagine donating to a bragging billionaire in the first place and the said billionaire actually misusing the funds. It is kinda sad. He's gonna lose badly too and inflict heavy damage on the GOP.
 

Kyzer

Banned
Michael Cohen must be fuming right now because what he said in reply to a question asked when he went on CNN a few days ago is literally becoming a meme now.

Anyway is what trump doing here legal. He's been doing stuff like this for months now even though some of the things he done in terms of campaign spending have been worse than this.

Actually if you google it it really did become a meme within 24 hours.
 
D

Deleted member 284

Unconfirmed Member
I feel sorry for the Republican voters. Imagine donating to a bragging billionaire in the first place and the said billionaire actually misusing the funds. It is kinda sad. He's gonna lose badly too and inflict heavy damage on the GOP.
Oddly enough, I don't feel sorry for them. They effed up a lot of people, so turn around is fair play.
 
I feel sorry for the Republican voters. Imagine donating to a bragging billionaire in the first place and the said billionaire actually misusing the funds. It is kinda sad. He's gonna lose badly too and inflict heavy damage on the GOP.

a fool and his money will soon be parted
 
I notice the article omitted how much space he's renting, the cost per square foot, etc. It did mention that the Clinton campaign is actually spending more, but it doesn't give context. Is he overcharging himself, or is he paying essentially market rate?

I was all set to be outraged at this until I read that last line about Clinton's rent too. Trump is still paying less than her.

So, "Trump gives himself less of a discount" might be a more accurate and less inflammatory headline. But we would actually need more data to say for sure.
 

Kyzer

Banned
another piece of non-news that will get us hooting and hollering, take heat off of tax returns and proposed war crimes, and allow him to point to the media and liberals as splitting hairs over nothing
 
I was all set to be outraged at this until I read that last line about Clinton's rent too. Trump is still paying less than her.

So, "Trump gives himself less of a discount" might be a more accurate and less inflammatory headline. But we would actually need more data to say for sure.

Well that's not entirely accurate. Clinton isn't renting properties that she owns for the purposes of the campaign so she is beholden to the rent charged by the property owners. Trump could be renting "at cost" but instead is charging "for profit" rates. This also ties into the fact that the majority of spending by Trump is for Trump or Trump family member businesses.
 

Kyzer

Banned
Well that's not entirely accurate. Clinton isn't renting properties that she owns for the purposes of the campaign so she is beholden to the rent charged by the property owners. Trump could be renting "at cost" but instead is charging "for profit" rates. This also ties into the fact that the majority of spending by Trump is for Trump or Trump family member businesses.

thats not true, if anything Im surprised he was able to give himself a discount, im pretty sure the law is actually that they have to pay the same rent that anyone else would but idk

I know that with my business I was considering renting out an apt to my mom and I was advised that I have to charge her the same thing I would charge anyone else, so it was kinda pointless.
 

numble

Member
The biggest problem with all of this is the fact it is legal according to election laws etc. Laws need to be written to outlaw the usage of ones own property etc. unless an independent group is tasked with determining fair value compensation etc.

The Basement of Trump Tower is not worth 170 grand a month. Shit it wasn't worth 30 grand a month.

Well that's not entirely accurate. Clinton isn't renting properties that she owns for the purposes of the campaign so she is beholden to the rent charged by the property owners. Trump could be renting "at cost" but instead is charging "for profit" rates. This also ties into the fact that the majority of spending by Trump is for Trump or Trump family member businesses.

The rule is not to rent "at cost"--it has to be the market value, which generally is for a certain profit rate. The FEC can investigate if it is below market (constitutes a donation by the corporation) or above market (enriching one's companies). But the fact that his corporations profit is not a violation per se--it is actually in the rules that you should pay a for profit rate.
 

ElFly

Member
I was all set to be outraged at this until I read that last line about Clinton's rent too. Trump is still paying less than her.

So, "Trump gives himself less of a discount" might be a more accurate and less inflammatory headline. But we would actually need more data to say for sure.

yeah the article is p dumb by excluding the area trump is renting

but if he is paying the commercial prices mentioned almost at the end, he is still overpaying compared to hillary's campaign; based on the last paragraph, hillary is paying $31 anually per square foot
 

Nocebo

Member
I was all set to be outraged at this until I read that last line about Clinton's rent too. Trump is still paying less than her.

So, "Trump gives himself less of a discount" might be a more accurate and less inflammatory headline. But we would actually need more data to say for sure.
If I'm reading correcntly Clinton is renting far more space. So the price would at least make sense. But that is not really the point of the article.
The point is the rent was raised almost 400% for no discernible valid reason.
 

ElFly

Member
If I'm reading correcntly Clinton is renting far more space. So the price would at least make sense. But that is not really the point of the article.
The point is the rent was raised almost 400% for no discernible valid reason.

tbf maybe it was pointed out to him that he had to charge market rates
 
Everything about Trump, from his personality to his style to his aging personal jet, is indicative of a man who is trying to stretch a few million made 30 years ago into the rest of his life. At the same time, using his dwindling net worth to try to prove to people he's a savvy businessman.
 
I was inspired after the 2012 primaries, mostly by Herman Cain - I thought, with all the unaccountable cash that flows into a campaign, all that delicious PAC money that can be (legally!) pocketed when said campaign is suspended/ended, a doomed right-wing Presidential bid could be incredibly lucrative for anyone willing to stick with a cardboard candidacy for a few months.

Sadly, Donald Trump didn't just beat me to it, he bought into his own swindle. What could've been a (mostly) harmless con became an existential threat to the entire system.
 
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