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Tuesday, June 21, 2016

One way or the other we will pay for Con Man Donald's presidential dreams

Back in March, The Daily Beast’s Olivia Nuzzi pointed out that Donald Trump was paying himself to run for president. This was controversial at the time. Now it’s simple fact.

We've had candidates run for president before for reasons little larger than fame and matching funds. Al Sharpton's 2004 campaign—also advised by longtime Trump ally Roger Stone—comes to mind. But the Reverend Al's outsized ambitions seem quaint and comparably honest next to Con Man Donald. 

The details of the Federal Election report are alternately hilarious and depressing. For a certain kind of political nerd, paging through disbursements offers insight into the mundane day to day of a presidential campaign. Their airplane tickets and meals at random restaurants in Iowa and New Hampshire, there is $15,000 here and $2,500 there, paid to consultants and staffers (hint: the part-time consultants always make more money than the full-time staffers).

But what you see with Con Man Donald is out‑of‑control expenses that have little or nothing to do with the basic operational responsibility of running a presidential campaign. Instead, we see $423,000 paid in rental fees to his estate/club Mar-a-Lago (which he could have just gifted as a self-funded candidate rather than charged back to the campaign), and $394,000 spent on Trump-branded jets. He spent over $200,000 on hats and $35,000 on a New Hampshire-based online ad company called Draper-Sterling, but nothing on building swing state organizations or television ads. The whole operation is like Trump’s hair— a few gilded threads spun together to give the impression of substance when there is plainly nothing underneath.

The final evidence of the ugly truth underneath Con Man Donald’s campaign is this: much of the money that Trump has bragged about pouring into his campaign is a loan. It will be reimbursed by donors and U.S. taxpayers if Trump accepts matching funds, which looks like a financial necessity after months of unforced organizational errors and the RNC taking in a pathetic $11 million in May, after Toxic Trump won the nomination.

That's right America; you're going to pay for Con Man Donald's presidential dreams, one way or the other. (Full Story at Daily Beast)

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