REPORT:
DONALD TRUMP, GRIFTER INCARNATE, CHARGES TAXPAYERS FOR WATER HE DRINKS AT
MAR-A-LAGO
Pretty sweet con the president’s got going!
BY BESS LEVIN
OCTOBER
27, 2020
In a lot of ways, becoming president of the United States hasn’t
been great for Donald Trump’s bottom line, thanks to his name and
brand being synonymous with racism, kidnapping, corruption, sexual harassment, white supremacy, the death of facts, mass murder, and a crazy
man who goes on TV and claims his enemies
are probably running a satanic, sex-trafficking cult. Those little things have
led to tenants in Trump Tower reportedly dumping their
condos at a loss just to escape the stench by association, canceled hotel
deals, and “sharp decline[s]” at his
flagship resorts.
Still, in other ways, being the most powerful
person in America has been absolutely tremendous for Trump’s family business,
which he refused to divest from after
being inaugurated and still profits from to this day. For one, Republican
politicians, foreign officials, corporate executives, and anyone looking to
grease the wheels of the federal government know their money will go far at the
Trump International Hotel Washington, D.C. “Why wouldn’t I stay at his hotel
blocks from the White House, so I can tell the new president, ‘I love your new
hotel!’ Isn’t it rude to come to his city and say, ‘I am staying at your
competitor?’” a diplomat told the Washington
Post in 2016. For another, he’s able to use trips abroad to peddle his
money-losing golf clubs, where he can also “suggest” the vice
president spend the night despite non-Trump properties making more sense. And
then, of course, there are the trips to Mar-a-Lago and his club in Bedminster,
New Jersey.
We’ve known for some time that these frequent
jaunts to his own properties—280 of them to date—either to meet with heads of
state or to simply get away for the weekend, cost taxpayers millions of
dollars. But in a new report out today, the Washington Post puts an actual
price tag on the amount of money Trump has funneled from the U.S. Treasury, as
well as his campaign, directly into his own pocket: at least $8.1 million,
which is reportedly more than his hotels in Hawaii and Vancouver have taken in
since 2017. It also reveals what an out and out con the president is, bilking
taxpayers for not just large items like hotel rooms— which, of course, they
wouldn’t have to pay for if he was at the White House or a private
residence—but the kind that flows out of a tap:
In the
case of the government, Trump’s visits turned it into a captive customer, newly
revealed documents show. What the government needed from Trump’s properties, it
had to buy from Trump’s company. So the more he went, the more he got. Since
2017, Trump’s company has charged taxpayers for hotel rooms, ballrooms,
cottages, rental houses, golf carts, votive candles, floating candles,
candelabras, furniture moving, resort fees, decorative palm trees, strip steak,
chocolate cake, breakfast buffets, $88 bottles of wine and $1,000 worth of
liquor for White House aides. And water.
Yes, water:
President
Trump welcomed the Japanese prime minister at Mar-a-Lago, in front of a
towering arrangement of roses. The two could have met in Washington, but Trump
said his private club was a more comfortable alternative. “It is, indeed, the
Southern White House,” Trump said, greeting Prime Minister Shinzo
Abe in front of the press in April 2018. For Trump, there was another,
hidden benefit. Money. At Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s company would get paid to host
his summit.
In the
next two days, as Trump and Abe talked about trade and North Korea, Trump’s
Palm Beach, Fla., club billed the U.S. government $13,700 for guest rooms,
$16,500 for food and wine and $6,000 for the roses and other floral
arrangements.
Trump’s
club even charged for the smallest of services. When Trump and Abe met alone,
with no food served, the government still got a bill for what they drank.
“Bilateral meeting,” the bill said. “Water.” $3 each.
At the same meeting with Abe, Mar-a-Lago reportedly charged the
government thousands of dollars for accommodations for staffers, despite the
fact that federal policy says the most the government could pay was $182.
“[There’s] a five bedroom house that three of the senior staff are staying in
at $2,600 per night,” State Department employee Michael Dobbs wrote
in an email to his colleagues. “The two other Senior staffers (Bannon and
Walsh) are expected to be charged $546 for their rooms.” From a logistical standpoint,
hosting events at Mar-a-Lago, rather than the White House, is, as one former
official put it to the Post, a “pain in the [posterier].”
Also, if the Abe meeting, and others like it, were held at 1600 Pennsylvania
Avenue, Bannon and other White House employees would’ve simply stayed in their
own homes. But, of course, that would mean there wasn’t anything in it for
Trump. Plus, hosting them at the president’s for-profit properties means
gouging the Secret Service:
When
Trump visited Mar-a-Lago for two weeks at Christmas last year, for example, the
club charged the Secret Service $32,400 for guest rooms. In
addition, Trump’s adult children have brought their father’s
company another $260,000 in taxpayer revenue on their own, records show, by
taking solo trips to Trump properties with their own Secret Service agents in
tow.
And, in
some cases, Trump’s properties even got paid on days when no Trumps were
present at all. In Bedminster, N.J., for instance, Trump’s club has charged the
Secret Service $17,000 per month to rent a cottage from May to
November—even on days when the family is absent. That’s an unusually high rate
for the area, but a former Trump administration official said they had to pay
it—to be ready, if Trump suddenly decided to visit. Defense Department records
recently obtained by The Post show a similar pattern of $17,000 payments to
Trump’s club in Bedminster in recent years. Pentagon officials declined to
answer questions about whether they have a cottage there too.
As the Post notes, the Trump Organization has
defended these payments in the past in two ways. The first is by claiming that
the law says they have to charge the government, which ethics experts say is
not true at all. (“There’s nothing that would prohibit any government employee,
including the president, from offering the government something for
free,” Don W. Fox, who was acting director of the U.S. Office
of Government Ethics in the Obama administration, told the publication.) The
other argument is that while it has to charge the government something—which,
again, it doesn’t—it only charges enough to cover costs. “If my father travels,
they stay at our properties for free. Meaning, like, cost for
housekeeping,” Eric Trump told Yahoo Finance last year while
trying to defend the president’s attempt to hold the G7 at his Miami resort.
“If they were to go to a hotel across the street, they’d be charging them $500
a night, whereas, you know we charge them, like 50 bucks.” Obviously, though,
that’s not true either:
Among
the hundreds of transactions reviewed by the Post, there were about
two dozen payments that came close to that description: On three occasions when
Trump visited his hotel in Las Vegas, for instance, the Defense Department
reported paying just $74.51 per night for rooms. The Defense Department
declined to comment about those payments. But, in cases where the Post could
determine what room rate was charged, the Trump Organization mostly appeared to
charge the maximum allowed under federal spending rules. Or more.
At
Mar-a-Lago, the government was charged rates ranging from $396.15 to $650
per room, according to documents obtained by the Post and people who
have seen other, unredacted receipts. The rate for the cottage at Bedminster
worked out to $566 per night. Once, when Donald Trump Jr. stopped
at the Trump hotel in Vancouver, the Secret Service was charged $611 per night
for his agents’ rooms. The Trump Organization has not commented on these higher
charges. Michael Cohen, Trump’s longtime “fixer” and attorney,
said he saw no sign of a discount in those rates. “That’s what anybody coming
in would pay,” said Cohen
And then there’s the matter of the Trump Organization funneling
money from the campaign into its coffers. While campaign donations were used to
pay Trump’s businesses in 2016, during that race, Trump put in $66 million of his
own money. This time, he’s donated a paltry $8,020 as of October 14, while
extracting $5.6 million—all the while begging for cash:
In
recent months, something unexpected happened to Trump’s campaign—once called a
“Death Star” by former campaign manager Brad Parscale. Several
campaign officials have said they could use more money for television ads in
the final stretch.
It
started to run short of money. The campaign’s cash on hand shrank down to $43
million, far less than that of Democratic rival Joe Biden. That was
surprisingly little, for a campaign that started raising money far earlier than
past incumbents seeking reelection: Trump’s 2020 campaign had been
fundraising since before Trump took office in 2017. The campaign has canceled
TV ad buys in key states such as Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio. In emails to
prospective donors, Trump asked for money in capital letters. “You’ve never let
me down before and I know you won’t start now,” Trump wrote on Sept. 23.
“Contribute ANY AMOUNT RIGHT NOW.”
The
next day, Trump’s campaign paid Trump’s business $40,000 in rent, for that
space in Trump Tower.
In a separate report earlier this month, the
Associated Press revealed that the
campaign blew $1 billion on, among other things, private jet rides, legal fees,
and Don Jr.’s book, Triggered.
Both the Trump Organization and the Trump
campaign declined the Post’s request for comment. In a statement,
White House spokesman Judd Deere said, “Any suggestion that
the President has used his own official travel or the federal government as a
way to profit off of taxpayers is an absolute disgrace and lie.”
