I don't know that even Trump is this slimy, but... One train of thought I'm seeing crop up more and more on message boards and the like - both from liberals AND from conservatives who are not Trump acolytes - is this: where is the money going? After pathetic fund raising numbers for months, the Trump campaign has announced pretty dang good numbers for the past two months, nearly as good as Clinton's, mostly in small-dollar donations (i.e. from said acolytes). Yet... unlike the Clinton camp, they've purchased very little ad time on TV, and hired very few staff members to do the ground work/ get-out-the-vote effort in various states. Which are the two main reasons you raise campaign cash. So where is the money going? Surely, he's not just going to keep it, is he? A dirty little secret of campaigns is that, by and large, one CAN keep excess (unspent) contributions after the campaign is over. Of course, most people in tight campaigns do spend it. Some even spend more than they have and go into debt, especially those who lose. Usually, the only ones with an appreciable amount left over are incumbents who win in landslides but fund-raise anyway and don't spend everything. And they get a little bad press about that, and then it's forgotten. The people who sent the cash usually aren't too upset because, after all, their guy won and that's why they sent the money. Further rumors hold that Trump is in deep to Russian oligarchs, and maybe even the Russian mob (which is one reason he won't release his taxes). Some financial analysts are saying they suspect he's broke, or at least, has liabilities that exceed his assets. It is, at the least, quite strange that someone losing as decidedly as he is at the moment would hold on to campaign cash so tightly. Perhaps he's holding on for a last minute ad blitz; that would be foolish, considering now is the time when perceptions tend to solidify, but it is possible to have a foolish campaign strategy. But not hiring ground staff at this late date can't really be justified by any conventional understanding of what it takes to win a presidential race. Does he actually need the money? And does he plan on holding on to as much as he can? Is the whole Trump campaign actually just a grift in the literal - not just metaphorical - sense? Is he grifting his followers - the great white working class he claims to champion - out of their cash just because he needs it? He's shown few scruples about grifting people out of cash before (see Trump University, et al), so morally it doesn't seem beyond him. I'm not sure what to think about this. Part of me thinks he couldn't be THAT slimy, but then again... What do you think?
The whole thing is so bizarre - I've received a ton of emails from the Clinton campaign, asking me to donate $1.00 by this weekend. :-/
You had me until this point...no way in hell he's such a diabolical genius that he could've come up with such a convoluted, ridiculous plan just to raise some money. True, but a far more plausible explanation is that he simply doesn't care if he wins, or outright doesn't want to. I could buy that he sees the cash grab as a tidy side benefit, but only because it presented itself, not because he thought of it in the first place. No way no how. Oh, I definitely think he's that slimy. I just don't think he's that smart.
Nothing would surprise me. You know, people keep talking about how Trump won't release his tax returns because it'll show he paid almost no tax, or it'll show no charitable donations, or even money stashed overseas, somehow. But really, I don't think Trump cares about any of that. Trump won't release his tax returns because they'll show he has far less net worth than he pretends. Far less. And he's all about ego.
<I could buy that he sees the cash grab as a tidy side benefit, but only because it presented itself, not because he thought of it in the first place. No way no how.> I think that's probably correct. My guess is the most likely scenario is that he ran initially as a combination of ego and also for financial gain in the sense that he thought it would increase the value of his "brand." People like Gingrich have used even failed presidential bids to make a mint off the gullible with everything from ghost-written books to commemorative coins. And from the beginning he ran almost as a Messiah, meaning his followers might very well plunk down 80 bucks for one of his Bengali-made shirts after it was all over, just to get a "piece" of him. After he got the nomination, he realized his acolytes would pour in millions to the campaign proper, much of which he could keep if he didn't spend it. <You know, people keep talking about how Trump won't release his tax returns because it'll show he paid almost no tax, or it'll show no charitable donations, or even money stashed overseas, somehow. But really, I don't think Trump cares about any of that. Trump won't release his tax returns because they'll show he has far less net worth than he pretends. Far less. And he's all about ego.> I think it's probably all of the above. IMO, it can't be simply that he pays a low (or even zero) effective tax rate. I think most people, supporters and detractors alike, assume that's the case. Hell, he brags about how little he pays. To his supporters, it just proves how "smart" he is (as opposed to having an army of tax lawyers taking advantage of mechanisms simply not available to the average Joe.) Plus, after Romney, we're pretty much inured to the idea. If that's all it was, it would be a half-day story. There must be something else in there. All of the other three make sense. He's almost certainly not worth what he claims, and I don't think his ego could stand that being exposed. If it's appreciably less (as many experts have posited), it hurts not only his ego and his fee-fees, but possibly his whole career (and maybe even those of his kids) going forward. It shows he's not the brilliant, never-loses businessman he claims, and that his whole image is built on. Nothing succeeds like success, as they say, and if his returns show he's not really all that successful, it means he probably is also less successful going forward. The other two seem highly likely to me too. WaPo has investigated his charitable giving, and can't find evidence of much at all, including from various charities he has claimed to give to. He had to be shamed into ponying up the 1 million he promised to veterans earlier this year, months later. But well before that, he claimed to have given "millions and millions" to vets charities over the years because he "loves the vets so much." What if his returns showed he actually gave next to nothing? That's a lie that's easily understood, hard to weasel out of or obfuscate, and would tick off vets who support him at the moment. The Russian connection is also definitely there - we know in general terms that he's borrowed from Russians because US banks stopped lending to him as a bad risk (!!) some time ago... the questions are: 1). how much, and 2). who within Russia? Just Russian banks? Or shadier connections than that? This could be anything from "no big deal" to "BFD," depending on the answer to that one. He's doing himself political damage with everyone but his base by not releasing the taxes. So it's a completely logical conclusion to say that he knows there's something (or somethings) in there that would do him more political damage if it was revealed. IMO, that can't be just a low effective tax rate, though it may be that as well. It has to be one or more of the other three, and maybe some other things that aren't as obvious.
What everyone seems to overlook is that jet he tools around in doesn't run on air or fly itself. It has already been reported in other places that he is taking a lot of that and reimbursing himself for expenses of the campaign. I don't really think he is hoarding any of it, but, he is spending it on his jet, his accommodations and whatever personal expenses that he might incur during the campaign. That is legal, so, it can be a very big part of "where did it go". Please don't interpret that as an effort to justify it, just an explanation of where it might be spent.
Still not. Consider that 80 million in a month is considered a huge haul (Clinton didn't do much better than that herself), and that's supposed to pay for everything, including what in a typical campaign are the two largest expenses: TV ads (production, and the larger expense of airtime) and ground staff in all the competitive states. In Clinton's campaign the money IS going primarily to those things. And it went to those things in Romney's campaign last time (when 80 million in a month was considered a very good month) - and you know he didn't fly coach and his top staff didn't stay at the Super 8 either. And he had a much larger staff. And they paid for all that transportation, accommodations, etc. AND put plenty into TV ads and ground staff. So it's reasonable to ask where it's going in Trump's campaign. It's not being spent on the two big traditional expenses now. It would be plausible - if strategically questionable - that they're holding back till after Labor Day and then they'll spend it there. But if they don't...
Ahem... Donald Trump Jacked Up His Campaign’s Trump Tower Rent Once Somebody Else Was Paying It Trump essentially paid himself for rent back in the primary days. Now he's having his marks - excuse me, his supporters - pay for rent in Trump Tower. And he quintupled the rent. "Trump nearly quintupled the monthly rent his presidential campaign pays for its headquarters at Trump Tower to $169,758 in July, when he was raising funds from donors, compared with March, when he was self-funding his campaign, according to a Huffington Post review of Federal Election Commission filings. The rent jumped even though he was paying fewer staff in July than he did in March. " (snip) "“If I was a donor, I’d want answers,” said a prominent Republican National Committee member who supports Trump, asking for anonymity to speak freely. “If they don’t have any more staff, and they’re paying five times more? That’s the kind of stuff I’d read and try to make an (attack) ad out of it.” (snip) "Prior to May, three-quarters of the $59 million spent by Trump’s campaign had come out of his own pocket ― meaning that whatever Trump charged his campaign for rent was largely coming from Trump himself. That situation is now entirely reversed. Trump’s money makes up a tiny percentage of his campaign’s spending. The bulk now comes from outside donors, both small-dollar givers and those writing maximum-limit checks of $2,700. “Nobody cares when you’re spending your own money, but when you’re spending the donor’s $27, that could cause problems,” the RNC member said, adding that small donors especially may not be sympathetic to Trump’s extravagance. “Most campaigns run on a much tighter budget.” Your donor money at work, suckers.
Oh, and a popular (and I must say, not entirely implausible) theory going around now is that if/when Trump loses in November, he'll claim it was "rigged," his supporters were cheated out of the President they deserved, and then he, Bannon, and now-disgraced (but in need of a gig!) Roger Ailes will create a new media entity, to the right of Fox News. A new haven for white nationalists and those who think Fox is too squishy. Possibly on a subscription basis so that the marks - oops! There I go again, I mean audience! - will have to pony up money upfront whether they watch or not. Trump’s real endgame: A white nationalist media empire?
FWIW, HuffPo didn't bother checking to see if the space being rented had increased proportionally - which is what the campaign is now claiming. This is one of those stories where my skepticism outweighs my credulous bemusement at the Trump campaign's ineptness. Can they possibly be THAT dumb? (Yes, I know, of course they can ... but not every single time!) Also ... So Trump is going to take a page out of the Sarah Palin school of broadcasting? Nah, I think they have bigger plans than that. I expect a rebranding of Breitbart itself. Its namesake is deceased, after all, and according to many of his friends, is spinning in his grave, since he kind of hated Trump's guts. Expect Trumplestiltskin to purchase of one of the smaller national cable networks - with campaign funds, no doubt.
FWIW: "The Trump campaign on Tuesday responded that it had expanded into larger quarters." (snip) It did not, however, address the question of why the campaign needed more space when it had a smaller staff. (snip) The campaign’s number of paid employees and consultants went from 166 in May, to 139 in June, to 172 in July. How many of those actually worked in Trump Tower cannot be determined from the FEC filings, although typically only a small fraction of a presidential campaign’s staff works in the headquarters building. Last autumn, only about a dozen of the campaign’s several dozen paid employees worked in Manhattan." (Early this article cited a high of 197 employees in March.) The idea of a subscription service is one that has been floated, as has a more traditional Fox-style (only even more unhinged) network. I'm sure they'll do whichever one they think can rake in more cash. Ailes certainly knows how to make a boatload by feeding the gullible, but of course Fox money comes mostly from advertisers - who might balk if the new network is too Breitbart-y.
