Trump qunitupled his campaign's Trump Tower rent — once his donors started footing the bill https://t.co/boz22wTZhA pic.twitter.com/keo9OlKnhp
— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) August 23, 2016
Wait. This is an *actual picture* of Trump campaign office space? pic.twitter.com/qr3uRCHysI
— dan sinker (@dansinker) August 23, 2016
Rule is campaigns have to pay fair market value. Market didn’t increase 5X this year, so Trump not paying FMV either before or now
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) August 23, 2016
Goniff's gonna goniff. https://t.co/TmnYntEYMZ
— John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) August 23, 2016
Seriously how f**king stupid is Trump for thinking this wouldn't become public? Was it really worth the extra $135K? https://t.co/7WKBELyGS7
— Daniel Drezner (@dandrezner) August 23, 2016
Like all of his businesses, Trump's campaign is using his name to sell a shoddy product to line his pockets https://t.co/1ylktUqLJl
— Dan Pfeiffer (@danpfeiffer) August 23, 2016
What percentage of Trump donations will ultimately end up in his pocket, I wonder? https://t.co/ogpBSdQWcz
— Bob Schooley (@Rschooley) August 23, 2016
RYAN: So, you quintupled the rent on your office once donors started paying?
TRUMP: I did! Terrific.
RYAN:
TRUMP: Wait, do people know that?— Owen Ellickson (@onlxn) August 23, 2016
RYAN: Donors are furious.
TRUMP: They'll cool down when they hear how sweet of a deal it is for me.
RYAN: No.
TRUMP: But it's REAL sweet!— Owen Ellickson (@onlxn) August 23, 2016
MattF
Monetize, monetize.
Chyron HR
Yes, but did he meet with anybody? Or send them e-mails? Let’s focus on what’s IMPORTANT here.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
I assume these donors aren’t the big gazzillionaire types who’ve been reportedly not giving Trump a dime because they know exactly how he operates, ie., like this. Thus, he’s fleecing the rubes. Good.
Kay
Also, Trump now says his immigration plan will be to do what Obama and Bush did, just better.
This is maybe bad form, but his base know as little as he does. They really weren’t aware we have an entire police agency devoted to immigration, ICE? Why would they need his new army? This promise he’s breaking wouldn’t have even hit home if his voters had a clue, because they’d say “we have ICE. why do we need a new agency?”
Kay
I get the feeling from the sons they think they died and went to heaven with these millions pouring in.
Best Grift Ever. They’re practically drooling.
one_particular_harbour, fka Botsplainer
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
Yeah, I’m actually OK with him hoovering every last dime from the pockets of the tobacco-chawing, camo-clad, drawling MAGA cap wearers.
Leaves them less money to buy Bushmasters.
Eric
@Kay: better agency. Bigger guns. More and greater grift. Make America grift again. Great!
randy khan
I do believe that the FEC rule is that you have to charge the campaign *at least* fair market value to avoid a contribution, so charging more than fair market value is okay from that perspective.
Now whether it’s okay to divert money from the campaign to your pocket, I don’t know. I seem to remember there’s an FEC decision permitting a campaign to pay the candidate a salary, but I’m not sure if I’ve got that right.
NorthLeft12
This will just impress his devoted followers even more…..”Gee, what a great businessman! Just think of what he could do if he were President!!!”
Honestly, they are too ignorant to understand how bad this looks, and are more than willing to overlook it because of who he is sticking it to. I think they imagine that as President he will somehow stick it to the rest of the world [allies and enemies…it makes no difference] and to the undeserving Americans [ POC, liberals, smart and strong women, that prick next door who has a nicer house and yard than me,……etc.].
shomi
Lol…so the latest attack bubbling up on the innertubezzz is that Clinton lacks stamina. So just the right mix of dogwhistle for all the old white guys who don’t think a woman should be prez.
Someone who looks like Drumpf should not be making attacks about stamina….The guy looks like he could drop dead at any minute. He seems to be looking worse and worse by the day.
PaulW
This is why political campaigning is – right now – the biggest financial con game in the world.
Screw hedge funds: you can pocket tons of money during a political campaign and NOBODY will do a damn thing to stop it because you can use Citizens United decision and its loose reading of the 1st Amendment to claim “free speech” protection and avoid fraud charges.
And you’ll still get suckers – even among real billionaires who should be smarter businessmen than this – willing to pay you because you’ve got this wonderful Far Right media megamonster screaming ZOMG THE DEMOCRATS ARE EVUL to force those suckers to hand over more and more cash as you make them angrier and angrier about nothing getting done.
gogol's wife
@Chyron HR:
Right, the front page of the New York Times this morning is telling me that what’s really important is Hillary’s e-mails.
Kay
Having worked in a rural post office in a near-poverty area you-all would cry if you saw how many grift operations there are in both conservatism and religious fundamentalism. That was years ago and it’s exploded with the internet. I cannot imagine how many solicitations they get now that lists move at lightening speed and all you need is a website.
one_particular_harbour, fka Botsplainer
BTW – the $100,000 that Trump allegedly donated in Louisiana?
The beneficiary is some Baptist church that is currently being interim pastored by Tony Perkins.
Yeah, THAT Tony Perkins.
raven
@Kay: And then there are “Veterans” issues that swindle people.
MattF
@Kay: And then there’s the scammy robocalls. I got about a dozen over the past two weeks from ‘Internal Revenue Services’ claiming I’m about to be sued. I ignore them, but also note that I’m not the real intended target.
dedc79
Trump claims to be the best at a lot of things that he’s actually horrible at, but he IS truly one of the best grifters on the planet.
shomi
It amazes me that some people are still surprised by any of this. This is who Drumpf is and always was.
raven
I sit here fretting about my hernia surgery and get an encouraging text from my boss who is in a desperate fight with cancer. Perspective dude, perspective.
MattF
@dedc79: Except that now his grifts have to be documented with the FEC. Sad!
one_particular_harbour, fka Botsplainer
The “donation”
Jeffro
This stuff w/ bringing Bannon on board and the mounting evidence of grifting…this is the kind of stuff that will send even my RW dad over the edge. He won’t vote for Clinton, but I seriously doubt he’ll vote for Trump at this point.
(He lives in a pretty blue state anyway, but it’ll help push Trump down to the fabled 27% mark. I’ll take it! )
Waldo
“If this is how he screws his loyal supporters, imagine how he will treat the Chinese!”
— His Loyal Supporters
comrade scott's agenda of rage
More on “the donation”, or some donation:
http://freakoutnation.com/2016/08/revealed-trump-did-not-donate-truckload-of-supplies-to-louisiana-flood-victims/
Nina
Is the higher amount for the same square footage? If he ramped up the amount of office space as the campaign got larger I can see the bill legitimately going up. At least that’s likely to be the excuse.
Either that, or he’ll claim that they had to upgrade the space to handle campaign stuff. You know, more gold plate and coffered ceilings.
SenyorDave
Does anyone seriously believe the media will cover stuff like this? Especially when the Republicans in Congress are now ramping up the e-mail investigation to 24/7. They just subpoened the e-mail providers, and I’m assuming by the time they are done they’ll rope in anyone who was even tangentially involved (an some who aren’t, since they really can do whatever they want in the short run). And the media has decoded that the e-mails are the only important story.
MattF
@Nina: It’s true– in fact, bad taste is more expensive.
indycat32
So Trump claims to be worth billions and the best he can do is a lousy $100,000?
Dork
$170K per month for just a floor or 2 of a building is so obscene that it seems like it should be investigated by the FEC for stealing.
Ha ha! I make myself larf!
shomi
Who would have thought that a former slum lord with a reputation for gouging and scamming and not paying his bills would do something like this.
Barbara
@randy khan: Umm, no. That’s what Marco Rubio got into trouble for, not to mention it’s what I believe Jesse Jackson Jr. was actually prosecuted for — using campaign donations for personal expenses. Paying greater than FMV rent to the candidate would, in essence, be a way of laundering political donations so that they end up being available for the candidate’s personal (unrestricted) use. On the other hand, who is to say what FMV is — they might have rented more or different space over time. I wouldn’t jump to conclusions about that without more information.
Major Major Major Major
Have you noticed how the more syllables somebody uses to describe their political beliefs, the more annoying they are?
schrodinger's cat
@Kay: In Trump’s bizzaro world immigrants to the United States have it easier than citizens do. All of the benefits and none of the responsibilities, as if they were heirs to daddy rich bucks. Defies common sense, but his supporters eat it with a spoon.
MattF
@Dork: Given the location, it’s not surprising that the rent is bizarrely expensive. It’s that fugitive factor of five increase that’s suspicious.
NotMax
@MattF
Mentioned several times previously at BJ, but worth reminding again.
An inconvenience, but a necessary one. Report those calls to the office of Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. Phone: 800-366-4484 or else online here (red box on the right labeled IRS Impersonation Scam Reporting).
hovercraft
New Clinton Ad “Just One”
New Priorities Ad “Watching”
As much as the media is in a tizzy about this nonsense, the campaign and the superpac are spending real money to put Trump in his own words on TV , so the American people can hear for themselves who he is. The media want to make a race of it because covering the she’s winning he’s losing, is a loss for them. They lose money, and if he stays as boring as he’s been for the last week they also lose because he’s boring them. They need a horse race and God dammit they’ll make it one or die trying. I hope Hillary continues to ignore them, they can complain that she’s not doing pressers, but then the voters see her on with their local anchors and Jimmy Kimmel, and say I just saw her on TV, what are they talking about. The media will never be happy, especially now that they’ve discovered that donors get access and water is wet.
NotMax
@Major Major Major Major
The antidisestablishmentarians on hold on line 2.
;)
Aleta
Some (edited) quotes:
OzarkHillbilly
Now, I’m a carpenter not an electrician, so take what I say here with a small dose of salt:
I have decades of experience in commercial construction and I have NEVER seen wiring like that spaghetti hanging exposed just waiting to get snagged. No way is that up to code. NO FVCKING WAY. I can not see how they have an occupancy permit for that floor.
New York building inspectors should be on their way right now with a ‘cease and desist’ order. Either that or they are on the take too.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Dork: Depends where you are. Here in SoCal, I’m in a pretty small commercial building and there’s no way we could get an entire floor of the building for only $170k/mo. Manhattan will be a lot more.
dedc79
@MattF: If he was undercharging for the rent before the 5x hike, then that is problematic too, because it would amount to an unreported gift to the campaign (the difference between the rent charged and the market value).
Aleta
I imagine there’s SO MUCH influence-grift and padding going on in the nonstop business world of perpetual campaign services. Probably standard Trump practice to create ways to net the middleman profits for himself.
Bill
I think we’ve finally gotten to the true point of the Trump campaign.
NotMax
@dedc79
Dead end. Counter argument (which would be all but impossible to disprove) is that his clinching and later receiving the nomination increased the perceived market value of such space on a short-term lease inside that particular branded building.
Bex
@OzarkHillbilly: Email Bill de Blasio about that.
NorthLeft12
Hovercraft; your comment is one giant link to the Hillary ad. Happened to me once too. Not at all sure why.
Anyhoo, I agree with you about Hillary’s current strategy for avoiding press conferences. We all know that all they want to talk about is emails, emails, emails. It appears that the local guys and talk show hosts actually allow her to talk about actual policy that may be of interest to the actual voters. The downside is that they will continue to attack her, but honestly, I don’t see that holding press conferences will ever change that. Perhaps she should sit down with a few reporters who have shown a willingness to talk about something other than Republican created “scandals”.
randy khan
@Barbara:
I just looked it up, and while “personal expenses” generally can’t be reimbursed, campaigns can pay salaries to candidates and, to the extent they actually work in the campaign, to family members.
I didn’t see any guidance on paying rent other than that a campaign can’t pay rent for the candidate’s residence, but there may be something out there.
MattF
@Bill: Two points: a financial scam and a policy scam.
Chris
@Kay:
I’ve seen a pretty impressive scam operation in a health insurance plan that my Appalachian, fundiegelical, cousin signed up for a couple years back. You paid $250 a month to be on that “insurance plan,” but you still had to pay all the costs of your operation up-front, then you’d send an email around and basically hope that the charity of your fellow network members was enough. In exchange, you had to make all your medical records available to everyone in the network; you had to live a lifestyle that was entirely healthy by their standards (no smokers or heavy drinkers or wev); the insurance plan would not under any circumstances pay for birth control or drug rehab; and finally, you had to sign a waiver promising never to sue the “insurance company” if it somehow didn’t meet your needs.
(The worst part is it’s really not a scam. It’s just nitwit bait. They’re being perfectly up-front with you that they will take your money, guarantee you nothing, and leave you with no recourse. Idiots just take the bait because hey, they’re Christian and clearly concerned with morality, so they must be good people).
rikyrah
Ferret Head has changed the game on them.
The GOP M.O. is to use the OFFICE as the point of grift.
This is the Nominee using the actual CAMPAIGN as the object of the grift.
The Czar of All the Stupids
In addition to those truly execrable ‘MAKE AMERICA GREAT’ hats, I hope Trump’s been handing out complimentary tubes of K-Y jelly to his donors… ’cause it sure looks like they’re gonna need them by the time this is over…
Just sayin’…
MattF
@Chris: I’d call that affinity fraud.
Ruckus
@raven:
Had hernia surgery 3 yrs ago. It isn’t all that bad. (and yes perspective, I’m having a hard time with this myself) Anyway the biggest issue I had was that 2-3 days after the surgery, everything turned black and blue. Every single thing within 8 inches of the site turned black and blue. It’s normal, just no one told me. Now you know. BTW it goes away in a few days and things began to return to normal. Good luck, enjoy the time off.
Mike E
The Aristocrats!
rikyrah
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
As someone points out – the REAL GOP Crime Bosses aren’t giving him anything..
BECAUSE THEY KNOW HOW HE OPERATES.
If the ‘ rubes’ that voted for him get swindled…oh well.
dedc79
@NotMax: (1) They need only look at the rent charged for other floors in the same building (and for similar space in same area) (2) there is no explaining away a 5x hike in rent, whether short-term or long-term.
Amir Khalid
@Nina:
He hasn’t exactly been vigorously expanding his campaign staff headcount. So what would he need more office space for?
The Other Chuck
@OzarkHillbilly: I suspect that’s data and/or phone wiring, which isn’t subject to code. You can see proper conduits where electric goes. Still manages to be an incredibly sad little office though. Not a single poster for their own candidate. Not exactly a shining example of master carpentry either.
Jeffro
@Major Major Major Major: I’m a Dem
/not annoying in the least
hovercraft
@Jeffro:
I’m not sure, that ’27 %’ is pretty solid, “i could stand on Fifth Avenue and shoot someone…..” Anything he says or does is not as important as him sticking it to the liberals, the media, and the establishment. Plus many of them say they don’t actually believe he’s going to do most of what he says he will, they just like his attitude, and the fact that he drives their enemies crazy.
WaterGirl
@raven: Hey raven, fretting about surgery is only human. I’m glad you have a good boss who cares about you, and the perspective is surely priceless. Figure you’re in surgery now, depending on the time zone and depending on whether they are running on time or not. I would not be at all surprised to find that there are hundreds of us on BJ who are sending good thoughts your way.
hovercraft
@NorthLeft12:
Yeah I messed up, I didn’t close the link button after I pasted the link, so every thing I typed after the paste became part of the link. Sorry.
MattF
@WaterGirl: Yeah, like my BIL says, minor surgery is what happens to someone else.
catclub
But if were really a multi-billionaire, the amounts are piddling. Although, everyone knows very rich people who still search for the cheapest gas to save a dollar on a fillup. Those people have mental health issues as far as I am concerned. => Back to Trump after all.
Shana
@Amir Khalid: No, he only added about a dozen or so staffers and it’s not clear whether or not they were at Trump Tower or out in the field.
OzarkHillbilly
@The Other Chuck: Not sure about data and phone wiring not being subject to code, but I really doubt it. Every gawddamned thing in commercial construction has specific code compliance including the placement of screws for hanging the drywall (sarcasm, but not by much) either way who ever installed it should be shot and pissed on. Every comm job I ever worked on had specific schematics and procedures for the install of all low voltage wiring. Why? So when there is an outage one can find the correct wire. Duhhh.
amk
@Amir Khalid: Exactly.
hovercraft
@Dork: @CONGRATULATIONS!:
That rent is not at all excessive for NYC, I know that a studio apartment ( 600 sq ft) in a prime area like the Upper East Side can run you almost $2,000 a month, so for prime real estate, which Fifth Ave. is can easily run that high. There is a reason I’ve spent the last 25 years circling NYC rather than living there. The Rent Is Too Damn High. Jimmy McMilan ran for governor on that platform, and actually got in some of the debates.
catclub
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
square footage? wow.
Never mind. my math is borked this morning.
I live a in a cheap place. It is hard to imagine how much higher rents get paid.
grandpa john
@Aleta: Samuel Butler knew what he was talking about over 300 years ago. Some things never change.
OzarkHillbilly
@MattF: I’ve had a few minor surgeries. A hernia operation is not among those so listed. ANY time they put you under, it’s major. (or at least that is my personal dividing line)(just cause I HATE anesthesia)
hovercraft
@rikyrah:
He may have perfected it, but Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich and many others have been slowly turning the act of running for president into a source of income for a couple of cycles now. Between using it as a resume builder to get FOX gigs or radio gigs, they also use it to jack up their speaking fees. The Mike Huckabees of the world use the campaign to install members of their families into paid positions where they can make lots of money and get a toehold into the grift. Family enterprises are created to charge the campaign for services, but Trump has taken this to a new level, basically eschewing any venue that is not owned by the candidate, except for rallies, means that he making money hand over fist. Between the travel, and the free advertising for his properties alone he is making out like a bandit.
Kay
@Chris:
We had an older lady I just loved- she gave me pumpkins for my kids every year – and she would put a dollar in each donation envelope in front of me at the counter and hand them back to be mailed. They multiplied because they found a mark and they’re selling the lists and she seemed frantic- like she HAD to do this. I didn’t feel I could say anything because it’s none of my business and she gets the same privacy everyone else gets, but I so wanted to tell her “you can just throw that out- it’s a fake bill”.
NotMax
@dedc79
No, not germane. What would need to be compared is the asking price for similar empty space – same building, same or equivalent views – not extant rates for occupied space already leased out long-term. The campaign space may well be on a month-to-month lease as there is no expectation of extended occupancy beyond November.
Again, it is perceived value of what the market will bear and not historic rates that is the crux.
(Not taking the DT campaign’s side, for those who came in late, rather playing devil’s advocate.)
The Other Chuck
@OzarkHillbilly: Sure there’s code for data wiring (fire code distinguishes plenum vs riser cables), and probably electrical code for that and other low voltage stuff, but from what I’ve seen, data cables can and are just strung higgledy-piggledy in even the most professional offices, then fixed later. Not that they’re likely to fix anything in that office, since it’s just a half-assed Potemkin office to justify charging rent in the first place.
NotMax
@OzarkHillbilly
Have a friend who at one point worked in the technical engineering department for NBC at Rockefeller Plaza. At one point he was called in to rip out a ceiling and do rewiring of a control room.
Why? Because over the decades, first for radio and later for TV, more and more stuff had been strung and each time a drop ceiling had been successively lowered to accommodate all the spaghetti. At that point the ceiling was so low that some tall people had to hunch over if standing.
So he dug the schematics out and began snipping, removing, restringing, etc. Until he came across one wire.
That wire did not appear on any schematic or blueprint at all and from its placement up near the original ceiling, was run there when or shortly after the building was constructed. Supervisor was called in and finally said, “What the hell, snip it.”
Not long after, the tech engineering department was getting calls from several floors that all the wall clocks had suddenly stopped working.
rikyrah
@hovercraft:
You are correct, which is why I made the distinction of him being the NOMINEE.
It was Maddow who informed me of the Campaign as Grift for the GOP. I had never made the connection – actually running. I was used to them using THE ACTUAL OFFICE ONCE WON as grift. But, Maddow broke it down about the GOP grifting machine being part of the reason for people with no chance of winning getting into the race.
That’s why I made the distinction between just a mere candidate, and the actual Nominee.
Linnaeus
Happy birthday, “welfare reform”:
Eric U.
some leftbloggers periodically bemoan the grift on the right. I say have at it. If Trump can steal large donor’s money and not spend it on his campaign, I say go for it. I’m not sure how many campaign ads I’m really going to see this year for president. So far it’s too many. But Pennsylvania is pretty much in the bag now, so I assume the money will move on to other states. OTOH, hoping to see some McGinty ads soon, that attack ad against her is getting on my nerves. Thank the deity for netflix and amazon prime
catclub
@Linnaeus:
How much disappeared? In Louisiana, population 4.5M, there are 4000 families on TANF. Let each family be 6 people and that is 1/2% of the population.
Stan
@randy khan: Right, *below* market value is a campaign law violation.
“Five times above* fair market value is probably what used to be called ‘fraud’.
Stan
@NotMax: ” “What the hell, snip it.” ”
Decades ago, working in IT, we had a similar problem in a computer room. Had several cables we could not identify as we were re-cabling the entire place. Some wise older guy said, “Disconnect everything and see who complains”.
It worked pretty well. ;)
MattF
@OzarkHillbilly: My eye surgeries (four of them) were all done under sedation, and by the end of it I’d gotten to knew the anesthesiologist at the eye surgery center pretty well. I guess any one of them could be considered minor– but the series of operations, all together, seems non-minor to me.
ETA: And, btw, anesthetics are avoided for eye surgery because they make your eyes roll up. Now you know.
Linnaeus
@catclub:
The linked article goes into a little more detail. In particular, the authors focus on (and are critical of) the decline of cash assistance for needy families, which they say TANF institutionalized (even if states can, technically, offer cash assistance). They also point out that a lot of TANF money goes to other purposes that do little to help the people that it was supposed to help.
The Other Chuck
@MattF: Don’t they still use cocaine as a local anesthetic for eye surgery?
MattF
@The Other Chuck: Well, they used fentanyl on me.
The Other Chuck
@MattF: Ah, far more effective I’d imagine. Fentanyl is crazy powerful stuff.
catclub
I am pretty sure the NPR feature I listened to used your article as its main source.
@Linnaeus: Those both sound familiar.
Patricia Kayden
@shomi: It’s shocking! Shocking, I say!
bluefish
Per TPM, Corey L. has shared with reporters just why it is that Donald can’t address African American voters in large numbers in certain locales. The gift that keeps on giving. Talk more, don’t ever stop.
bluefish
Correction and apologies — The quote from Lewandowski has more to do with why Trump rallies aren’t being held in certain places. Different in tone. Note to self — Do not post when riddled with disbelief and anxiety. Let this national nightmare be over, Time Machine of my choosing. I despise this crew. Off to unplug the tube.
Lurker Extraordinaire
@Kay: Because smaller government, radda radda, drown it in a bathtub, radda radda.
Lurker Extraordinaire
@Chris: I have heard radio ads for “Christian” health insurance. Is that what your cousin has? Sounds like a waste, if you ask me.
Nora
@gogol’s wife: And it’s also telling me that what’s important is that BOTH CANDIDATES have issues with their health. All I can think of is Krugman’s “Shape of Earth: Opinions Differ.”
gex
@rikyrah: The same rich white men keep taking their money, and they keep getting madder at racial minorities, queers, immigrants, and refugees. It’s just so unnecessary.
But as a friend of mine says, “White supremacy is one hell of a drug.”
J R in WV
@The Other Chuck:
Back in about 1963 I gouged my cornea, and it didn’t start to hurt until about 3 am. My dad called the eye doctor/surgeon, and he met us at his office asap. He squeezed a drop into the corner of my eye, which I couldn’t open at all, and the pain ceased instantly.
I’m thinking that was liquid cocaine, as that was a long time ago… the absence of pain was almost the best sensation I’ve ever had… I was in JR High, so 8th or 9th grade maybe? Aftermath was a patch and antibiotic eye drops, no big deal.