Trump’s campaign is ridiculously, embarrasingly, and humiliatingly broke. This much has been well-covered. Trump cannot raise money, the RNC cannot raise it on his behalf, and accordingly he has a paltry $1.2M cash on hand heading into the general. This is due largely to the fact that he was only able to raise an embarrassing $3.1M in the whole month of May… barely more than Ted Cruz raised in the first three days of May.
In spite of the fact that the campaign has no money and is not raising any money, it is giving away hefty sums of money to Trump’s companies, his kids, and himself. The Wall Street Journal added it up and found that Trump spent over a million on his kids and his own companies:
Trump directed nearly a fifth of the $6.7M he spent in May to companies he owns or to reimbursing his kids: https://t.co/xXpuvw0q4w
— Rebecca Ballhaus (@rebeccaballhaus) June 21, 2016
If you look at Trump’s expenditure reports, it’s astounding and galling how much money he directed to companies owned or controlled by him:
Recipients of payments from Trump campaign with “Trump” in name, through May 31. Doesn’t include Mar-a-Lago/planes. pic.twitter.com/JF6skaWYGF
— Derek Willis (@derekwillis) June 21, 2016
Then there is the fact that, for some reason, Trump has been paying himself a substantial amount in payroll – in spite of the fact that he claims to be one of the wealthiest men on earth and does not need for his campaign to pay him a living salary, they have been doing it anyway. From the FEC report:
This goes on and on, but clearly Trump is regularly taking money out of his campaign and paying it to himself as payroll.
If you’re a potential Trump donor and the RNC comes to you asking for a donation, because the campaign is in bad shape, you’d have to ask yourself at this point why you would donate to a campaign that spends about half as much as it takes in enriching Trump and his companies. If Trump is as rich as he brags about being, why can’t he just fund all this himself?
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